The Yellow Wallpaper

Towards the end of the story the protagonist being the woman who is telling this story becomes so obsessed with this wallpaper it basically consumes her whole life. John was very controlling of her and kept her in that room and just wanted her to get rest. I think after so many weeks of isolation and focusing on that wallpaper she lost it and did what she had to, she ripped the paper off the wall. She told John “it is no use, young man, you can’t open it” (Gilman,378), this is where the story really changes as she uses her words to cut him just as he had done to her and this is where who controls who changes in the story.
The story really starts to shift when she refers to the wallpaper as a “fungus” (Gilman,372), she is starting to change her mind about that wallpaper and from then on everything is changing about that wallpaper. She sees a woman in the wallpaper who is trying to get it, that woman is representing herself feeling trapped. She has lost her mind.
I think the house in general upsets narrator, everywhere in that house is a constant reminder of that wallpaper, she referred to it as a fungus, she says it has a smell to it that fills every room in the house she goes to. I believe that wallpaper has taken over her, she is so consumed by it and that’s why she wanted to get rid of it in the end of the story.

A & P

In A & P, I believe the story is about Sammy’s “manly decisiveness”. Sammy clearly hates working for his manager and shows it when he quits his job on the spot. When his manager Lengel says, “You’ll feel this for the rest of your life” (Updike 224), Sammy shows that he has made his decision when he walks out on his manager anyway.
Sammy has several reasons to quit his job and they all stem from Lengels behavior. “Lengel is pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn’t miss that much. He comes over and says girls this isn’t the beach” (222). This shows how rude this manager is. He is the nitpicky guy that you would hate to work for. “He didn’t like my smiling” (222). Sammy was not allowed to have a sense of humor also. Lengel seems like the unhappy guy who wants to bring everyone else down with him.
Sammy’s epiphany is that he would be better off without this job. His boss is mean and he doesn’t have to stand behind him anymore. His epiphany occurs when Lengel is repeatedly whining about the girls coming in the store in swimsuits. Lengel says, “It’s our policy. He turns his back. That’s policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency” (223). Sammy thinks the girls coming in the store with their swim suits on was cool. I do not know of a teenage boy who would mind this.

A&P Mini-Essay

I think A&P by Updike is a story about conformity. I believe this because the girls who walked into the store in their swimsuits and barefoot didn't conform to what we believe people should wear in a grocery store. Also, Sammy discusses with himself the attractive features in each girl, and notes what would be considered attractive to most compared to what he found attracted. I also think that Sammy goes against this conformity in the end of the story when he quits. I believe he quit to show the girls that he thought they were mistreated. I think he did it also because the store's manager expected conformity from his employees; wearing the pressed shirt, the apron with their name, and the bow-tie. The story ends with Sammy coming out of the store, still feeling unsure about whether he made the right decision or not; he knows that his parents won't be happy with him quitting, but he wants to follow the girls. Of course, when he gets outside, the girls are no where to be seen and he realizes that he's made a fool of himself. I think he realized that he could make his own decisions, not just in where he'd work, but in all aspects of his life.

A & P

In the story “A&P” by John Updike the main character, Sammy, is a cashier at the grocery store called A&P. He helps three teenage girls, who are just wearing nothing but bikinis, when his boss comes up and yells at them for embarrassing the store like that. Sammy then sticks up for the girls, which after the girls left he quit. Sammy shows several factors, of the situation, why he quit his job.

First, I think he quit because he really wanted to look like a huge hero to the girls. When he ended up walking out of the store at the end they were gone. They really didn’t notice him at all to even know that he quit his job for them. Sammy did think that the girls would notice even though they didn’t at all.

Second, I think he wanted to show his boss that embarrassing the girls like that was wrong. Meaning it was right out in the open in the store Sammy thought it was wrong to do that to the young teenage girls. The boss was telling Sammy that it was wrong to not obey the dress codes that the store had even though they came to buy a couple of things. The boss also didn’t like the idea of them not having anything appropriate on because back in the day they weren’t used to seeing anything like that except on the beach.

Lastly, I think Sammy quit his job because he thought Queenie, the main girl of the three, was hitting on him. He thought that because she made eye contact with him when she first came in the store and also when she was pulling her money out of her bikini top that maybe she liked him. I think because of that Sammy thought if he stuck of for her that maybe she’d be impressed even though she never cared about him at all.

In conclusion, with his mind not thinking 100% he quit his job for many different reasons. All the reasons had something to tie in with the three girls that had came in the store and he just really wanted to look manly and really impress them even though it didn’t work.

A Rose for Emily

In the story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner I believe the narrator was an outsider who was viewing the whole event. I believe this because they don't know what is going completely right away. The development is slow because it goes step by step. I believe Emily killed Homer because he was gay. She was afraid if she didn't she would lose the love of her life. Even though she knows he might not love her that way back she would rather have it that way instead of without Homer completely. So I believe that is why Emily killed Homer so she'd never have to lose him and also to keep him close.

A Rose for Emily

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner (1930) is an eccentric story from start to finish. I believe the narrator is actually a compilation of thoughts that many of the townspeople seemed to have silently agreed upon. In the very first sentence (p.206, Kirszner & Mandell) it states “our whole town went to her funeral”. Throughout the story the thoughts and statements are always referred to as “we”, not from a single person alone. References made by the narrator using many former titles when talking about the characters is a sign that these thoughts are mainly from the commoners of the town. This is also why I believe the narrator is more of a group of person’s beliefs.
The narrator sets the tone of the story as odd from the beginning. This is shown by the wording of the text. For example, there was only a short span (p. 209, Kirszner & Mandell) that she was referred to as something other than “Miss Emily”. And at that time they referred to her as “Poor Emily”. The only time that she was humanized was during the times she was referred to as “Poor Emily”, when they felt sorry for her. The order of the story was peculiar. With the end of the story actually being the beginning it makes it hard to follow in some parts. On the other hand this is what is intriguing about the story. Certain parts would have to be re-read in order to figure out where I was at in time with the story. But, in doing so I was able to see more into the foreshadowing within the story.
I had an eerie feeling right before the end that something weird was about to happen. I think that her poisoning Homer was out of pure love for this man. She had finally found the love of her life, other than her father who passed many years ago. Her whole life revolved mainly around what happened in her house as she rarely went out. Her home was her world and she was going to make sure that Homer never left that home alive. Miss Emily loved Homer so much that she never wanted him to leave her world. She felt in order to so that she must kill him. She loved him up until her very end, which was evident by the gray hair left next to him on an empty pillow. She had lain with him every night – up until the day she died.

A Rose for Emily

The author of this story was apparently a townsperson representing him or herself along with the townspeople. The evidence to this was the word “we”. The author never said “I”, always “we” or “our whole town” (Faulkner, 1930). He or she is representing the town’s feelings towards Emily.
I believe foreshadowing is part of the reason why this story doesn’t seem to be in chronological order. The author mentions Emily’s funeral in the beginning then towards the end of the story he or she provides a little more detail about her funeral. Also, when Emily buys the arsenic, we don’t know what she’s using that for until the end when we learn Homer has been dead in her house since he vanished.
I think Emily killed or poisoned Homer because she was afraid of being alone. She had been alone ever since her father passed away, so she killed Homer. Emily thought Homer was going to leave her because he wasn’t the marrying type and he bluntly stated he liked men and hanging out with the younger men in the Elk’s Club. Emily was able to get away with poisoning her lover because nobody ever went into her house. In a way, I felt bad for Emily because all she wanted was someone to be with since her father died, but I think she went a little too far with the Homer situation.

A Rose For Emily

The narrator in the story never refers to themselves as “I,” it’s always “we”. I can only conclude that this means there isn’t a single person retelling the events. Unless the narrator is suffering from a psychological disorder, perhaps dissociative identity disorder, and is aware of their other selves, the only other feasible reason for the pluralism is that there is a collective recounting of the story from the people that lived in the town. If this is true, then the story’s development makes perfect sense, as multiple people would add in different details, and not always in chronological order.

Another reason for the jumbled order of the story, which leads to a grisly revelation, is that it supports the “poor Emily” schematic. By telling the story in order, it would be clear near the beginning or middle what Emily did, ruining the ending. Emily murdered the laborer Homer, whom had been supposedly courting her while he was in town working on construction. Homer’s preference in sex is explicitly mentioned in the story, and since “Homer himself had remarked – he liked men…that he was not a marrying man” (pg 210 Kirszner & Mandell) Emily would have been rejected as a potential partner.

Emily had previously been rejected, and was traumatized by it. With the fear of another public rejection, she decided to take matters into her own hands, and ensure that this one won’t get away. She decides to poison Homer with arsenic, after making it seem to the townspeople that they were to be wed. Emily went as far as purchasing wedding bands, personalized toilet seats, and creating a bridal tomb for Homer in an upstairs room. After Emily had passed away, the townspeople inspected her home, and a strand of silver hair was found laying on a pillow next to Homer’s rotted corpse. Emily reacted at the thought of rejection, the fear of rejection, and thought that the most prudent recourse would be in murdering her suitor and keeping him with her forevermore.

A Rose For Emily

I believe the narrator of the story is someone from the town and has known Miss Emily for many years. The narrator only focuses on events where Miss Emily did something that was out of the ordinary. He or she talks about how Miss Emily wouldn't pay taxes on her house and how she kicked the men out of her for asking her to pay them. It's as if the narrator is standing next to you outside of Miss Emily's house and you are gossiping about the old woman who never left her home. In the end of the story you find out Miss Emily poisoned Homer with the arsenic that she bought. They found his body in the upstairs bedroom after Miss Emily died and found he had been dead for many years. I believe Miss Emily killed him because she was afraid he was going to leave her like all the men her father had scared away. The story also tells you that Homer liked men and that he wasn't the marrying type so she knew eventually he would leave. In a sense yes she was crazy but I think she was more afraid of being alone then anything and she wanted to prevent it from happening and that's why she killed Homer.

The Story of an Hour

"The Story of an Hour" was a rather short story, but I actually had to read it a couple of times to get a better understanding of the story. I was a little confused at first about what Mrs. Mallard was expressing after the death of her husband.

I believe the meaning of paragraph 5 was that even though she just lost her husband, she was very quickly able to enjoy and notice the pleasent things in life. "She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life." (Choplin, 1984) That sentence I believe was a sign of what she thought was going to be a fresh start.

"It was not a glance of refection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought."(Choplin, 1984) This sentence I believe is saying that she is not so much thinking of him while in a daze. She was actually thinking pretty clearly and pondering a selfish thought. I say selfish not in a bad way, just that she now could think about herself and her freedom.

From this point on she knew she was going to live for herself. Even though the man she was married to and "loved sometimes" just passed away, these were pretty immediate thoughts for her.

The Story of an Hour

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin shows the mind of a woman in suffering and her realization of joy, but the source of both of these emotions is much more complex than we the readers first understand. In examining Mrs. Louise Mallard’s behavior after learning of her husband’s death, the author describes her as having a “fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” (Chopin, 1894) This strength is fast replaced by “a dull stare in her eyes” which “was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.” (Chopin, 1894) This statement is an overture of her forthcoming behavior and sensibilities, and I believe shows that she was less worried about the social conventions of what a grieving widow should be, than expressing the grief about the life she had missed.

As the story begins, we read through paragraph five which seems to be an unrelated descriptive paragraph where she sat staring out her window, in reality, it is an internal reflection of Mrs. Mallard’s desires, to be teeming with life as all of the things around her seem to be. This is reinforced later in the story as she “was drinking in the very elixir of life through that open window.” (Chopin, 1894)

As we read through the story we get the sense that Mrs. Mallard, though she loved her husband “sometimes” deeply regretted marrying the man as “Often she had not.” (Chopin, 1894) After the shock of the death has begun to wear off, we see that her actions are less a concern for what would be considered proper mourning, but a realization that she may never have loved the man that she married. This is followed by a deep regret for the time she had wasted with him and the acceptance that with his death she was now “Free, free, free!” (Chopin, 1894) Paragraph thirteen of the story perfectly illustrates this point and to my mind is the theme of the story. It shows the tenderness she felt for him, yet at the same time the exuberance she felt at the thought of “a long procession of years to come that would be hers absolutely.” (Chopin, 1894)

As we come to the end of this story, we see the opposing side of Mrs. Mallard as we met her. Instead of sullen and near comatose, we find her in the grips of the strongest emotion she had ever felt, including love, self-realization. “What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being.” (Chopin, 1894) This discovery gave her the power to overcome her feelings regarding her husband’s so called death, her years attached to him which she considered a waste, and her own feelings of inadequacy.

The author's use of irony in ending the story was very refreshing, in that the “monstrous joy” which had consumed her was ultimately the “the joy that kills.” (Chopin, 1894)

"A Rose for Emily"

The narrator of story is an observer, a townsperson, someone who witnessed the events of the story first hand, giving readers a third person point of view. The narrator explains events using “we” and “our whole town” (Faulkner, 1930). Multiple times the narrator gives thought and feelings about Miss Emily that give perspective of what the entire towns’ thought and feelings are toward her. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…” (Faulkner, 1930). Here the narrator is echoing the whole towns’ feelings of Miss Emily. When the narrator states, “the young men” and “the ladies” (Faulkner, 1930) throughout the story, it leaves readers unknown to whether the narrator is a male or a female.
Emily murdered Homer Barron by poisoning him. She went to the druggist and asked for some arsenic. The druggist said, “…the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for” and “Miss Emily just stares at him…until he looked away” (Faulkner, 1930). In this gesture, it is my opinion that Miss Emily feels that she is better that others and does not need to give an explanation to her purchase of the poison that she is above the law. Emily used the arsenic to poison Homer, because as stated in the book, “…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” (Faulkner, 1930). Emily did not want Homer to leave her so if she killed him in her house he would be there forever.

"The Story of an Hour"

In "The Story of an Hour," by Kate Chopin, many things are going on in such a short amount of time. In paragraph five, there are a lot of descriptive scenery views. I think this is helpful to put the reader in the setting, which is appropriate to better understand what's going on in the story. Chopin proclaims, "The delicious breath of rain was in the air." This really made me think of the smell after a beautiful rainfall; this describes the setting nicely.

Once Mrs. Mallard found out about her husband's death, she had very mixed emotions and became in a distant state of mind. At the end of paragraph seven, I believe that is what "suspensions of intelligent thought" means. She was not having any intelligent thoughts going on at all, but in a daze, not knowing what to do next. "But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky." This quote is evidence to me that she was sort of spaced out of reality; not thinking of just one thing in particular but in utter shock and disbelief of her recent loss.

Later on in the story, in paragraph sixteen, Chopin exerts, "Free! Body and soul free!" I chose this passage to signify the difference in how she is now feeling. Mrs. Mallard went from being in a complete daze to realizing that she is now a free woman to do as she pleases. There is no longer a man telling her what to do, but she, now ready to carve her very own paths in life. Though this passage is short, it made my mind turn in ways to wonder what Mr. Mallard was really like, which is a huge part of this story's significance.

Response to A Rose for Emily

I believe that in the story, "A Rose for Emily" having the story out of se
quence helped to build the suspense of the story. There were so many different things happening in such a short story that at first I had quite a hard time following, but I also believe that if the events were listed in the order in which they happened, the story would seem dull. The way William Faulkner has the story set up goes along with the saying, "Save the best for last." All the events in the story and the way that they were ordered led up to the conclusion.

As far as the narration of the story, I believe that it was someone in the town that Emily resided in that told the story. There were several different examples that support my theory. Any time that the narrator referred to a situation or an event that happened the narrator would refer to it as, "We," such as saying in the fourth paragraph of page 211, "We didn't even know she was sick," It implies to me that it was a very close knit community, one where everybody knows everybody. I also wonder if the narrator of the story wasn't on the city board in some way. I will refer to another example on page 211, in paragraph 3, "Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed."

I really was surprised at the end when the townspeople found Homer's body upstairs in the room with the items that Emily had purchased for him so long ago. Even with the foreshadowing of her buying the arsenic, that was one part that I didn't see coming. Emily poisoned Homer with the arsenic. I believe that she did it so he would never leave her. I think that being robbed of the normal life of a woman by her father had that effect on her. I don't think that Emily realized it, as we sometimes don't. In the end, she didn't want to be alone, so she killed.

A Rose for Emily

The townspeople are the narrators of the story. They influence the story with their point of view.It starts off by Emily's death and then concludes her death in the end. Telling about her house and how it was on a "selected street" and ending up like an "item decaying." The townspeople influence how the story is looked at in perspective. They are concerned for the well being of Emily and how the house influences the neighborhood, with its smells.
Emily poisons Homer with arsenic, that she bought at the drugstore. (William Faulkner, 1930) She was left alone when her father died, even though she was in denial of his death and had kept him there. She didn't want to be left alone again. She knew Homer "liked men and wasn't a marrying man." But they knew "she would persuade him yet." Emily would rather have Homer anyway she could, so she wouldn't be alone. So she let his body decompose in her upstairs bedroom and lay with him, whenever she wanted to. She knew she could get away with it. No one entered her home and knew they wouldn't "accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad."

A Rose for Emily

The story "A Rose for Emily" is not told in chronological order. I believe that this story is told by another person who lives in Emily's town. This person did not know Emily personally but seemed to know a lot about her family and their history. Because this person did not know her, I think that the story seemed to go out of order. It was like this person kept going back to details that they forgot to mention. They had to go back in time to add the things that would make the story make sense. If the person telling the story had a better understanding of the facts, the story may have went in a better order. They would have been able to tell it from start to finish without leaving things out.
I believe that Emily killed Homer. I think she did this because she loved him so much and did not want to lose him like every other man. She was so used to having her father driving all the men in her life away that she did not want it to happen again. The passage on page 208 of the Literature book says, " We remembered all the young men her father had driven away. . ." This tells us that the people in the town were very aware of why Emily never had a husband before her father's death. Killing Homer was her way of keeping him with her forever.