Essay Poe

Comparison between A Rose For Emily and The Fall of the House of Usher

    These stories are both gothic style, narrated in first person. A Rose For Emily uses we so is told from townspeople. The Fall of the House of Usher uses I so is told by a visiting friend. In both stories the protagonists are isolated from the world being in their comfort zone which is their house. Also they had someone in their houses. In A Rose For Emily there was Tobe a servant of Emily. In The Fall of the House of Usher there was Madeline who was Usher’s sister. In both stories we also can see that their homes were actually family inheritance. There’s also mental illness in both stories. I think they used this to make it more suspensive. Both stories have mutual themes as dead, family, isolation, fear.

    In A Rose For Emily we have a relationship between Emily and a man named Homer Barron that we never know exactly how it all goes down, only that he took her out on sundays and disappear at her house. The Fall of the House of Usher presents a brother and sister relationship between Usher and Madeline. We never really know Madeline story and how exactly her relationship with his brother was. So we can see that in A Rose For Emily there’s a lover relationship and in The Fall of the House of Usher there’s a family relationship.

    Emily’s house represents mental illness and death. It is a shrine to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room where she preserves the man she would not allow to leave her. The house of Rodrick Usher represents the mental illness, death and it ends with the decay of the house. Letting them to rest in peace.

   These stories don’t have a lot of differences because they are both presenting practically the same themes. I liked both stories. Edgar Allan Poe was a great writer. I never heard about William Faulkner but A Rose For Emily was a really good story because you don’t expect that is going to end up like that.