Question

Chose one character from each of these three stories and write an introduction paragraph: (1) The story of an hour. (2) A Rose for Emily. (3) The Lottery.

Answer 1

1) The story of an hour:Louice Mallard

An intelligent, independent woman, Louise Mallard understands the “right” way for women to behave, but her internal thoughts and feelings are anything but correct. When her sister announces that Brently has died, Louise cries dramatically rather than feeling numb, as she knows many other women would. Her violent reaction immediately shows that she is an emotional, demonstrative woman. She knows that she should grieve for Brently and fear for her own future, but instead she feels elation at her newfound independence. Louise is not cruel and knows that she’ll cry over Brently’s dead body when the time comes. But when she is out of others’ sight, her private thoughts are of her own life and the opportunities that await her, which she feels have just brightened considerably.

Louise suffers from a heart problem, which indicates the extent to which she feels that marriage has oppressed her. The vague label Chopin gives to Louise’s problem—“heart trouble”—suggests that this trouble is both physical and emotional, a problem both within her body and with her relationship to Brently. In the hour during which Louise believes Brently is dead, her heart beats strongly—indeed, Louise feels her new independence physically. Alone in her room, her heart races, and her whole body feels warm. She spreads her arms open, symbolically welcoming her new life. “Body and soul free!” she repeats to herself, a statement that shows how total her new independence really is for her. Only when Brently walks in does her “heart trouble” reappear, and this trouble is so acute that it kills her. The irony of the ending is that Louise doesn’t die of joy as the doctors claim but actually from the loss of joy. Brently’s death gave her a glimpse of a new life, and when that new life is swiftly taken away, the shock and disappointment kill her.

2) A rose for Emily:Characters Emily Grierson

Emily is the classic outsider, controlling and limiting the town’s access to her true identity by remaining hidden. The house that shields Emily from the world suggests the mind of the woman who inhabits it: shuttered, dusty, and dark. The object of the town’s intense scrutiny, Emily is a muted and mysterious figure. On one level, she exhibits the qualities of the stereotypical southern “eccentric”: unbalanced, excessively tragic, and subject to bizarre behavior. Emily enforces her own sense of law and conduct, such as when she refuses to pay her taxes or state her purpose for buying the poison. Emily also skirts the law when she refuses to have numbers attached to her house when federal mail service is instituted. Her dismissal of the law eventually takes on more sinister consequences, as she takes the life of the man whom she refuses to allow to abandon her.

The narrator portrays Emily as a monument, but at the same time she is pitied and often irritating, demanding to live life on her own terms. The subject of gossip and speculation, the townspeople cluck their tongues at the fact that she accepts Homer’s attentions with no firm wedding plans. After she purchases the poison, the townspeople conclude that she will kill herself. Emily’s instabilities, however, lead her in a different direction, and the final scene of the story suggests that she is a necrophiliac. Necrophilia typically means a sexual attraction to dead bodies. In a broader sense, the term also describes a powerful desire to control another, usually in the context of a romantic or deeply personal relationship. Necrophiliacs tend to be so controlling in their relationships that they ultimately resort to bonding with unresponsive entities with no resistance or will—in other words, with dead bodies. Mr. Grierson controlled Emily, and after his death, Emily temporarily controls him by refusing to give up his dead body. She ultimately transfers this control to Homer, the object of her affection. Unable to find a traditional way to express her desire to possess Homer, Emily takes his life to achieve total power over him.

3) The Lottery:When Tessie Hutchinson arrives late to the lottery, admitting that she forgot what day it was, she immediately stands out from the other villagers as someone different and perhaps even threatening. Whereas the other women arrive at the square calmly, chatting with one another and then standing placidly by their husbands, Tessie arrives flustered and out of breath. The crowd must part for her to reach her family, and she and her husband endure good-natured teasing as she makes her way to them. On a day when the villagers’ single focus is the lottery, this breach of propriety seems inappropriate, even unforgivable; everyone comes to the lottery, and everyone comes on time. The only person absent is a man whose leg is broken. Although Tessie quickly settles into the crowd and joins the lottery like everyone else, Jackson has set her apart as a kind of free spirit who was able to forget about the lottery entirely as she performed her chores.

Perhaps because she is a free spirit, Tessie is the only villager to protest against the lottery. When the Hutchinson family draws the marked paper, she exclaims, “It wasn’t fair!” This refrain continues as she is selected and subsequently stoned to death, but instead of listening to her, the villagers ignore her. Even Bill tells her to be quiet. We don’t know whether Tessie would have protested the fairness of the lottery if her family had not been selected, but this is a moot point. Whatever her motivation is for speaking out, she is effectively silenced.

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