Essay Poe

Karina M. Hernández Cortes                      845-14-3444                        Ingl 3221 L03

The Fall of the House of Usher and A Rose for Emily

            The Fall of the House of Usher and A Rose for Emily are short stories that had a lot in common. The Fall of the House of Usher is about a family that were rich, have a direct line of descent and that only left two members, a twin brothers that are sick. The man, Roderick, was mental illness and his sister, Madeline, had catalepsy; they lived in the house of the family with their servant. Roderick wrote a letter to his childhood friend, the narrator of the story, asking him to come visit him because he needed him and there is where the story began. A Rose for Emily is about a rich family, like the Ushers, composed by a widowed man, his daughter, Emily, and two cousins. This story begin with the end that is the death of Emily, but the story really begin with the dead of the father, that Emily keep in the house for several days and the same thing does with the dead body of a man she loved but in this time for years and inclusive she sleep with him.

            Both stories are gothic style, are in first person and had similar themes, like family, loneliness, death, loyalty, fear, suspense and others. Family and loneliness come together in these stories because basically the reasons this persons are alone are their family. Death is present in the house of Usher in the uncertainty of if Madeline was death or is having an episode of her disease; in A Rose for Emily is present in the death of her father and the death of Homer, death that she induced. Loyalty is demonstrated by both servants of the respective families, both were loyal to the people they serve and were for them in every moment. The characters of these stories are similar too, they have similar situations, with their families, have fear of be alone and because that they no want to accept the death of the people they loved or that had been with them, they want to stay in their home and nobody no them very well.

These stories have a very few differences. The authors, for example, The Fall of the House of Usher was written by Edgar Allan Poe and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. The time when the events happen in each story are completely different. The members of the family, in Usher’s family only left the two siblings and in the Grierson’s family were Emily, her father, that died soon in the story, and two cousins. Both stories were told different, The Fall of the House of Usher were narrated traditionally; and A Rose for Emily began with the end and later narrate the rest of the story.