English Literature

While both are considered great American writers with brilliant works and sterling contributions to literature, they have voices that are in some ways, similar enough to strike at a common chord, and at the same time different enough to sound off their own unique look at certain subjects, style, attack, perspective and delivery. To even begin to understand the similarities and to even being to compare and contrast the work of the two great poets, it is very important to start with brief biographies of the two writers. After all, whatever the convictions of the writers are and how his life is a living testament to these convictions, will all bleed through and reflect through his or her words and works. After all, poems are, in one way or another, an extension and creation of, as well as a peek through the person that one who gave it life is; the proverbial ‘god’ or ‘goddess’ for that matter who breathed life unto them. As Dickinson herself puts it, a poem is the poets ‘epistle’ to the world, when she said “This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me, -- (Dickinson,1960)” To this, Faulkner replies, in the narrator’s voice regarding Miss Emily that ‘thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse (Faulkner,____).’
Short Biographies of Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner
    For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!” – (Dickinson, 1960)
    Emily’s full name is Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. She was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family with a good status in life. Her religious upbringing and short stint at Mary Lyon,s Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, her immense taking to wearing pure white clothing, her reclusive lifestyle and her detached dealings with people earned her a reputation of being some sort of an eccentric. She did not develop personal friendships, but carried out a few correspondences with people. Some of the people who knew her had an idea that she was a poet but the majority of her works were only brought into public knowledge only after her death. She was such a prolific writer, but as ‘she was a private poet who wrote as indefatigably as some women cook or knit (Blackmur, 1937). When she died, her sister Lavinia discovered a huge collection of her poems. With much doubt as to her talents, it was not until the 19th and 20th century that she was finally considered a major American poet. On May 15, 1886 she succumbed to what her physician diagnosed as Bright’s Disease, and left an extensive collection of poems and correspondences. Her reclusive lifestyle shows through her poems, which mainly speaks of her deep entanglements and solitary commune with nature and the divine.

    William Faulkner on the other hand was born in New Albany,  Mississippi in 1897. After serving in the Canadian and British Royal Air Forces in World War I, he studied at the University of Mississippi, and then worked for a New York bookstore, and later for a newspaper in New Orleans. His work focused on the development and later decadence of the South. His brilliant works centered and always involved colored people and their interactions with their white counterparts. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature and produced solid works of great acclaim such as ‘The Sound and The Fury (1929), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) Intruder in the Dust (1948), Requiem for a Nun (1951) and numerous other short stories, including “A Rose For Miss Emily.” He was a prolific writer who produced an extensive body of works. He died on July 6, 1962.
Analysis proper: literary form, Language, Tone, Metaphor, Voice, Narrative Structure,
Perspective, Theme and treatment of Subject and Interpretation.

    The poems are written in the first person, where the speaker is also the persona. This is the first major difference between the poem and the story. While the poet/persona/narrator in the poems speaks directly of and about her self, the narrator speaks in a limited third party perspective. The narrator did take on an omnipresent status, but only as much as someone who passes for a ‘community member,’ not seeing beyond the doors of Miss Emily’s house, which does more for foreshadowing and suspense building.

    The language usage in the poems and in the story is all very clear, almost straight forward, and very descriptive. The poems are spoken by a persona who had education, is very discerning and in good command of descriptive language. Same goes with the story. The poems even star with self description thus:
“I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose—(Dickinson, 1960)
-----
“I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb, (Dickinson, 1960)”
The short story narrator starts the tale with fairly the same descriptive penchant, thus:
“WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years. (Faulkner, 1950)

In fact, this descriptive quality is what propels the piece forward. With the persona in the poem cataloguing descriptive language such as: ‘fairer House than Prose—(Line 2),’ ‘Impregnable of Eye—(Line 6)’’ ‘an Everlasting Roof (Line 7),’ and ‘Of Visitors--the fairest—(Line 9).’ The same is true with the second poem where adjectives are dished out such as ‘Adjusted in the tomb (Line 2),’ ‘He questioned softly why I failed? (Line 5),’ and ‘Until the moss had reached our lips,(Line 11.) In the story, rich descriptive passages are also rife such as:
“It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street (Chapter 1).”
Then there is that expertise in describing Miss Emily in the later part:
“When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning (Chapter IV).”
It is needless to say how Faulkner’s description through the narrator in the last part of the story gave the final master stroke of this macabre story.

    The second literary technique in the story, where form is concerned is the Narrative structure. It is easily seen in the works that they all follow a certain linear narrative structure where the ‘narrative line’ follows a normal progression. While the story is basically a ‘flashback,’ or a back story, still, the narrative line follows a linear pattern. The first poem starts out with a general statement of how the persona ‘lived in the House of Possibility (Line1)’ and progresses with a comparison of her dwellings to that of ‘Prose’ (Line 2),’ it does culminate from an interior description of the self to stretch out towards receiving ‘Visitors--the fairest—(Line 9) to a grand vision of ‘spreading narrow hands (Line 11),’ to the very limits of gathering ‘Paradise (Line 12).’ Such structure is also used in the second poem from the point of the persona’s ‘dying for beauty (Line 1)’ to being scarcely ‘adjusted to the tomb (Line 2),’ to then being beside someone who claims ‘dying for truth (Line 7),’ to being ‘brethrens (Line 8),’ later developing ‘kinships into the night (Line 9),’ to talking ‘between the rooms (Line 10),’ until the ‘moss reached (their) lips (Line 11)’ to ‘cover their names.’

    The same linear structure is followed in the narratives, where we are told in a back story, by the narrator of the most significant events and the town folk’s encounter with the strange and aristocratic character that is Miss Emily. In a delicious tale rife with foreshadowing techniques we are treated to the unfolding events through the narrator that led to the discovery of the very mystery of the strange Miss Emily, and her house of dust and antiquity.

    The suspension of disbelief is also common in the works, as with the first poems personification and exaggerations, as to the persona that can dwell in a ‘House of possibilities (Line 1), with an ‘everlasting roof (Line 7) to receive ‘fairest visitors (Line 9) and gather Paradise ( Line 12) with the spreading of her ‘narrow hands (Line 11).’ The same is true with foreshadowing and suspension of disbelief with a persona in the second poem that just ‘died for beauty (Line 1),’ and yet can converse with another dead man. The same suspension of disbelief can be seen in the almost mythical existence, resilience, stubbornness and aristocracy of the main character Miss Emily in Faulkner’s story. There is the element of foreshadowing in the first reluctance of Miss Emily’s to burry her dead father. The same suspension is seen in how she holds sway over her Negro henchman and only companion, as well as the dawning knowledge of the crafty way Faulkner has planted back into the room the things that Miss Emily bought for Homer Barron, including the tarnished silver toilet things. There is also a dawning of that realization as to the true nature and secret of the house and Miss Emily with the almost abrupt and dropped account of what the minister saw when he came to speak with her, and why he vowed to never return to that house and never wanted to speak a word about anything he saw in that house. Such wonderful and delightful master crafting of the story is indeed laudable.

    Lastly, a non formalistic element that shows in both the poems and the story is the treatment of the subject of solitary women, as well as the element of the strange and macabre, as well as the treatment of death and mortality. In the first poem, we are treated to an almost goddess-like or deified woman. We see her living in a House of possibility, which can be interpreted as a magical and mystical house of abstraction. Her very character speaks of faerie-like characteristic, ad finally bolstered by the image of her gathering paradise. Same is true with the strange talking dead in the second poem. The same could also be said of the strong, almost malevolent and powerful character of Miss Emily, who can wave away any opposition and could stare down any troublesome authority.

    In the works, the theme of death is also seen as a pleasant experience; even romanticized. For the poems, death is seen as liberation from life’s seemingly prison-like quality. We see death as a place or state where a woman can form ‘brethren-ness’ and kinship as equals, with a man. The story shows death as a liberation, both for Miss Emily, from the pains of this world, and the sadness of solitariness and unrequited love; as well as from the town folks who are released from the pressure by the discovery of Miss Emily’s dark secrets. In the works, death is romantic and allegorical at the same time.

    Perhaps, what sets them apart is the perspective from which both writers have written their pieces. For Dickinson’s poem, it could be argued that she ‘wrote herself into the poem.’ Surely, an examination of her solitary, cloistered and reclusive life would support the theory of how, she is actually the very persona she writes of in the poems. As for Faulkner’s story, the narrator is an unnamed, undescribed and unspecified citizen of the town. Even the solitary figure of Miss Emily did not bother to live outside her self and involve her self when she can help it. She was non participative and was merely a sort of ‘spectacle,’ to be glanced at or talked about.

    To say the least, that both writers exhibited brilliance in their works is an understatement. Both writers have shown such talents and thus, their works remain an enduring example of literary greatness, and are sterling pieces for the period, and even until the present. The most beautiful quality of the works is in their ability to admit multiple interpretations, for people from different backgrounds and convictions. Everyone finds a piece for themselves in the poems and the stories. This universality is a quality that great literary geniuses are able execute breathtakingly and marvelously.