Jilting in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily and Katherine Anne Porter's The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

The following passage is an excerpt from Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how such choices as figurative language, imagery, and dialogue develop the complex emotions the character is feeling.

     In "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," Katherine Anne Porter gives readers a glimpse of the thoughts of a woman about to die.  Lying in her bed in her daughter Cornelia's house, eighty-year-old Granny Weatherall drifts in and out of consciousness.  Through her thoughts of events both current and bygone, it is learned that Granny has worked hard all her life, and frequently tells herself that she did a good job.  She thinks of events that made her stronger: digging holes for fence posts, "riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies" (311), taking care of sick animals and sick children.  Though Granny Weatherall tries to assure herself that her life has been

Katherine Anne Porter’s The Jilting of Granny Weatherall centers around the story of an old woman who lies sick and dying and feels her life flashing before her eyes. She experiences a wide range of emotions over the course of the story before death comes upon her. These emotions are developed in the passage due to the use of literary choices like figurative language, imagery and dialogue made by the author.

Desperation for love arising from detachment can lead to extreme measures and destructive actions as exhibited by the tumultuous relationships of Miss Emily in William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily” (rpt. in Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 9th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2006] 556). Miss Emily is confined from society for the majority of her life by her father, so after he has died, she longs for relations that ironically her longing destroys. The despondency and obsession exuded throughout the story portray the predicament at hand.

When Janie was about sixteen, she spent a spring afternoon under a blossoming tree in Nanny?s yard. Here she comes to the realization that something is missing in her life? sexual ecstasy. The blooms, the new leaves and the virgin- like spring came to life all around her. She wondered when and where she might find such an ecstasy herself. According to Hurston, Nanny finds Janie kissing a boy named Johnny Taylor and her ?head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm? (12) . Nanny can think of no better way to protect Janie than by marrying her to a middle-aged black farmer whose prosperity makes it unnecessary for him to use her as a ?mule? (Bush 1036).

One of the perspectives employed by Porter is seen through Granny’s thoughts, which are preoccupied by her jilting and “the thought of him [the man who jilted her]… that moved and crept in her head” (5) that when her death came she still “wanted to give Cornelia the amethyst set…[and] to do something about the Forty Acres” (8).

In “A Rose for Emily”, Miss Emily Grierson lives a life of quiet turmoil. Her

It is noted in the passage that “Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man” (4). First her father runs away men, then when a man finally comes around he is homosexual. One day Miss Emily goes to the druggist and says “I want arsenic” (3). It is after seeing this that the people in town started to think she was going to commit suicide (4). Homer barron leaves and returns after Miss Emily’s two cousins leave. The people in the town never see him again and they say “the one we believed would marry her … had deserted her. The body of Homer Barron was found on the bed with a piece of Miss Emily’s gray hair next to the body.

In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily Grierson, referred to as Miss Emily throughout the story, is the main character of 'A Rose for Emily'. Emily used to live with her father and servants, in a big decorated house. Emily was not able to develop any real relationship with anyone else, but it was like her world revolved around her father. When her father passed away, it was a devastating loss for Miss Emily. Instead of going on with her life, her life halted after death of her father. Miss Emily found love in a guy named Homer Barron, who came as a contractor for paving the sidewalks in town. The passed passage of time creates a tension in her life. At first she cannot accept the death of her father. After that she creates tension in the community by refusing to pay the taxes. When Emily proposed Homer Barron

Emily’s father wanted her beside him at all times and being taught no man was ever good enough. But, Indeed she eventually fell in love with a guy who deserted her. Mad at her father because he interferes she decides that he must die in order for her and the lover to be together . The lover has another idea in mind when he relizes that emilys father only lefted her the house and no money ,Poor Emily is an understatement ,her love vanished

In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Emily becomes a minor legend during her lifetime. After her death, when her secret is revealed, hers becomes a story that no one can forget. "A Rose for Emily" is the story of the old maid who fell in love with a northerner, but resisted being jilted once too often. And only after her death, "When the curious towns people were able to enter her house at last, did they discover that she had kept her dead lover in the bed where she had killed him after their last embrace." (Kazin 162) . "In her bedroom, Emily and the dead Homer have remained together as though not even death could separate them."(Kazin 162) . Even though her lover had

In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily is born to an upper-class family, and is an only child of her father. Emily is denied of her most basic and primal need of being with a man, “none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 000). Her father runs off all the suitors, “… a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip” (Faulkner 000). She is completely isolated and caged in the grand house by her father's dominant behavior. Emily stands behind her father and blocked off the exit to the outside world. Just like her physical body, her emotions are entrapped. She is past thirty years of age, and she has not had a chance to express her desire to marry a man and have a family. Never was it mentioned in the story, that Emily steps out of the house before the death of her father. After her father dies, Emily finds a man whom she intends to marry according to tradition. Miss Emily is forced to give a name to her relationship with Homer Baron. However, when Miss Emily realizes that Homer Baron was going to desert her, she poisons him and maintains “marital life” with his corpse for forty

After living so long as a victim of loneliness perpetrated by her father, Emily decides that she will be vindicated-she will have her man. She orders a toiletry set to be engraved with Homer's initials, purchases an outfit and a nightshirt for him, and buys the arsenic that is to seal his fate. When the townspeople enter her house for the first time in forty years, they find a bridal tomb: a tarnished toiletry set, a neatly pressed suit, and a rotting Homer Baron clad in the nightshirt wearing a "profound and fleshless grin" (87).

Miss Emily wanted Homer Barron all for herself. It was often seen that Barron lacked affection towards her, because of his interest in men. He was considered a non marrying man, but this wasn’t enough for Miss Emily. The textual clues indicates, “Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet seat in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece, men’s clothing, even a nightshirt. The contextual clues reveal that maybe Miss Emily used the arsenic on Homer Barron. To hide herself from the authorities, she would, “for six months not appear on the streets, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray, that was the last we saw of Homer Barron” (162). Essentially, this is foretelling sign something is up. Finally, we see the textual proof of this matter. Miss Emily had passed away, and residents took it upon themselves to search the home. It was forty years since they had seen this particular room. “the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, among them lay a collar and tie. . .the man himself lay in the bed, what was left of him rotted beneath what was left of his nightshirt”(164). Homer Barron was not seen for years, the keyword nightshirt, the man’s toilet things, pinpoint that Homer Barron was the man lying in the bed, not to mention that Miss Emily ended up with what she wanted, a man to hold until death. The Araby character’s nature was always at an awkward stage. The contextual

The townspeople felt bad for Emily and thought the reason for her craziness was because her family had a history of it. Emily also waits three days before revealing the death of her father. Emily allows the dead body of her father to lie in her home rotting away. Another crazy action that Emily does is when she goes to the pharmacy to purchase “rat poison”. When Emily goes to buy the arsenic she doesn’t tell the druggist what exactly she is going to use it for, but stares him down making him feel uncomfortable. “Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up” (213). One of the most extreme actions Emily performs is being responsible for Homer Barron’s death. But, after fully reading the story the reader understands that Emily not only kills Homer but sleeps with his corpse. “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay… Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (215) There the reader’s thought of Emily sleeping with the dead body and her psychotic tendencies is confirmed.