Comparing A Rose for Emily and The Rocking Horse Winner Essay

In A Rose for Emily and The Rocking Horse Winner Faulkner and Lawrence present the theme of love in a twisted manner. Although both of these stories are about love, they are about two very different kinds of love: Emily Grierson is in a romantic relationship with Homer Baron, while Pauls love is maternal for his mother. Both stories do however, give a macabre view of love, as they each end with the deaths of the protagonists. Although both stories illustrate love as a source of pain and anguish, it is Emily that presents a more twisted view of love, as she is in control of the decisions that she makes in her life. Conversely, Pauls story is actually tragic in nature. Motherly love is supposed to be unconditional and unwavering; Paul however, never seems to be loved by his mother no matter what he does.

Both Emily Grierson, the southern lady and Paul the young child suffer from Oedipus complexes. Emily loved her father and refused to give up his dead body for three days after he died. She attempts to replace him with a man that is similar, her lover Homer Baron, who carries a horsewhip like her father. Paul tries to replace his father as the breadwinner of the family, as his mother indicates that his father is unlucky and this is the source of their misfortune. He rides his rocking horse with fury, a sexual symbol of his mother, to find luck. He tells his rocking horse to take him to luck. Paul thinks that if he can convince his mother that he is lucky he will gain her love. The main difference between these two characters is that Emily was a powerful woman that had been given a happy childhood, her father loves her and she does not want for anything, while Paul is at his mothers mercy and is a powerless young boy desperate for his mothers love. Unlike Paul, Emily does not feel unhappy or unloved; she is calculating and uses her power to obtain poison to murder Homer so that he may never leave her.

Isolation is a theme that runs through both stories. Emily is isolated from society at an early age by her father. He turns her into a recluse as he keeps all suitors away from her until she becomes a spinster and is too old to marry. Conversely Paul is imprisoned by the voices in his home that insist that there must be more money. Pauls imprisonment is against his will, all he desires is to be a normal child that is loved by his mother. Emilys seclusion from society is by choice, she has been taught by her father that she is better than the other members of the Jefferson community. It is this seclusion that allows Emily to keep Homers body in her house for years without anyone being the wiser. It is this seclusion from society that ultimately causes both characters to become mentally ill. While no one seems to know that Emily is mentally ill, regarded simply as a southern eccentric (which allows her to purchase poison without any problems), Paul on the other hand is obviously ill (wild eyes), yet no one tries to help him, casting him as a helpless victim and cementing the tragic nature of his character.

Both Paul and Emily are protagonists in their own stories, and in both stories the characters die. Paul, however, dies at a young age of an awful death and never earns his mothers love, whereas Emily lives a full life and enjoys the love of both her father and her lover Homer Baron. It is also Emilys need for control that ends Homers life. Emily not only seduced Homer with material possessions and lured him back to her home where she poisoned him, she also kept his corpse for many years and became a necrophiliac, as evidenced by the single strand of gray hair on the pillow next to Homers body. Emilys twisted nature is revealed in the way she carefully carried out Homers murder and then proceeded to sleep with him every night, acting out a morbidly-disturbing marriage fantasy. Conversely, Paul had no choices in life, and instead of the voices in the house going away once he successfully provides his mother with money, they simply become louder and more insistent, driving him to complete madness. In keeping with the tragedy of Pauls story, all his suffering and efforts to please his mother are ultimately in vain as she appears unchanged by his death.

While both are love stories, the love between Emily and Homer is more morose than between Paul and his mother. Emilys relationship is with a dead man a man she murdered and whose corpse she then sequestered in her home; her marriage ideals involved ownership of the other person. She had been given all the advantages in life, however it was this high place in society that led to her self-inflicted seclusion and subsequent mental illness. Pauls story on the other hand, is simply the tragic tale of a son desperate to earn the love of his mother at any cost, which he paid for with his own life.