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Harvey
1
Justin Harvey
English 102-010
McAbee
19 February 2018
Similarities and Differences Between Two Characters
In mostly every story, the reader compares and contrasts the story to another similar story
they have read before like some character traits and the themes of the two stories. This can be
done with William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” and Katherine Mansfield’s story
“Miss Brill.” However, these stories can be viewed as very different from each other, but they
also share some of the same qualities in both of the main characters. The characters in these two
stories both practically live the same life kind of, as both appear to be lonely with neither having
much of a social life. Hence, in the short stories, “Miss Brill” and “A Rose for Emily,” the two
characters live very different lives, but they also share some very important traits.
In the short story, “Miss Brill,” the protagonist whose name is actually Miss Brill is a
very odd person. She appears to be a lonely woman as she is unmarried and no one in her
community really listens to her. However, she tried her very best to be a part of her community,
this is the opposite to what Emily did in “A Rose for Emily.” Miss Brill thought the only way the
community was able to function as if she was present and watching them. The best example of
this is when Miss Brill thought to herself, “They were all on the stage. They weren't only the
audience, not only looking on; they were acting. Even she had a part and came every Sunday. No
doubt somebody would have noticed if she hadn't been there; she was part of the performance
after all” (Mansfield 169). This shows how Miss Brill wanted to be a part of her community and
thought she was in fact, even though in reality she was not.
Harvey
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This contrasts very much so with Emily in how she pretty much just shuts out her
community. She does not participate in anything her community does and never did in her
childhood because her father would not let her. She never pays her taxes because she made a deal
with Colonel Sartoris, who had been dead for over a decade (Faulkner 145). This shows how
much Emily had been out of touch with the outside world. The only time she ever really went
outside was to go buy some poison to kill her husband, to which everyone thought she was going
to kill herself and they did not even try to stop her. So, that just proves that the community did
not care at all about her because she never developed a relationship with them.
There are some similarities that Emily and Miss Brill do in fact have. They both have
pretty depressing and boring lives and seem to need some type of romantic relationship or even
just a friend for that matter. Miss Brill did at least try to have some kind of human involvement,
