Trilling, Faulkner, and Hemingway

Kevin (Kyoo Sang) Jo

Professor Glen McClish

RWS 600 Assignment: Trilling, Faulkner, Hemingway

9 December 2013

1. Of this time, of that place

This story describes the relationship between an English instructor and poet, Joseph Howe, and two of his students: Tertan, a brilliant, but mentally ill student of philosophy and art; and Blackburn, a wily and unprincipled opportunist. This story is divided into four sections and has a third-person point of view. The narrator always looks over Howe’s shoulder and maintains Howe’s perspective on events. The narrator also reads the character’s mind and evaluates the character’s personality. Such an omniscient point of view shows type 22 in the taxonomy of narrators. The narrative method is very realistic. This is not only because it is told from a third-person omniscient point of view but also because the instructor, Joseph Howe, is to a considerable degree a fictionalized projection of Trilling himself. In fact, Lionel Trilling’s commentary on this story shows that two characters – Ferdinand Tertan and Theodore Blackburn – had their origins in actual students Trilling had taught at Columbia College. The narrator explains weather to help the reader perceive the passing of time. The story opens with “It was a fine September day. By noon it would be summer again but now it was true autumn with a touch of chill in the air.” In the last section, the narrator describes the weather of the commencement day as follows: “After years of bad luck with the weather, the College had a perfect day for Commencement. It was wonderfully bright, the air so transparent, the wind so brisk that no one could resist talking about it.”

2. A rose for Emily

Emily Grierson’s death makes Grierson family’s mansion open to the townspeople first. She is of noble birth in the southern small town, Jefferson. Emily’s family has fallen on hard times after the Civil War. Her father dies when Emily is about thirty. In fact, she does not get along with the townspeople even after her father is dead. After father’s death, Emily lives in the aging family mansion with a manservant as cook, gardener, and general handyman. A few years pass and a handsome laborer, Homer Barron, from the North arrives as part of a project crew. Emily and this man are seen to be keeping company. One day Emily appears in the apothecary and buys arsenic. The man in question is not seen again by the townspeople. Thirty years pass and Emily does not leave her home; she ages, grows fat with long, iron-gray hair, and becomes increasingly reclusive, and eventually dies. After she is buried, a group of townsfolk enter her house to see what remains of her life there. The door to her upstairs bedroom is locked; some of the townsfolk kick in the door to see what has been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for their wedding, lies the horribly decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed; on the indented pillow next to the remains is a single, long, iron-gray hair. 

The narrator, who is the voice of the town in general, tells the story of Miss Emily’s life as observed by the people around her. The narrator is privileged as well as uncommenting because the narrator transfers only the observed facts not evaluating, reflecting, and judging. Therefore, the narrator corresponds to type 25 in the taxonomy of narrators. In response to the representation of time the author uses “ellipsis” to cut in the narrative without summary from on time period to another. In the part of the end, the narrator comes back in the time after the funeral. In other words, the narrator opens with the Emily’s funeral, tells the Emily’s history, and comes back in the time after the Emily’s funeral. This is flash-forward with respect to “order.” On the other hand, the subject, “A rose for Emily,” is a kind of metaphor. It symbolizes Emily’s passionate love for a man because she wants to be with Homer Barron forever even killing him.

3. A clean, well-lighted place

An old, deaf man sits in a café, drinking late at night. It is too late and almost time to close, but the old man does not think about leaving the café. He tried to kill himself the week before. A young waiter really wants to go home because his wife waits for him and he wants to go to bed. The young waiter becomes impatient and says to the deaf man that he should have killed himself last week while he curtly pours the drink. On the other hand, an older waiter has consideration for the old man and feel like opening the café a little longer for him. Finally, the old man leaves the café and the young waiter goes home. The old waiter continues his train of thought, deciding that life is meaningless. On his way home, the old waiter stops at a bar, telling the bartender that the bar is unpolished, reminding himself of his disdain for bars because they aren’t the clean, well-lighted places he relishes. He leaves the bar, knowing that he will not get to sleep until dawn because of insomnia.

In general, an undramatized narrator does not say other characters’ mind, but the narrator explains the old waiter’s future in the end of the story as follows: “Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep.” Therefore, the narrator can be viewed as type 23 in the taxonomy of narrators. This story has a dichotomous structure of light and shadow. The shadow means meaningless, nada, or nothing. The light is a mean to make nada disappear. The old deaf man suffers from nada and tries to kill himself. Therefore, the café, a clean, well-lighted place, is helpful in part for him to overcome nada. That is the reason why he tries to stay at the café longer. Also, the older waiter experiences nada and is not able to sleep at night because of insomnia. The reason why the older waiter leaves other bar at once is because he knows that he cannot overcome nada in the unpolished place. This story shows two different oppositions effectively by a monolog or a dialogue not by narration or depiction.