The Story of an Hour

In paragraph 5 of The Story of an Hour, I believe the focus of the external images is to the readers Mrs. Mallard's calmness. As the story continues into paragraph 7, Mrs. Mallard continues to let her body and mind escape reality. I believe this is what Chopin means by "suspension of intelligent thought." She isn't thinking hard about anything but rather letting her mind be free. I think a situation opposite of this would be in paragraph 8. "There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know: it was too subtle and elusive to name." (Chopin) In those sentances, it seems that Mrs. Mallard's mind is no longer free, but now she is searching for an answer. She's confused, and therefore, her mind has not been "suspended of intelligent thought." My favorite paragraph in The Story of an Hour was paragraph 19. "Her fancy was running riots along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own." (Chopin) These few sentences were the ones that made me realize how happy she was to finally be alone. It was almost as if she felt a new found freedom that she had never felt before.

Rose for Emily

This story written by William Faulkner was a strange story because of the order and the ending. The narrator of this story was a man who had lived in the same town as Emily and knew quite a bit about her life. For me personally because this story was told out of order it was hard for me to follow. Emily's father died and because of that I think that was a reason why she wanted to keep Homer. I think that she didn't want to be alone and she didn't want to lose yet another man. So she killed Homer and ultimately he never left her. In the end of the story it was said that she would lay next to his decaying body because some men saw that there was an indentation of a head in the pillow next to Homer with a strand of iron-gray hair. That to me was very strange and unexpected.

A&P

I think John Updike’s short story, A &P, is about manly decisiveness. He talks about how the dress code in the store states that your shoulders must be covered whilst in the store, but Sammy disregards the rule so he can “enjoy the view” of the girls in the store. Sammy ends up quitting his job at the A & P because of rude customers, how his boss treats the inappropriately dressed customers, and because he wants to be a hero to the girls. “The girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say ‘I quit’ to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.” At that moment, Sammy has an epiphany and decides to quit his job for the girls he stood up for and hopes that they will be outside the store waiting to thank him for what he did, but they aren’t. He realizes “how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” seeing as how he just quit his job for nothing.

A Rose For Emily

The narrator of the story is a citizen of the town that Emily is a resident of. This person being the narrator shows more how he\she feels about Emily and the things she said and did. The narrator actually says she was “a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.”(pg. 209, paragraph three, line one.) The order jumps back and forth from present to past and then back to the present. It starts by saying they are going to attend Emily’s funeral and then goes back to tell about who she is and how she has acted. It then comes back to them attending her funeral and going through her house because no one had seen the inside of her house in nearly ten years.
Emily uses arsenic to poison Homer because he won’t be with her because he is gay. So she decides to make it appear as if they are getting married and then poisoned him and left him in the bed. She then continued to sleep in the same bed with his dead and decaying body. The people looking through the house find something more disturbing than the body of Homer in bed and he\she says, “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head.”(pg. 215, paragraph fifty, line one.) They then found one of her iron gray hairs on the pillow suggesting she had been sleeping in the bed with his corpse recently. She decided that she wanted him because her father was not around to run him off, but with him being gay she had to take drastic measures to be sure she could keep him to herself.

A Rose for Emily

In Faulkners' A Rose for Emily the narrator seems to be a randon outside townsperson, not directly involved with the plot but an onlooker watching the story unfold. I believe that the reason the story is not told chronologically is due to the recollection and memory of the narrator. It is almost as if the narrator is trying to piece together and make sense of the story himself, trying figure out why details happened as they did. The narrator did know details about converstaion amond Emily and the druggist, "I want some poison," said Emily. "Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--" responded the druggist (212). The narrator seemed to be there, for those conversations, but was not involved in them. The drugs were for killing her husband. But why did she do it? I have two theories. Emily did love Homer, but she was a proud woman. Maybe she killed him because he was not as high in the caste as she was. "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, as a day laborer." (212) But she left him in the house and slept next to him. But, was ashamed of herself and about her name in town. The other theory is that he was gay. Maybe the terminology and circumstances was different in this stories time, but there is a curious excerpt in the plot "Then we said, " She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked -- he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk's club-- that he was not a marrying man." (213) It could be a difference between the phrasing not and then, but that line stood out.

The Story of an Hour

Paragraph five pays a lot of attention to the external images because, the author tries to show us for ever life taken there is life given. It makes the life spring out of the story with the way she writes that paragraph. In paragraph seven "suspension of intelligent thought" was the author's way of showing Mrs. Mallard feelings on the verge of crying. In paragraph 11 Mrs. Mallard says under her breath, "Free, free, free!" This is somewhat the opposite of the earlier passage i described. My favorite passage in this story all of paragraph 5 because it shows so much life and imagery in it.

A Rose For Emily

The narrator of William Faulkner’s story A Rose For Emily is not officially mentioned. However, there are hints throughout the story as to who the narrator is. The narrator appears to be a third party observer in the town. The narrator influences the story’s development by telling us what happened in the past and present, changing the tone to be sometimes positive and sometimes negative. Once Miss Emily dies and is put to rest, the townspeople enter her home and find her husband’s, Homer, dead body in her bed. It was obvious by the indent in her pillow with her hair on it that she had been sleeping next to her dead husband for years. It is apparent in the text stating, “Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer” (Faulkner), that she did this to Homer because she was ashamed of herself for loving him and knew their relationship would not be accepted because of her high social status and his low social status. So she killed him and kept his body so she could keep the relationship alive for herself in private.

My thoughts......

I found "A rose for Emily" to be a little hard to follow, but deeply interesting just the same. It strikes me as sad how Miss Emily obviously did not trust her lover to stay with her thus bringing about the 'necessity' of the arsnec purchase. It was very morbid but a good read none the less.
"Story of an Hour" was very good at touching on the verious stages of a new widow's grief. First is the shocked tears, followed by the painful seclusion stained with memories, and finally the realization of the freedom the death of her husband entails. And last but not least, the shock of seeing someone thought to be dead alive and walking proves too much for a weak heart, and she who rejoyced at her own freedom is actually the one who ends up granting her husband a freedom of his own.

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