Influential William Faulkner: Southern Gothic Literature
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Southern Gothic The Civil War was a period of turmoil in American history due to disagreement on the roll slavery should play in society. After five years of fighting, African American, or black, slaves were freed which in result led to segregation between blacks and whites (United States). The segregation caused by the Civil War led to a writing period known as Southern Gothic. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Southern Gothic as, “a style of writing practiced by many writers of the American South whose stories set in that region are characterized by grotesque, macabre, or intense isolation.” Southern gothic is the period of writing influenced by the Civil War’s results which played a role in literature from the 1930’s to the 1940’s. Influential…show more content… This short story displays the grotesque and macabre qualities of the southern gothic writing style while telling the story of Miss Emily Grierson’s death, a secretive, silver haired, old woman and, “fallen monument,” of Jefferson, Mississippi who is delusional and devastated after the loss of her father (Faulkner). When Miss Emily’s father died, which is described in part two of the short story, she refused to admit he was gone and kept the body for three days before allowing him to be properly buried. Part three of the story describes Miss Emily’s interaction with a construction worker hired by the town, Homer Barron, and her suspicious purchase of arsenic. Part four builds the readers suspicions when told that Homer entered Emily’s house one day and was never seen again and that she closed off her house to most visitors. During part five of the short story we discover the truth behind Homer, he was sealed in the upstairs bedroom laying on the bed with wedding supplies and a suit laid out. Next to him was an indentation of a person’s outline and one silver grey hair on the pillow…show more content… Southern gothic is the period of writing influenced by the Civil War’s results which played a role in literature from the 1930’s to the 1940’s. William Faulkner developed a suspenseful plot in A Rose for Emily similarly to Harper Lee’s eerie plot in To Kill a Mockingbird, by adding ghost-like characters and discussing the isolation of characters after the civil war who did not conform to the idea that races should be segregated and not have equal rights (Donaldson). Literature during this time period was developed around the pressing issues that appeared after the Civil War and resulted in grotesque and macabre events with isolated