Comparisson and Contrast Essay

William Faulkner vs. Edgar Allan Poe

          Although William Faulkner and Edgar Allan Poe are both Gothic writers, they use certain elements, writing techniques and skills that make their works very different from each other. For example: “A Rose for Emily” (Faulkner) and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Poe). Faulkner emphasizes physically gloomy imagery that is described with exact details in the text. Even his interpretation of the Gothic elements differs from Poe’s elements. This can be seen in the element of location. Poe uses a remote location in the literal sense. For example: Usher's house in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand, Faulkner’s characters are located in functional societies but they separate themselves in some way from the rest of the people. For example: Emily simply disappears into her house one day and is never seen again by the rest of the community she lives in.

           Faulkner also uses super sensitive character focusing on the psychological aspect. For example: the idea of change is what torments Emily. She refuses to pay her taxes, ignoring the fact that Colonel Sartoris had been dead for ten years. This character directly contrasts Poe's sensitive characters, like Roderick and Madeline Usher. The two of them are physically sensitive, because they suffer from actual diseases that are not emotional. Faulkner’s stylistic choices are very straightforward. In "A Rose for Emily", Faulkner’s writing is filled with phrases where the fact is stated in a matter of fact, despite its surprise. On the other hand, Poe's style relies more on flashbacks or a complex dialogue.

At the end of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the narrator is running from the Usher house as it collapses into the ground. Everything happens so fast that the ending does not fully answer all the questions created while reading the story. Poe's style was to leave the audience to create their own solutions or opinions. In contrast, Faulkner wraps up the most important aspects so that the mystery has a satisfying ending for the reader. For example, in “A Rose for Emily”, the ending comes as a surprise when Homer Barron’s dead body is found on Emily's bed, but still concludes Emily’s mysterious nature.

Faulkner's setting is a normal society that is based on enforcing rules and changing people that do not fall under their view of “acceptable”; a society that rejects anything different. Emily is the character that conflicts with the society's expectations. She wishes for her life to remain constant and she shows this through many of her actions: keeping the same Negro servant, denying her father's death for three days because she doesn’t want to accept the fact that her life is changing and, in the end, by killing her fiancé, Homer Barron, so that he never leaves her. Different from Faulkner, Poe's purpose is to excite his readers, so he presents unique characters without offering an explanation for their actions. The Ushers are excluded from society, but not by the people who live around them, they’re just located in a faraway place. He’s not focused on changing or curing the Ushers from their illnesses.

Poe's setting in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is not realistic nor can the people relate to it, while the story “A Rose for Emily” is located in a small normal town that anyone can easily imagine and be related to. William Faulkner proves himself to be very different from Poe who, even though he was also a Gothic writer, has very unique writing skills and techniques. Maybe that’s why he’s known as the “Father of Gothic”, while Faulkner is just a very good Gothic writer.