To answer the question as to if there is a paradox within the stories lets first take a look at what a paradox is. Paradox means, contrary to expectations, but contains some truth. The first thing that comes to mind in the Story a Rose for Emily in terms of what could possibly be a paradox is the part where Emily was buying poison. Emily did not want to state specifically what the poison was for, thus the store clerk as well as the reader was led to believe that Emily would use the poison to commit suicide. The clerk even left a letter on the arsenic poison stating that it was only to be used for rats, which implicates that he is aware that Emily had ulterior motives. Now while the poison was not used for her to commit suicide as previously speculated, it was however used to kill the man that she was hoping to marry, Homer.

Emily could also be viewed as the redeemer for Homer, or the person who bought Homer redemption. Homer can be viewed as an immoral person in that day and age since Homer liked men, and was “not the marrying kind”. If you considered Homer’s actions a sin then Homer was redeemed through death. In the story, Bartleby the Scrivener, the narrator himself was trying to act as the redeemer of Bartleby. Bartleby was non-compliant, selfish, and overall rather lazy and preferred to stay stationary which caused a lot of problems for his employer as well as those around him.

Bartleby was willfully being a thorn in the side of everyone and yet the one person who was truly trying to help him, redeem him, or should I say “save” him from himself was unfortunately unsuccessful in the end. There may be several paradoxes within this story, but the one that I believe is relevant is when the narrator tries several peaceful methods to remove Bartleby from the premises. The Narrator gave Bartleby several options to which Bartleby only replied that he would prefer not to do any of the options. One such option was to have Bareltby forcefully removed which did not sit right with the narrator so ultimately he decided to act against what he believed would have been the correct choice due to him pitying Bartleby. Bartleby was later removed by force anyway however it was done without the narrator’s knowledge since he would not have chosen such an option. Even while Bartleby was in confinement the narrator accepted to pay the bribe for Bartleby to eat well, just for Bartleby to refuse to eat and ultimately starve to death.