A Rose for Emily

I really enjoyed reading this short story and even though I wasn't quite sure how to go about it when it started once I finished it I was intrigued. Although I would never be OK with killing someone for any reason I understand in a way why she did it. She was so afraid to be alone and unloved in a way this made her believe someone would always be there for her. Everyone was always interested in what Emily was doing and in a way they were jealous cause of her big house and how her father had given her everything. "Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows-she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house-like the carven torso of an idol in niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation-dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse." William Faulkner pg. 211. But growing up in a small town I know how neighbors are and they are always interested in someone elses business and whats going on in their lives such as in this line of the story clearly states the town was always watching her. Emily was lost in her own little world and she wanted to be loved in the end when they opened the room with the body of Homer in there you could finally realize that she would give anything to be loved by someone even kill them. With the way the body was laid out she must have laid by him many many nights just to get the feel that someone would love her and hold her in that way.

The Story of an Hour

I thought this story was very interesting because at first I wasn't sure the beginning meant when the story started out as Mrs. Mallard had a heart trouble. Clearly in the end, she died of heart disease-of joy that kills. The end of this story is sad to me because she didn't know if she loved him or not. In the end, it killed her whether it was love or not. Mrs. Mallard was a small women with slender arms. A passage in the story that really caught my eye was "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. She was so happy she was free but yet weeping for his death. Another one that caught my eye was "And yet she had loved him-sometimes. Often she had not." I knew that her husband must have done something very wrong to her. Not only once, but for several years. In the end, I counldn't believe that Brently was still living, and yet it was to late for him to even realize anything. This story, I felt, was sad. Mrs. Mallard died of saddness and joy. To me, the story meant how sad she was that he died and what a joy it was to her that she won't ever get hurt again.