Robert Frost „Mending wall”

The mending wall can represent separation or alienation – the walls that people construct to
separate themselves from others: “Good fences make good neighbors”. In addition, it may
also symbolise a unity or connection between people as both neighbours come together each
spring to repair the wall.

This poem tells the tale of a rock wall which sits between two properties in the countryside.
Something continually destroys this rock wall. A compelling aspect of "Mending Wall" is
the Frostian sense of mystery and loneliness. What begins as a quest to discover the
identity of the wall-destroyer, ends in a meditation on the value of tradition and
boundaries.

 The poem shows natural process, natural cycle.

 The speaker is one of the neighbours, he is a farmer. Each spring he and his neighbour
repair the wall “Oh, just another kind of out-door game,/ One on a side.” . He thinks
they don’t really need a wall, because their sides will never mix “There where it is we
do not need the wall:/ He is all pine and I am apple orchard./ My apple trees will never
get across/ And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.”.
 His neighbour thinks that the wall is necessary “He only says, ‘Good fences make
good neighbors.’” After the speaker’s question about this case, he also tells that
something does not want the wall because it’s always destroyed. The neighbour “will
not go behind his father’s saying”. It’s important for him, and he repeats the sentence
again.
 Wall is made of stone (it’s New England). The gravity makes the stones stable “To
each the boulders that have fallen to each./ And some are loaves and some so nearly
balls/ We have to use a spell to make them balance”.
 Boundaries aren’t necessarily a bad thing, this poem seems to tell us, as long as we
occasionally question the purpose of our walls, or maybe just as long as we question.

Robert Frost “Spring pools”

This poem sees time as being destructive. For him, yesterday’s flowers wither, winter snows
melt, spring pools are drained by trees, trees lose their leaves in Autumn. The unpalatable
epiphany for the poet is that time destroys beauty.

 The subject of the poem: passing of time. The process of nature and changing seasons.
 The speaker sees the nature as a naturalist.
 There are 3 characters: spring pools, trees, flowers. Spring pools appear in the
beginning of Spring time, they’re from the melted snow. The roots of the trees will use
the water from the spring pools to produce leaves. The speaker knows that the flowers
will be gone soon.
 “Let them think twice before they use their powers” – trees as a violent creatures that
will destroy the beauty he sees.
Edgar Lee Masters “Doc Hill”

In this poem the speaker, Doc Hill, delivers his message to the reader after his death. His
marriage fails and his son chooses a questionable path in life, therefore he uses his medical
skills to redeem his sad life and self-respect.

 Free verse (no rhymes, no rhythm).

 Doc = Doctor, Edgar Lee Masters was a doctor himself, his personal life was a
disaster.
 By saying “Through all hours of the right caring for the poor who were sick.”, he
claims that he loved his job and his patients (caring is an important word). He was
there by day and night because his wife hated him and son chose a wrong path in life.
That’s why he “turned to the people” and “poured out” his love to them.
 He is happy to see that crowds of people were at his funeral. That means he was
popular. They feel sorrow and grief.
 “But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able/ To hold the railing of the new
life/ When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree/ At the grave/ Hiding herseld, and
her grief!” He was deeply moved when he saw his lover or friend, or somebody in
love with him. She is hiding herself, because she is more sorry than she should be
(they were probably in love, the world didn’t know about them, so it’s wrong for her
to cry after him in the crowd of people).

Edgar Lee Masters “Margaret Fuller Slack”

“Margaret Fuller Slack” from Spoon River Anthology depicts a tormented woman who
believes motherhood doomed her ambition to become a great writer. Ironically named after
the first American feminist, “Margaret Fuller”, Mrs. Slack does not possess the egotistical
personality of her namesake, while suffering the ills that they both decry.

 George Eliot mentioned in the first line, she was a British, Victorian female writer. “I
would have been as great as George Eliot”.
 Mrs. Slack possesses a "photograph of [herself] made by Penniwit”. Margaret uses the
photograph to support her contention that she was marked for greatness: in the photo,
she sits with her "chin resting on hand," and she has "deep-set eyes" that are "gray"
and "far-searching." These qualities in her estimation reveal a profundity that should
have allowed her to accomplish greatness, the absence of which she now laments.
 She met John Slack, the rich druggist who wood (uwodzić) her, telling her that she
will write novels. She married him and gave birth to eight children.
 She wanted to write but she had to do the household chores.
 She died probably young from lock-jaw. While she was washing the baby’s things, she
ran the needle in her hand. It was an ironical death.
 Last line “Sex is the curse of life!” means that it limited her. She became mother and
had to do the chores, not having time to write at all.
 Edgar Lee Masters “Lucinda Matlock”

Lucinda Matlock is the narrator of the poem, and is speaking to the younger generation.
Masters portrays a typical American woman, who feels the youth is becoming pessimistic
and hopeless. In this poem, Matlock represents positivity, strength, and overcoming
challenges that come with living the life to the fullest.

 She enjoyed her life “I went to the dances.../ And played snap-out...”.
 She found Davis, “they became married and lived together for seventy years” – she
was happy in this marriage. They had 12 children, they lost eight of them. She did all
the household chores and it was enjoyable for her.
 She was enjoying her life just the way it was. She died at the age of 96 – “At ninety-
six I had lived enough, that is all,/ And passed to a sweet repose.”
 The theme of the poem "Lucinda Matlock" by Edgar Lee Masters is determination and
the enjoyment of living a full life.
 Lee Masters also describes the extreme hardship that Matlock faced throughout her
life. For example, eight of her 12 children passed away before Matlock died. However,
even with these hardships, the determination of the old woman is punctuated at the
end of the poem when she says "What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, anger,
discontent and drooping hopes? Degenerate sons and daughters, life is too strong for
you. It takes life to love life."

Jack London “To Build a Fire”

While this may seem at first like an intellectual deficit, what the man truly lacks is instinct –
the unconscious understanding of what the various facts mean. Themes: unawareness, need of
surviving.

There's a bearded man walking through the Yukon wilderness on his way to a mining
camp on Henderson Creek. There's a half-tame wolf dog following along at his heels.
When the man spits into the air, he hears a snap, crackle, and pop. It tells him that it must
be really cold out, because his saliva is basically exploding in mid-air. The dog's instinct
tells it not to travel in such cold, but the man doesn't seem all that concerned.
When the man reaches Henderson Creek, he decides to follow it all the way to the camp.
For some reason, walking across the ice instead of solid ground strikes him as a good idea.
When he takes off his mittens, he's shocked to find his fingers go completely numb in a
matter of seconds.
As the man continues his journey, he thinks back to a conversation he had with an older,
more experienced man from Sulphur Creek. He remembers the old-timer telling him that
it's a really bad idea to travel alone in temperatures below minus fifty. But the man thinks
the old-timer is a wimpy old coot and keeps walking, ignoring the advice of an older and
wiser mentor.
The man plunges through the ice and wets his feet. He's annoyed that he'll have to stop and
build another fire. When oh when, he wonders, will he get to sit by a fire and eat bacon with
the boys? He builds his second fire under a tree, but when he pulls twigs off the bottom of
the tree, he causes snow to fall off the branches and put out his fire. Now his hands are
getting really numb, and he needs to quickly build another fire to warm them. By this point,
his hands are so frozen that he can only use them as stumps. He's so clumsy he ends up
bungling his next fire and putting it out.
In desperation, he tries to kill his dog so he can cut it open and warm his hands inside its
body. But without his hands, there's no way for the man to kill the dog in the first place, and
his attempt fails miserably. With no options left, the man starts running as hard as he can for
the camp. But the place is still hours away, and he quickly runs out of steam.
He scolds himself for acting so shamefully and decides to meet death with dignity. With his
last spark of brain activity, he imagines himself alongside his camp friends, discovering his
own body the next day. Then he's transported into a warm room with the old man from
Sulphur Creek. He admits to the old-timer that he was wrong about travelling alone, and
then finally croaks.
The dog waits for him to get up out of the snow; but after it smells death on him, the animal
howls into the night sky. When it's finished howling, it forgets about the man and
continues along the creek toward the camp, where it knows there will be a warm fire and
some tasty grub.

Jack London “The Law of Life”

One main theme of “The Law of Life” is death. The story is in the last few hours of the man’s
life. Many people in the story die of ways with no sense in struggling to stay alive. This is
because death is always waiting for you, and doesn’t care about individual creatures.
This short story covers the last 5 hours of the old and dying Inuit chief Koskoosh. His tribe
needs to travel in search of clothing and shelter so he is left to die because of his age and
inability to see properly. Even his son has to leave him because he has a new family to feed
and take care of. However, the old Koskoosh is not dissatisfied as he knows the law of life
and her desires. He accepts his fate peacefully and starts to visualize the events of his past.
The images of both great famine and times of plenty vividly comes to his mind. As an
experienced person he contemplates nature and ultimately accepts its individualism.
In London's "The Law of Life," Koskoosh is expected to freeze to death, most likely, to
starve, or to be killed and eaten by animal predators. In the society of the story, everyone
is expected to contribute to the tribe. Once a person cannot contribute, he is left behind
when the tribe moves, and it is expected that he will die. Koskoosh is no exception. He is left
to die. He is expecting to freeze, but in the end, wolves find him, and he is about to be
attacked and eaten as the story ends.
Stephen Crane “The Open Boat”

In “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane we have the theme of optimism, desperation,
determination, disappointment, acceptance and gratitude. The story itself is narrated in the
third person by an unnamed narrator and the reader realizes after reading the story that Crane
may be exploring the theme of optimism. This story is based on Stephen Crane’s own real-life
experience, when a ship he was sailing on to Cuba sank in the high seas off the coast of
Florida. He was a correspondent for an American newspaper and he was on his way to write
about problems that led up to The Spanish-American War in 1898.

As the story opens, we're introduced to four men—a captain, a cook, an oiler, and a
correspondent—who find themselves in a lifeboat after their ship sinks off the coast of
Florida. It's a small boat, and the sea is rough. The only name we get is the oiler's—Billie.
Everyone else is simply known by his profession. The captain is injured, and steers the
boat. The cook bails out the water from the bottom of the boat. The oiler and the
correspondent take turns rowing the boat. The cook claims that there is either a "house of
refuge" or a "life-saving station" nearby, and if they can get close enough, they will be
rescued. They make their way to a lighthouse and are sure they will be rescued. They smoke
cigars and drink water. After waiting a while, they realize there's no one there, so they
begrudgingly row back out to sea. The experience of being in the boat together creates a
strong sense of brotherhood between the men—a sentiment directly in contrast to the
men's feelings toward nature and the universe. After feeling convinced they would be
saved, they remain stranded in the boat and start to feel incredibly angry at the universe—
only a cruel, merciless world would allow them to feel so much hope, only to drown them
in the end. Some people show up on a beach in the distance, and the men think they're
saved again. It turns out the beachgoers are just some tourists at a resort, who apparently
think the men in the boat are out on a leisurely fishing trip. Night falls. The other men all
fall asleep, but the correspondent stays up rowing the boat. He feels incredibly lonely and
abandoned. A shark swims around the boat, and he wishes he had some company. At this
point, the narrator describes a philosophical shift from the anger he felt toward the universe
earlier in the story. He explains that once a man realizes the universe "does not regard
him as important," he may want to punish the universe, but realizes there is no way to
do so. Instead, he can only proclaim that he loves himself. Day breaks. The captain decides
that no one is coming to save them, so they should try to make it to shore on their own
while they still have the strength to swim. The men agree and the oiler rows them toward
shore. The correspondent thinks some more about the indifference of the universe to
humankind as the oiler keeps on rowing. Finally, some rude wave interrupts his thoughts
and crashes over the boat, spilling the men out into the water. The oiler swims strongly
toward shore, the cook floats on his back, and the captain holds onto the capsized boat. The
correspondent, holding a piece of a life preserver, sees someone on the beach taking off his
clothes, rushing to come rescue them. The captain calls for the correspondent to swim over
to the boat. As he does, a huge wave throws him over the boat and into very shallow
water, where he can stand. The naked man on shore helps drag the cook, the correspondent,
and the captain onto dry land. They look off to the side and see the oiler, face down in the
water, drowned. Suddenly, a number of other people arrive, carrying blankets, clothing, and
food. They carry the oiler's body onto the beach. That night, the men hear the sound of the
ocean, and feel they are now able to serve as interpreters.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby”
In the summer of 1922, Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate from the Midwest and veteran of
the Great War—who serves as the novel's narrator—takes a job in New York as
a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island, in the fictional village of West
Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious multi-millionaire who
holds extravagant parties but does not participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to
East Egg for dinner at the home of his beautiful cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her
husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an
attractive, cynical young golfer. She reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle
Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes”, an industrial dumping ground between West Egg
and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels with Tom to a garage owned
by Myrtle's husband George Wilson before heading to an apartment in New York City that
Tom uses for trysts with Myrtle, as well as other women with whom he has sex. At Tom's
New York apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party ensues, ending with Tom striking Myrtle
and breaking her nose after she angers him by saying Daisy's name several times. Nick
eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at
the party and they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who
recognizes Nick because they were in the same division in the Great War. Through Jordan,
Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy through a purely chance meeting in 1917 when
Daisy and her friends were volunteering with young officers headed to Europe. From their
brief meetings and casual encounters at the time, Gatsby became (and still is) deeply in love
with Daisy. Gatsby had hoped that his wild parties would attract an unsuspecting Daisy,
who lives across the bay, to appear at his doorstep and allow him to present himself as a man
of wealth and position. Having developed a budding friendship with Nick, Gatsby uses him
to arrange a reunion with Daisy: Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house without telling
her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby takes Nick and
Daisy to his large mansion in an attempt to demonstrate his wealth and sophistication.
Daisy, Nick and Gatsby spend the day enjoying all the activities Gatsby can provide and Nick
realizes Daisy is also in love with Gatsby. Soon, the two begin an affair. At a luncheon at
the Buchanan estate, Daisy speaks to Gatsby with such undisguised intimacy that Tom
realizes their affair. Although Tom is an adulterer, he is outraged by his wife's infidelity.
The group drives to the Plaza Hotel, where Tom confronts Gatsby in his suite, asserting that
he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand. In addition, he discloses that
Gatsby is a criminal whose fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal
activities. Daisy decides to stay with Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to
East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him. On the way back,
Gatsby's car strikes and kills Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later learns that Daisy, not
Gatsby, was driving the car at the time of the accident. George mistakenly concludes that
the driver of the yellow car is his wife's secret lover. George learns from Tom that the
yellow car is Jay Gatsby's. George fatally shoots Gatsby in Gatsby's swimming pool before
turning the gun on himself. Nick organizes a funeral for Gatsby, but only one of Gatsby's
party-goers and his estranged father, Henry Gatz, attend. None of Gatsby's business
associates attend, nor does Daisy. Nick runs into Tom in New York and learns that it was
Tom who told George that the yellow car belonged to Gatsby and gave him Gatsby's address.
Disillusioned with the East, Nick moves back to the Midwest, having decided not to tell
Tom that it was Daisy behind the wheel of the car that killed Myrtle.

 Narrator: Nick Carraway, he’s from Minnesota (Midest – west of the Mississippi
River, conservative America, relatively white, homogenous territory)
  American dream (provincial environment)
 He goes back home at the end, because he is disappointed of the people. He is a device
to tell the story, thanks to him we get to know Jay Gatsby
 Story begins with the retrospection (retelling the story of Gatsby), what Gatsby tells
Nick is not true.
 West Egg (new money, e.g. Jay Gatsby – how do they get the money?) vs. East Egg
(old money that is inherited, e.g. Tom)
 Summer of 1922 (parties, prohibition, cars, the book mentioned by Tom)
 Jordan (professional golf player, she’s always bored, financially independent, kind of
boyish, she does what she wants)
 Daisy (Nick’s cousin, attractive yet shallow, identified as a flapper)
 Tom (Daisy’s husband, millionaire, an imposing man of muscular build with a "husky
tenor" voice and arrogant demeanour, he plays polo)
 Gatsby (a young, mysterious millionaire with shady business connections (later
revealed to be a bootlegger), originally from North Dakota, obsessed with Daisy
Buchanan)
 The Valley of Ashes – working-class people, Mr Wilson (owner of a gas station,
workshop, garage), Mrs Wilson
 The title – the (one of the kind), the great (Gatsby is an illusion, he was created by
James Gatz, he disappeared at the parties, he didn’t like this world of wealth)
 Book – emptiness, romantic story, emotional involvement of Gatsby, disappointment
of the idea of American Dream, nobody cares that Gatsby is dead

Ezra Pound “In a Station of the Metro”

In this poem, Pound describes watching faces appear in a metro station. It is unclear whether
he is writing from the vantage point of a passenger on the train itself or on the platform. The
setting is Paris, France, and as he describes these faces as a “crowd”, meaning the station is
quite busy.
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.”
 metro – underground in Paris, he lived there
 setting: a station of metro
 imagism – movement in which the stress was on the image
 similarity to haiku
 apparition – like a ghosts, there’s something about those faces
 two images: 1. “faces in the crowd” 2. petals are part of a flower, they’re separate,
lifeless, faces are also lifeless/ Human faces are quite petal-shaped, dark clothes
against those white faces,
 he is in some distance to people, he may be at the top of the stairs or he sees people
going up and down the stairs
  emotions: he thinks rather positive of people, sadness that they are unusual, fragility
(petals will fall down when the bough is no longer wet), temporariness, not cheerful,
he feels sort of sympathy for them

Ezra Pound “Canto XLV (Usura)”

This poem is constantly begins its statements with the phrase "With usura." Pound hopes to
outline all the crummy things in the modern world that he blames on the practice of
moneylending with high interest. He uses the Latin form of the word "usury" to give his poem
a real "fire and brimstone" vibe to it. Pound spends his time listing all of the wonderful things
the world had back in classical times, like great art and great political leaders. As the poem
winds to a close, Pound throws out the phrase "CONTRA NATURAM" (all caps, in case you
missed it). This Latin phrase means, "Against nature," and Pound uses it to say once and for
all that usury, greed, and the obsession with money not only go against human nature; they
corrupt and ruin nature in general. They're just the worst.
 Cantos are very referential, they’re difficult to read
 Subject matter: usura is a bad thing, he mentions what usura destroys: building the
house, family line
 Destructive force of usura (borrowing money, Pl: lichwa)

Ezra Pound “The River-Merchant’s Wife”

The poem (letter) is meant to remind her husband of her role as his wife, of her existence, of
their relationship. It is meant to be a gentle way of telling him not to forget, or betray her.
A lonely housewife hasn't seen her husband for five months, so she decides to write him a
letter. In the letter, she recalls her first memory of their meeting. Then she recalls how she
acted after they first got married—at the tender age of fourteen. Then, when she was fifteen,
the wife started to feel more settled in the marriage. But when she was sixteen, her husband
had to go to work. While the husband travels and sells his goods, the wife tells him (through
this letter) all the beautiful things he's missing and how she can't wait for him to get home.
 Pound translated this poem from Japanese
 Story about the woman, marriage that is arranged. First, she was not cheerful about
this marriage.
 “At fifteen I stopped scowling” – then she became comfortable with this marriage
 “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/ Forever and forever, and forever” – she
started to be attached to him, the feeling of devotion, she started to miss him
 “The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead” – that his her interpretation of this
noise, because she feels sadness, they make her angry
 “You dragged your feet when you went out” – he was reluctant to go
 “By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses” – she watches it since he’s
gone, she sees it changing
 “The paired butterflies are already yellow with August/ Over the grass in the West
garden” – they hurt her because they’re together and she’s without her husband
 “I grow older” – when he’s away but she’s 16!! xd
William Carlos Williams “The Young Housewife”
The poem is a generalized depiction of the narrator’s attraction to, sightings of, thoughts
about, and actions toward a young married woman with whom he has limited contact –
restricted, perhaps, to these chance encounters when he passes her in his car.
 Williams was a doctor
 first stanza: the speaker images the woman in her house (she “moves about in negligee
behind/ the wooden walls of her husband’s house.”) – this line suggests that it’s not
her house, it’s her husband’s house
 “Then again she comes to the curb (kramarz)” – this situation happens again and
again, he knows her schedule
 “and stands/ shy, uncorseted, tucking in/ stray ends of hair” – she is not formally
dressed, that’s because she is a housewife (the quest is over, she’s married)
 “and I compare her/ to a fallen leaf” – a leaf that doesn’t show life
 last stanza: we find out that the speaker is an observer, maybe even a stalker, “as I bow
and pass smiling” - it’s the only physical contact he can have with her, situation
accidentally on purpose

William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”

It is possible that the speaker is observing and appreciating the everyday necessity of manual
labour – or even commenting on humankind’s relationship with nature.
 “so much depends/ upon” – at this particular moment it makes them important, this
phrase is disturbing, it makes a good point for a discussion
 “a red wheel/ barrow// glazed with rain/ water” – they are covered in water, it’s still
glossy, it makes them look different, red draws the attention
 “beside the white/ chickens” – contrast between red wheelbarrow and white chickens
 The weather is bad so the sight is nice, it changes the attitude of the speaker to the
whole day.

William Carlos Williams “This Is Just To Say”

Theme of guilt. Before our speaker eats the plums, he knows he shouldn’t, that someone else
is saving them for a delicious breakfast they’ll never get to have. So, the entire poem is a note
of apology, in which the speaker asks for apology and expresses his guilt.
 A note that you could leave for a plums owner
 Naughty situation: a lover left this note after eating it and then he/she left
 Not naughty one: family member ate the plums and then left a note
 “Forgive me/ they were delicious/ so sweet/ and so cold” – it makes the situation cruel
e. e. cummings “anyone lived in a pretty how town”
The poem tells the story, in nine stanzas, of a couple, “anyone” and “noone”, who seem to
live in a small town very much like other small towns. The names they are given support this
idea: anyone and noone could be anyone and everyone. They are two ordinary people living
an ordinary life. When Cummings talks about love and death in this poem, he always weaves
these themes together with the theme of nature.
 Cummings didn’t really used capital letters.
 The story of two people who were different from anybody else in the town.
 “spring summer autumn winter”, “sun moon stars rain” – expressions used for passing
of time
 anyone is male, noone is female
 “he danced his did” – he enjoyed the things that happened to him
 “she laughed his joy she cried his grief” – very supportive, devoted
 “someones married their everyones/ laughed their cryings and did their dance” – he
contrasts between anyone and noone and other people
 “one day anyone died i guess/ (and noone stooped to kiss his face)” – she died out of
grief, they were buried together
 “all by all and deep by deep/ and more by more they dream their sleep” – other people
slept their dream, they did the opposite
 “noone and anyone earth by april” – the composition of the body (what happened after
their death to their bodies)
 “wish by spirit and if by yes” – what happens to the soul, this is what we wish

William Faulkner “Barn Burning”

Loyalty to family vs. loyalty to the law. In “Barn Burning,” Sartoris must decide whether
loyalty to family or loyalty to the law is the moral imperative. For the Snopes family,
particular for Sartoris’s father, family loyalty is valued above all else.
"Barn Burning" (set in about 1895) opens in a country store, which is doubling as a Justice
of the Peace Court. A hungry boy named Sarty craves the meat and cheese in the store. He's
afraid. His father, Abner Snopes, is in court, accused of burning down Mr. Harris's barn.
Sarty is called up to testify against his father, and he knows he's going to have to lie and say
his father didn't burn the barn. The Justice and Mr. Harris realize they are putting the young
boy in a bad position, and they let him off the hook. The Judge tells Mr. Snopes to leave the
county and never come back. On the way out of the courthouse a kid calls Sarty "Barn
Burner!" and knocks him down, twice. Sarty tries to chase the kid but his father stops him.
Sarty, his older brother, and his father get into the family wagon, where his mother, aunt, and
two sisters are waiting. The wagon is already loaded with their broken possessions. That
night, the family camps. After Sarty falls asleep, his father wakes him up and tells Sarty to
follow him. Sarty does. His father accuses him of being on the verge of betraying him in
court. He hits Sarty. Then he tells him that the most important thing is to stand by your
family. The next day the Snopes arrive at their new home, a shack on the farm where they
will be working as tenant farmers. Abner wants to talk to the owner and he takes Sarty with
him. When Sarty sees the owner's fancy, white mansion he feels like everything just might be
all right after all. He thinks his father can't possibly hurt people who live in a house like that.
In the yard, Abner deliberately steps in some fresh horse poop, forces his way into the
mansion, and tracks the poop all over the white rug in the front room. Later that day, the
owner of the rug and mansion, Mr. de Spain, has the rug dropped off at Abner's shack.
Abner sets his two daughters to cleaning it, and then dries it in front of the fire. Early the
next morning, Abner wakes Sarty and the two of them return the rug to de Spain. De Spain
shows up shortly after, insulting Abner and complaining that the rug is "ruined". He tells
Abner he's going to charge him twenty extra bushels of corn to pay for the hundred-dollar
rug. When he leaves, Sarty tells Abner that they shouldn't give de Spain any corn at all. After
working hard all week, Sarty goes with his family to town that Saturday. He goes with his
father into a store, and sees that a Justice of the Peace Court is in session. De Spain is there.
Sarty doesn't realize that Abner is suing de Spain to have the fee of twenty bushels
reduced. Sarty blurts out that his father isn't guilty of burning any barns. Abner sends him
back to the wagon, but he stays in the store to see what happens. The Justice decides that
Abner is responsible for the damage to the rug, but he reduces the fee to ten bushels. Sarty,
his father, and his brother spend some time in town and don't go home until the sun has
almost set. After dinner Sarty hears his mother trying to stop his father from doing something.
He realizes his father is planning to burn the de Spain barn. His father and brother realize
that Sarty is planning on alerting de Spain, and they leave him behind, held tight in his
mother's arms. Sarty breaks free and runs to the de Spain house. He's only able to say
"Barn!" a few times, and then he's on the run again. De Spain is right behind him, about to
run him over. Sarty jumps into a ditch and then returns to the road. He hears three gunshots
and soon after, behind him, sees the red glow of the de Spain barn on fire. At midnight Sarty
is on top of a hill. He's come a long way. Everything is behind him. He mourns the loss of
his father (who he seems to assume is dead), but is no longer afraid. He falls asleep and feels
better when he wakes up. The whippoorwills (birds) are singing and it's almost morning. He
starts walking toward the woods in front of him. He doesn't turn around.
 Set in the South
 Family of Snopes (father works on other people’s farms, he gets part of the crop –
sharecropping, he’s a sharecropper)
 Financial aspect (he destroys (burns) barns which have crops in them.

William Faulkner “A Rose for Emily”

She lives a life of loneliness, left only to dream of the love missing from her life. The rose
from the title symbolizes the absent love. It symbolizes the roses and flowers that Emily has
never received, the lovers that overlooked her. In his own way, Emily’s father shows her how
to love. The theme is that people should let go of the past, moving on with the present so that
they can prepare to welcome their future. Emily was the proof of a person who always lived
on the shadow of the past; she clung into it and was afraid of changing.
The town functions almost as a character—it's traditions, societal mores, history, and
prejudices inform a whole lot that happens to Miss Emily (and the people she interacts
with). The narrator of this story represents several generations of men and women from the
town. The story begins at the huge funeral for Miss Emily Grierson. Nobody has been to
her house in ten years, except for her servant, so everyone's pretty thrilled to get a peek
inside. Miss Emily's house is old, but was at one point the best house around. The town had a
special relationship with Miss Emily ever since it decided to stop billing her for taxes in
1894. But, the "newer generation" wasn't happy with this arrangement, and so they paid a
visit to Miss Emily and tried to get her to pay the tax debt. She refused to acknowledge that
the old arrangement might not work anymore, and flatly refused to pay. Massive temporal
leap time: thirty years before Emily "vanquishes" the tax office, the townspeople
complained about a terrible stink coming from Miss Emily's house. This was about two
years after her father died, and a short time after her lover disappeared from her life. The
stench was overpowering, but the authorities didn't want to confront Emily about the
problem. She was a lady, after all, and to accuse a woman of smelling bad was considered
not-so-chivalrous. So they took the gentlemanly way out: they sprinkled lime around the
house in the dead of night and the smell was eventually gone. Smaller temporal leap time:
everybody felt sorry for Emily when her father died. He left her with the house, but no
money...and he had spent his living years scaring away any suitor that might have wanted to
marry her. When he died, Emily refused to admit it for three whole days. The town didn't
think she was "crazy then," but assumed that she just didn't want to let go of her
dad...even though he had been a wildly abusive monster. The story doubles back and tells us
that, not too long after her father died, Emily begins dating Homer Barron, a Northerner
who was in town on a sidewalk-building project. The town heavily disapproves of the affair
and brings Emily's cousins to town to stop the relationship. One day, Emily is seen buying
arsenic at the drugstore, and the town thinks that she plans to kill herself. The town thinks
that this might actually be for the best: after all, Emily is an unmarried woman over thirty
and Homer has been heard saying he's not the marrying type. But then, Emily goes and
buys a bunch of men's items—an engraved shaving kit, a suit, a nightshirt—and the
townsfolk think that she and Homer are going to get married. Homer leaves town, then
the cousins leave town, and then Homer comes back. He's seen entering Miss Emily's
house...and then he's never seen again. Emily herself rarely leaves the home after that. In
fact, she's never really seen again, except for a period of half a dozen years when she gives
painting lessons in her parlour. Her hair turns gray, she gains weight, and she eventually
dies in a downstairs bedroom that hasn't seen light in many years. It's massive temporal leap
time yet again: the story cycles back to where it began, at her funeral. Tobe, miss Emily's
servant, lets in the townswomen and then leaves by the backdoor. He's never seen again.
After the funeral, and after Emily is buried, the townspeople go upstairs to break into the
room that they know has been closed for forty years. Inside, they find the corpse of
Homer Barron, rotting in the bed. On the dust of the pillow next to Homer they find an
indentation of a head, and there, in the indentation, a long, gray hair.
 Southern society and its complexity.
 “Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation” –
she’s a monument of the past (which was very important), memory of better life
 Tobe (the Negro) – devoted servant who runs the house, after Emily’s death he is gone