"A Rose For Emily" and "The Lottery"

Get Over the Past, Focus on the Present “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner and “The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson are both short stories that deal with conflict from either the community or individually. Faulkner hints us readers the main conflict in “A Rose for Emily” is not only Emily but other characters in this short story. For “The Lottery”, Jackson hints the readers the conflict is more on the social side meaning the community or society not only the main characters. But the main comparisons between these two short stories are the characters, and the communities that seem to be stuck in the past. William Faulkner starts the short story off with saying the character Emily, from “A Rose for Emily”, is dead. Faulkner divides the short story into five parts, and those five parts talk about Emily’s life which is spoken from the town’s perspective. Emily is described as a burden, whose “old fashioned” and is basically a mean old lady. The first part starts off with Emily not wanting to pay her taxes and the mayor sets up a meeting of the Board of Aldermen to her home. Not only was she showing no manners, she kept saying she had no taxes to pay and tells her servant, “the Negro” to show the gentlemen out. The short story continues on with mentioning Emily’s father’s death. The town’s people felt sorry for Emily, not only on the fact that he passed away but the fact that her father was a controlling man. Controlling meaning her father didn’t want her to seek men. Emily was in denial for her father’s death, “She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days” (151). She couldn’t let her father go because her father was her life and that was the only life she had. The other parts talk about Emily’s sweetheart named Homer Baron. Everyone in town are happy about her having a sweetheart, but it goes downhill once they find out Homer Baron liked young men. Emily ends up buying poison and it wasn’t easy buying since the druggist was curious as to