English III
Santana Young Man
3/30/11
Compare and Contrast A Rose for Emily and Trifles
Both of these stories are in the same type of mystery style. They have an unpleasant but
interesting sense about them.
When reading A Rose for Emily, I knew there had to be something shocking in the end. The
way the towns people dished the dirt about Miss Emily was interestinf. They seemed to only pay
attention to her. How she stayed in her home and never came out. How her father died and her
sweetheart left her. They talked about her faliing fpor a Northerner, Homer Barron, who was
also a day laborer and that did not come to there liking.Then they described a strong reek at Miss
Emily’s house. A few towns people complianed about it, some people went to action. They broke
open the cell door and sprinlkled lime there, within some days the smell went away. So they
thought that that’s what helped. Another thing that happened in the storie is when Miss Emily
goes and buys arsenic. Noone seems to have the real cause of it, they just assume she’s going to
kill herself and they wanted her to. They say she lost her ways and that her like a man that wasn’t
up to people-with-money standards. In the end she doesn’t use the poison for herself…………..
When Miss Emily dies the women are not mournful but curious to go into her house and scope
around. The men seem to pay their respects. When they inter her house they look around and
then they find a body laying on a bed. It is not Miss Emily or the servant. It was Homer Barron.
Right beside him on the bed was a pillow that had a dent in it like someone had layed by him.
The body had to be laying there for at least over ten years, I’m guessing. That’s when they
realized that the reeking smell the had noticed years’s ago was nothing of dishes or ill
housekeeping but a decomposing body of Homer Barron. I had come to believe that she killed
him so he would not leave her. But there could be all sorts of possibilities.
Trifles was kind of in the same catagorie, but it was written in play form. This mysitery was
very interesting and made me want to read more. Once we started reading it, you wanted to
finish it to see who the killer was. Wondering if the men would ever find evidence to the killer.
When I read the story I was wondering why Mrs. Wright was acting so indifferent. The way
Hale told his part of the story made it seem like she might have killed him. Because when you
watch a movie and a person just killed someone for the first time in their lives they act distant
and kind of brainsick. Reading Hale’s story I had to put forward that she could possibly have
killed him. Near the end of the story it tells that the women find a dead bird and they wonder
who would do such an atrocious thing to an innocent animal. The birds neck is twisted all they
around and hidden in a box that is aslo described to be a beautiful bird. Finding this bird, the
women learn that this could be a motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband, it was the final
irritation, she killed him. Mrs. Wright also doesn’t seem to mourn her husband at all, but then
Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. Hale were saying that Mr. Wright was not a pleasant man. The whole
story was a great mystery!
A Rose for Emily and Trifles compare in mystery, confusion, and beguilement . They have a
death that occurred, a women who was involved, a murder occurred, and the towns people
estimating what happened. In both stories the women that were the main characters were never
out there or they seemed to have to one come to visit them or anything. Miss Emily would never
come out of her home and was not easily exlained to the towns people. Mrs. Wright lived in her
home that was explained as cold and unwelcoming so people would not come over and she aslo
changed and was different from when she was when she was little. They also both kill a man.
The dissimilarities in A Rose for Emily and Trifles are, the men invesigate the murder in Trifles
and A Rose for Emily was a surprise when they found her unlawful kill of the man she didn’t
want to leave. Miss Emily dies in the end from getting sick, Mrs. Wright does not die but is held
captive for suspect of her husbands murder. Miss Emily was the talk of the town it seemed, she
never married because her father mentioned that no man was good enough for his daughter, well
Mrs. Wright was married. Mrs. Wright was known for being a decent and angelic character, they
also decribed that her singing was dulcet like a bird. Miss Emily was always engaged and rigid in
her home and never would really speak to anyone and neither would her servant. She was seen as
a little lost and they assumed it had to do with her fathers death and her sweatheart leaving.
Another contrast between them is that Mrs. Wright kills her husband because he did something
wrong and Miss Emily kills Barron because she doesn’t want him to leave her.
Both these stories are alike in ways but differ in so many others.
A Rose for Emily & Trifles are stories that are set in the Victorian Era, which is when women
were not what the men expected. They started writing which was on called for. They came out
and spoke. They let their true thoughts and voices be heard.
By Santana Young Man