Thursday, April 22, 2010
Guest Blogger - Sophie H.
So what the heck is with all these dead people? William Faulkner seems to be obsessed. I mean seriously, from As I Lay Dying to A Rose for Emily? It is quite creepy. But if you look closely the stories are very similar. Obviously they both have dead people who are around for much longer then they needed to be. Addie, who was carted around in a coffin for a week and Emily’s lover, who laid in her bed and she slept next to for years? Also they both have odd smells coming from Addie’s coffin and the smell from the dead person in Ms. Emily’s house. Both stories play with point of view, but if you look deeper into the stories, there is more. Both stories have to do with a deeply misunderstood woman. Ms. Emily we finally realize is psycho. But obviously something happened along the line that made her snap. We realize something is wrong when she won’t let her father’s dead body leave the house for three days. By the end Ms. Emily has killed her lover and has slept with his dead body for years. Addie is less obviously misunderstood. We only see what she thinks through her chapter. Addie hates her life and only loves Jewel. And she believes that we live our life to die. Although Addie didn’t kill anyone, do you believe there is a reason they both act strangely? What could have happened to Ms. Emily to cause her to kill?
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Yeah, what IS with all of these dead people? I know that there are some parallels between these two stories as well, but the obvious difference is that Addie wasn't insane enough to keep dead bodies in the house and she didn't push away neighbors. Though I will admit that Addie does have the strange quality of enjoying the abuse of students, these two stories aren't incredibly similar except for the smelly corpses. My thought on Addie's "strangeness" would probably her husband's neglect towards her causing her to lash out on the children, but that's just a guess. On the other hand, I can definitely see why Emily killed the man she loved. This is because she knew he wouldn't really love her in life because after all, it says that "he liked men" as Ms. Arko explained in class. That knowledge undoubtedly forced Emily to hold onto what she loved, and she must have thought the only way to do that was to kill him and sleep with his dead body, however demented that sounds. The idea of her attachment to love is also illustrated through the way she kept her father's body in the house until her neighbors noticed the smell and did something about it. On a more general note, I firmly believe that these stories hold no other significant similarities, because they are completely different in their perspectives, reasons for death, etc., but for anyone who would care to prove me wrong I invite you to try. What do you think about this?
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree with Will but I think that there was also another reason for Emily to keep her "love" with her. I think that her father was the only thing that she had and when he died he abandoned her, and when her "lover" was going to leave she didn't want to feel the abandonment again. He had replaced her father but I don't think she had any real love for him.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason for the insanity of the two characters, Emily and Addie, could be that society put too much pressure on them to act in a certain way. All of the townspeople thought that Emily's life would be complete once she got married, but maybe she didn't actually want to marry the man who, because he was interested in men, obviously didn't love her. Once she was married, though, she was stuck with the man, so she solved her problem by killing him. Addie also felt that marriage was the next logical step in her life, so she marries the first man whom she meets. Addie found herself bound to her situation, so she lashed out through her disturbing ideas about punishing children. Both women tried to conform to society's beliefs, but it wasn't the right choice for them, so they just snapped.
ReplyDeleteyes the two books definatly had a close connectiona and I believe that Faulkner was in a state of deep depresion and had serious issues with letting go to people that had passed away. I think Emily had a tragic moment in her childhood that lead her to doing these things because usually normal people don't do crazy things like that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Patty. Ms. Emily was scared that her lover was going to leave her so she killed him and that way they could stay together forever. I think Addie was just and angry woman. Like you have said, she lashed out at children, but she also took revenge on Anse. It is not normal or good to have that much anger built up inside, usually people are able to let it out before they die. And as for Emily, I agree with Sophie that she was just "Psycho".
ReplyDeleteI think that by using the extremities of corpses, Faulkner exaggerates the human interactions that hold our everyday lives together. In this way, Addie and Emily are somewhat different. Addie feels like she's constantly being taken advantage of when she has to add another member to the family. She spends her life waiting to die and be alone. On the other hand, Emilly is tired of being left alone. She needs companionship to the point that she kills her love interest so that he can never desert her. (And he would have, he was gay.) However, one thing the two stories do have in common is the rancid stench left from the rotting bodies.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Emily killed her love, thinking that he would end up leaving her and she wanted to keep him to herself forever. You're right when you say Emily is psycho, considering what she did. As for Addie, she was a completely misunderstood person. No one really knew what she was thinking until her chapter, and then everything came out. She kind of has to act a bit strange while she is making her family do all this work to take you to another place to be buried and in the end its all just to get revenge on her husband, Anse.
ReplyDeleteI think that they both were alone in a room full of people. When I say that I mean they were both surrounded by lots of people, Addie had a huge family and Emily had the town, yet neither of them really had just one close friend that they could be themselves with. Addie had all her kids and her husband yet she still died with secrets she never told to anyone. Emily had the towns people, some tryied to talk to her and others came over for painting but Emily just alienated them all. I think both ladies could use a good friend.
ReplyDeleteMaybe william Faulkner liked the fantasy of death, and the mysterious aspects of it. I mean, it's very tragic when someone dies, but it can easily be turned into something creepy. We always want to know how someone died and when, mostly because we don't understand death. Maybe Faulkner just wanted to explore death's effects on people, or how desperate one will act to keep a lover with them.
ReplyDeleteI think it was interesting that Addie and Miss Emily were so casual about death, that it was just passing on to something else. Most people talk about death with anxiety or fear, but it was like they didn't really care. Addie was just waiting to die, and Emily nonchalantly killed her lover so they would stay under one roof together. It was like death didn't seem like a big deal to either of them, like life was just a phase of life. Maybe Faulkner didn't find writing about life very interesting.
I really like what Megs point is about. It is uncanny that both of the woman would be so comfortable with death. But also what happend to the common sense of if there is a decomposing body next to you you should probably get rid of it. Faulkner might have had a sick or mind or maybe he experianced more death then most people that eh decided that he was going to write about dead things instead of life. But then again all writers have their own "flavor" and Fualkner does a wonderful job at potraying his creepy/death loving flavor among his books and short stories.
ReplyDeleteI think there was something mentally wrong with Ms. Emily. Killing people [exceptially ones that some one supposedly love] is just for that. I also think that Adddie was nwever truely happy with her life and took it out on her children and Anse. You get these thoughts from her chapters and her thoughts towards the people around her.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that it is really creepy that William Faulkner wrote so much about people keeping the bodies of dead loved ones until they smell. I personally think that William Faulkner might have done this on purpose to show readers subconciously that people have issues letting go of things that they are attached to. He just used a creepy object for the characters to be attached to.
ReplyDeleteWhile it could be taken as creepy that Faulkner spent so much time writing about death, it is also understandable. Death is a completely complex affair that the human race has spent centuries debating and thinking about. It seems that Faulkner was just another human thinking about the same thing. When it comes to "As I Lay Dying" and "A Rose for Emily" specifically, they both seem to serve as an example of a main character with a lot about them being hidden from the reader and the other members of their community until after their death.
ReplyDelete