Southern Gothic Romanticism

Southern Gothic Romanticism

Southern Gothic Romanticism is a type of Gothic Romanticism that is normally based in southern america. It is has a lot of horror aspects to it but has individuality to keep the reader entertained. Both "The Life You Save May be Your Own" and "A Rose for Emily" have traits of this Southern Gothic Romanticism. They both are located in the south with an older woman as one of the main characters. Each of the women have an obstacle that they must get through for the story to end. These stories compare to works like Romanticism, Gothic, and Dark Romanticism by having a twisted ending that leaves the reader hanging wanting to know what comes next. like in "The Life You Save May be Your Own" the man just got done getting rid of a hitchhiker by accident and then it just ends the story leaving the reader wondering why the man was so unhappy with his mom. The Hitchhiker really made the story work by  showing how Mr. Shiftlet regretted leaving his mom to go find a wife, and why he forgave her for whatever she had done to him without knowing this we wouldn't know why he wanted to treat his new wife so well, "Mr. Shiftlet was so shocked that for about a hundred feet he drove along slowly with the door stiff open. A butt, the exact color of the boy's hat and shaped like a turnip, had descended over the sun, and another, worse looking, crouched behind the car. Mr. Shiftlet felt that the rottenness of the world was about to engulf him. He raised his arm and let it fall again to his breast. "Oh Lord!" he prayed. "Break forth and wash the slime from this earth!" (O'Conner). And in the story "A Rose for Emily" it ends by saying on the pillow that Emily slept was a gray hair. It makes the reader wonder if Emily's spirit is still living in that house, "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair" (Faulkner 8).

In "A Rose for Emily" I think her crime goes undetected until her death because the was always helping people learn how to paint china and the people didn't want her to stop so they didn't really say anything about it until after she was dead. She was also usful to the town in her duty, tradition, and a care. Such as it states from this passage, "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (Faulkner 1).

The part of  "The Life You Save May be Your Own" where Mr.Shiftlet drives the hitchhiker really made the story work because it gave us the reason why he left his house and ended up finding his new wife. It also explains why he didn't really want to take her away from her mother.