Question

In this Critical Thinking exercise, you will analyze one of the main characters in either “The Life You Save May Be your Own,“ "A & P," or “A Rose for Emily." In composing your post, address one or more of the following questions:

• What do you see as the central conflict for your chosen character? How is it resolved?
• How does the character change from the beginning of the story to the end?
• Is there a particular Critical Reading Strategy that you think would best help interpret the character? If so, mention and apply the strategy in your analysis.

Answer 1

A Rose for Emily

· What do you see as the central conflict for your chosen character? How is it resolved?

The central conflict of the character Emily Grierson belonging to A Rose for Emily is Man vs society and Man vs Nature.

Reasons:

Emily is isolating herself from the society and doesn’t want to mingle with people and be one among them. Emily also wants everything around her to be the same and never change. This evident from the way she kills her husband/love interest and keeps the decomposing corpse in the bed room and also sleeping next to the same. Hence, these two examples ascertain that the central conflict of Emily are Man vs society and Man vs Nature.

The central conflict is resolved with the death of the character.

· How does the character change from the beginning of the story to the end?

The character is a normal girl spoiled by the over protecting attitude and possessive nature of the father. At age 30, the girl who’s a woman becomes mentally ill and turns violent and becomes a murderer. She kills her husband and keeps the decomposing corpse in the bed room and also sleeping next to the same. After some more years she becomes completely detached from the society and rejects to pay her regular tax duties.

· Is there a particular Critical Reading Strategy that you think would best help interpret the character? If so, mention and apply the strategy in your analysis.

The plot of the story is straight forward. The story is about a girl raised by a father who controls the person life of his daughter. Emily becomes insane and becomes mentally ill. She rejects the society and is stubborn to move ahead. She doesn’t want rest of the things around her to move ahead too. In the end she dies and the story end with this.

Hence, a particular reading strategy isn’t required.