Magnifying and Obscuring Essay

The stories of John Updikes A&P and William Faulkners A Rose for Emily both make use of the eldest person betoken of view in narration but with very unlike and kinda a powerful effects that also affect former(a) agents of the narrative. The ways in which these two stories play with the individual elements of a piece of fiction bear witness just how important it is to make sure that these individual elements are totally taken cared of and built-up with equal care and attention, because a problem with sensation element plenty result into a problem with the entire myth the elements moldiness all be able to work together to support each other and to weave a tight story.A&P uses the prototypic person, non-omniscient, singular point of view (POV) narration to build sonority with the main character, Sammy for example Im in the third check-out slot, with my back up to the door, so I dont advert them until theyre over by the bread I could see Lengel in my place in the sl ot, checking the sheep by. (Updike 560). This connection with Sammy is a very important one because it is pretty a great deal the driving force of the story learning of whats going on in a teenage sons head spell there are half-naked girls walking nearly can make an interest read.This point of view is rattling what helps push the proofreader on a extensive as she or he plods through the A&P plot. With A Rose for Emily, on the other hand, we are given the first person, non-omniscient, plural point of view. Obviously, because it is plural it cannot be the view of the main character, suffer Emily Grierson. Instead we seem to have the entire story narrated to us by the entire town When young lady Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral for a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless smiling (Faulkner).This works to increase the arcanum that surrounds Miss Emily and her home plate because we never really knew what she is thi nk backing or feeling. This point of view, giving an air of mystery, again, helps push the reader on to discover what happens throughout the story. Relating with the use of the POV are the contrary story plots. Here, we can see a great difference between A&P and A Rose for Emily because we find that one is primarily character-driven while the other has a strong plot that keeps the readers going through the story.It is A&P that is, obviously, character-driven because of its simple plot of a boy wanting to elicit the attention of some pretty girls, which is rather common. pull down the events in the story and the simple chronological way that it folds are quite ordinary it is really Sammy his thoughts and his feelings that make a reader interested in the story. And, even up to the ending, readers are all interested only in Sammys fate and no one elses I matte how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter (Updike 564).In A Rose for Emily, on the other hand, we have a s tory with a strong plot, aided by the effective point of view narration, which moves the story along. The story hooks readers into the plot by making them curious about who Miss Emily Grierson is from the very beginning readers are wondering why she is a fallen monument and what is so interesting about the inside of her house (Faulkner). The non-linear timeline that the story follows also strengthens the mystery of Miss Emily because the building block to her look must be pieced together slowly and with a certain centre of intuition, at first.Now, the characters of the two stories are also very different one is as open to us as a book position flat-open, while the other is mystery to the very end. With Sammy of A&P, we never seem to see a concrete glimpse of in terms of physical appearance but the readers would all know him if they met him. The first person narration lets us in on all the things that makes Sammy think and tick with that little grocery stop. In his observatio n of the girls, we find a young man with a keen eye and, also, an eye for beauty.He also shows us the ability of a favourable imagination when he imagines how the girls behave and how their relationships with each other must be like as when he describes the tall girl as a tall one, with glum hair that hadnt quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across under(a) the eyes, and a chin that was too long you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very striking and attractive but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why they like her so much. (Updike 561) Sammy, as we can surmise, is a boy that is very much in-touch with his surroundings and his imagination. The word-painting of Miss Emily, in contrast, is one that is left murky and shadowy. Because we only see her through the townspeoples eyes, we never really see her understandably we can only watch her through the stories, the memories, and the patchwork guesses that these observers give us. be sides even from this blurry view of Miss Emily through a window, we can see how guarded and closed-off she is from her environment as when she acted ignorant of Colonel Sartoris death (Faulkner) the total contrary of Sammy. In A&P, we are set-up in a small grocery store that effectively concentrates our attention on no one and nothing else but Sammy and his current preoccupation. The A&P grocery store acts as the perfect magnifying glass to help us focus on our main character and how he deals with the current situation.A Rose for Emily is set-up up throughout decades of a life and in different places of the town this manner of a setting makes for even more mystery as the reader tries to fill in all the gaps between the old age that the narrators had no contact nor any knowledge of what went on in Miss Emilys life. The vast setting diffuses the readers minds and it wanders across time and space, searching for a complete picture of Miss Emily Grierson.These two stories, perha ps more different than alike, prove that good stories dont need to follow a certain pattern to mold in order to be good it is in the writer and the dedication to his work that makes a story count. whole shebang CitedFaulkner, William. A Rose For Emily. 16 February 2008. Fu Jen University Department of English Language and Literature. 26 June 2009 <http//www. eng. fju. edu. tw/English_ Literature/Rose/el-text-E-Rose. htm> Updike, John. A&P. The Compact Bedford entrance to Literature Eighth Edition. Ed.