Not that I didn't like Elliot's poem or Hemingway's story--I did enjoy them--but Faulkner's short "A Rose for Emily" was so much more interesting and familiar. By the time I read "Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic" (1001), I knew I've read this story before in high school. And I knew what the ending was. Just creepy.
Emily seemed odd from the beginning but the narrator seemed to go on and off about their impression of her. One day they were sad for her because they thought she would commit suicide. Then, they were happy when they assumed she was marrying Homer Barron, that one guy, the one dead guy she was sleeping with! Miss Emily must have been completely obsessed with this guy to sleep with his dead body or she was seriously insane. Anyways, I had the same feelings when I first read it: disgust, shock, huh? moments, and...disgust. But yet again, was it really her fault she became the way she did?
Maybe it was the town she was living in. I mean, this town sounded like those close-knit towns where everyone knows everyone about everything. No secrets to hide, and if there were, people wanted to know them right away. It could also have been her father who kept any males away from her. His death even affected her greatly. Who knows.
I found Hemingway's story to be a bit similar, not in the characters, but in the ending...strange. I disliked the male character very much only because of how he treated his female counterpart. I saw no reason in the relationship if he didn't lover her. I bet he would have been a lot happier if he wasn't with her. And she--so blind--was selfish and didn't seem to notice how much he disliked her. In the end, I hate to say this, but I felt like the male lead kind of deserved to die. And death was already making itself known. I really liked the way Hemingway integrated death in the story as if it was a character itself.
I thought it was funny how the arsenic was what sparked your attention. I also agree that the ending is extremely creepy. I agree about the small town feel that everyone probably knows everything. The whole Emily and Homer fiasco was strange. I mean I know she was in love with him but the fact that she slept with his dead body every night is over the top creepy. I thought it was hilarious how you said that the male deserved to die in Hemmingway's story. Being a female I would have to agree:).
ReplyDeleteI find the feminist energy in this post fascinating. One thing to note with regard to Hemingway is that he tends to write his female characters as weak and dependent creatures, at least in my experience of him. When I first read "A Farewell to Arms" in high school, I despised it for the simple reason that the female character was absolutely pathetic, and I have never met a woman so two dimensional and flat.
ReplyDeleteSo, believe me, I understand the frustration. I wonder, though, why Hemingway wrote that way. Did he perhaps not know many women well? Or were his stories supposed to be focused on the male lead? Although, I wonder what the point of that would be as his male characters have fallen a little flat in my experience: obsessed with death, drinking, and never achieving their ambitions.
To conclude my wild ramblings, I think your reaction to Hemingway's characters is interesting because I think many people would react that way. His characters are frustrating and frighteningly flawed. But it is important to take into account the time and place from which he was writing: the end of World War I in Paris. People were absolutely consumed with the amount of death and pain and loss. People were questioning the meaning of life, the point in it. It was a horribly depressing time, so I don't know if I can still fault Hemingway for making his characters so weak. Perhaps all he saw was weakness.