Meyer October 18 PDF

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Help with Meyer text book journal assignment 6...

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Josh Turner LIT 205 Section 07 18 October 2018 “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “55 Miles to the Gas Pump” by Annie Proulx Summary The short story “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner is split up into four parts. Each of them takes place at a different point in time. The first section introduces us to Emily Grierson. She has just died, and everyone in town is at her funeral. She had a nice house when it was built but over time got old and gross. Emily Grierson also never paid taxes. The second section tells us about how thirty years before her death, Grierson disappeared into her house and was hardly ever seen. There is also a terrible smell coming from her house, so one-night men go in and sprinkle lime juice on everything until it goes away. We also learn her father dies. Some of the towns people this is what drives her crazy. In the next section, we learn about Homer Barron, a man who dated Emily for a little while. Not many people liked the relationship and tried to stop it. Also in this section, Emily buys arsenic, and everyone thinks she is going to kill herself but doesn’t stop her because they think this is what’s best for her and them. The fourth section tells about how Homer disappears, so everyone thinks him, and Emily must have gotten married. She also refuses more taxes even after the towns people demand it. In the last section, we cut back to the funeral. We get a small description of the funeral and find out that Homer was found dead in Emily’s bed rotting away. “55 Miles to the Gas Pump” by Annie Proulx is a very short story about a man that commits suicide and a woman who cuts into an attic only to find bodies. The man is described as

the stereotypical cowboy, and though we don’t get much description of the woman, we can still picture her from the horrible story we are told about her. Response In both the stories “A Rose for Emily” and “55 Miles to the Gas Pump” the setting plays a very big part. In “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner the setting is essential to the story. Without the setting, the story wouldn’t have much of a character. “A Rose for Emily” takes place in the south sometime in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Much like Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, the fact that it takes place in the south is very evident in the characters and way of life that is presented in the story. “A Rose for Emily” has a very southern small-town vibe where everyone knows each other, and life is simple. We also know it takes place in the south because Emily had a black man for a servant. Faulkner also does a very good job at descriptions, for example, when describing Emily he writes “She was over thirty then. Still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face ought to look” (page 85). With out the setting, it has, “A Rose for Emily” would have a very different atmosphere in its plot. The setting in “55 Miles to the Gas Pump” is very characteristic of the story. The setting in the story is clearly the wild west. We are given a very detailed description of the main character and the land around him. For example she writes “Rancher Croom in handmade boots and filthy hat, that walleyed cattleman, stray hairs like the curling fiddle string ends, that warmhanded, quick-foot dancer on splintery boards or down the cellar stairs to a rack of bottles of his own strange beer…” (page 470). Though a suicide story could have taken place in any setting but the fact that it is in the wild west shows that even high riding cowboys would get depressed. The

second part of the story matches the wild west setting as with such a disturbing tale. It really put the “wild” in the wild west. Dead lovers in an attic are very strange and again could happen anywhere but fit very well with a wild west setting. Though both stories are very different, each of their setting’s plays an essential role....