Explaining the main characters
Miss Emily Grierson, a reclusive Southern woman harboring a gruesome secret.
Emily's father, a proud, aristocratic man who chases away his daughter's suitors because they aren't good enough for her.
Homer Barron, had a short relationship with Emily but disappeared mysteriously.
Colonel Sartoris, excludes Emily from paying tax.
Point of the story: In this story, Miss Emily Grierson is a lonely old woman, living a life void of all love and affection; although the rose only directly appears in the title, the rose surfaces throughout the story as a symbol.The rose symbolizes dreams of romances and lovers.
Importance of setting or location: the narrator carefully describes the house that Miss Emily lives in. This description helps us picture a decaying Mississippi town in the post-Civil War South and also Miss Emily's resistance to change.
Tools used by the author:"A Rose for Emily" evokes the terms Southern gothic and grotesque, two types of literature in which the general tone is one of gloom, terror, and understated violence. Faulkner uses two literary techniques to create a seamless whole that makes the tale too intriguing to stop reading: the suspenseful, jumbled chronology of events, and the narrator's shifting point of view, which emphasizes Miss Emily's strength of purpose, her aloofness, and her pride, and lessens the horror and the repulsion of her actions.
What the author trying to communicate: trying to teach what not to do when faced with loss. Miss Emily refuses to confront the fact that her father dies. She refuses to confront the fact that her boyfriend might not want to marry her. She refuses to confront the fact that she owes taxes . Instead, she shuts herself up in her old house, guards a very morbid secret, and refuses to go out into the world because it contains too much loss.
Relevance of the message:it is a massive wake-up call. Even when life throws us hardballs and loss seems like the name of the game, it's better than the alternative. The only thing worse than a life full of loss is a life spent avoiding loss because living in fear of loss can hardly be called "living" at all.
YELLOW WALL PAPER
Explaining the main characters:
Jane: the narrator suffers from what is now called postpartum depression.
John: Jane’s husband and a physician who exerts ultimate control over all the decisions affecting his wife’s freedom.
Jennie: John’s sister, who helps her brother control and observe Jane.
Weir Mitchell popularized the rest cure and was a real figure who treated Gilman unsuccessfully in his sanatorium.
Importance of setting or location:Her emotional position mirrors the house’s physical set-up. it stands back away from the road and contains many "locks" and "separate little houses." This is a super-isolated place. It’s separate from the road and therefore separated from society; the house itself is described as a place that binds and restricts.therefore the narrator is isolated and restricted. .
Point of the story: Charlotte Perkins Gilman went to see a specialist in the hope of curing her recurring nervous breakdowns. The specialist recommended a "rest cure," which consisted of lying in bed all day and engaging in intellectual activity for only two hours a day. After three months, Gilman says, she was "near the borderline of utter mental ruin."
Tools used by the author; the author used a narrative style known as epistolary fiction. This type of fiction unfolds via the writings of one or more characters. In this case, the main character, Jane, journals her thoughts while she is undergoing a "rest cure" for depression.
What is the author trying to communicate: prison solitary confinement is supposed to be good for the inmate. It's supposed to ensure redemption personally through habits of meditation and penitence but it ends up harming the human psyche irrparably.
Relevance of message;The story addresses sexism and the stigmatizing of the mentally ill. Therefore the world is in dire need of gender equality and acceptance of mental illness.Also serious mental illness is as a result of isolation.
THE LOTTERY
Explaining the characters:
Mr. Summers, the official who conducts the lottery.
Mr. Graves, the postmaster, who brings the stool for the black box.
Bill Hutchison, who draws the first black dot.
Tessie Hutchison, who draws the second black dot and is stoned to death by her fellow villagers.
Clyde Dunbar, whose wife draws for him because he's at home with a broken leg.
Old Man Warner, the oldest man in the village and a defender of its traditions.
The Watson boy, who draws for his mother.
Importance of setting or location: the lottery is set in a small isolated farming village. Jackon's village is a rural area,sorrounded by other such villages and with people who lived narrow lives and as a result have narrow lives as well.
Point of the story; The central conflict in “The Lottery” is the external conflict of person vs. society, because it is the traditions of the village that cause Tessie Hutchinson to be killed, and one other person a year before her
Tools used by the author: irony and symbolism
What the author trying to communicate to the audience; It forces us to look at the traditions we follow in a new light, because it so closely follows the patterns of traditions we were familiar with. And it also forces us to confront what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil."
Relevance of the message;"The Lottery" sits comfortably because it shows how the barbaric ritual of the lottery has been "accepted, routinised, and implemented without moral revulsion and political indignation and resistance." It's such a powerful symbol because it's treated as normal like so many other atrocities in history have been.