Miss Brill/A Rose For Emily

Compare and contrast how Miss. Brill and Miss. Emily avoid reality.  What is the eventual outcome for each woman?

Miss Brill avoids reality through her weekly Sunday trips to the park. She dresses all pretty and makes sure she looks absolutely beautiful in her eyes. She immerses herself in the actions of others in the park trying to find happiness in other peoples’ lives. Miss. Brill sees the whole think as a play. She is just merely an actress and everyone else is an actor and actress. She uses this to escape her harsh realities that she faces everyday. Like Miss. Brill, Emily tries to avoid her reality in a more morbid way. After Emily’s father died, I think she is afraid of being hurt and left again. So as she gets a husband, she kills him so they can be together forever and she will never have to experience living without him. She sleeps with his dead corpse every night and stays inside her house to avoid the pressures of every day society. Both of the outcomes for each of these women are completely negative. Two teenagers talking about how ugly her fur was and how old she was bring down Miss. Brill back to her Earth from her illusion. Also Emily’s outcome comes as she dies. Some people of the town she lived in were able to enter her “save haven” and go upstairs into her secret room, which housed her dead husband and many mementos from her marriage. 

Discuss the endings of both stories.  What type of ending is it? Justify your answer.  Do the plot elements lead up the ending?  Explain how so.  Is each story literary or commercial, based on plot and ending?  Use the Plot handout information to help you. 

In “Miss Brill” it describes Miss. Brill’s typical Sunday evening routine of her going by the bakery. But this Sunday, Miss. Brill hurt by the children’s comments skips the bakery goes immediately to her room and sits, takes off her necklace and then hears a cry. I think the ending of “Miss Brill” is an indeterminate ending. No definite conclusion is solved from the main conflict. The reader has to form their own conclusions about whether Miss. Brill found happiness or found another way to escape reality.  I believe that “Miss Brill” is a literary fiction piece. It shows insight onto Miss. Brill’s character and the conflict between her internal self.  Like “Miss Brill,” “A Rose for Emily” is literary fiction. I think it is literary fiction because it gives insight into Emily’s character and it does focus on the conflict between Emily and herself. Also I think the ending is a surprise ending. Although we know, that Emily was acting kind of sketchy we didn’t know she was sleeping in the same bed as her dead husband so the ending is definitely a surprise one. This is more proof that this is literary fiction because the surprise is legitimate. 

Pick one story.  What are some examples of irony?  What type is it?  What do the ironies reveal? 

There are many examples of situational irony throughout “A Rose for Emily.” One example is the smell that her house had. Members of the town just thought it was a dirty kitchen saying, “Just as if a man – any man – could keep a kitchen properly,” or a dead animal. So even after it was cleaned the smell was still there. The town never caught on but the smell was in fact her husband’s rotting corpse. Also an example of dramatic irony is her husband’s disappearance. The townspeople also thought that Emily had grown sad and decided to stay inside because of her husband abandoning her. In reality, Emily killed her husband so she could be with him forever and stayed in the house so she didn’t have to face society. I think the ironies reveal that the townspeople didn’t really care. They just used their pity as an excuse to not have to investigate her problems.