Importunities  noun \Ëim-pÉr-ËtĂŒ-nÉ-tÄ, –ËtyĂŒ-\
a:Â an importunate (troubesembly urgent/annoyance) request or demand
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities.
The Story of An Hour paragraph 10
Importunities looks like the word important and although the of the words definition meant annoying urgency I thought it just meant her sisters urgency was important.
Wares  noun  \Ëwer\
a :Â manufactured articles, products of art or craft, or farm produce :Â goods âoften used in combination <tinware
b :Â an article of merchandise
In the street below a peddler was crying his wares.
The Story of An Hour paragraph 5
Thinking a peddler is a man peddling a boat him screaming his ‘wares’ to me meant that he was screaming at people to beware. Turns out a peddler is a merchant and he was letting people know what merchandise he has.
Emily Grierson from William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily is a woman who never married. It was intriguing to see Emily become a recluse. The story is an excellent example of macabre and horror, Faulkner proves if done right you can creep readers out without gory details and intense violence.  The narration [third-point of view] was also enjoyable, I especially liked how the narration used the word ‘our’ to depict the feelings of the town as a whole.
The story started out with Emily already being dead, and then Faulkner starts telling us about the Colonel who made up a story so Emily didn’t have to pay her taxes, it is unclear what is actually happening in the story. However, it becomes clear what direction Faulkner was taking; key moments of Emily’s life in the eyes of the town were recalled and told to us, these events in turn helped with inferring the revelation of Emily’s chilling necrophiliac nature.
The first hint at necrophilia was Emily’s refusal of her fathers death when, for three days, she kept his dead body in her house. Emily wasn’t seen after her fathers death again until around the time construction workers showed up in town. She was seen around town with Homer Barron and the townsfolk thought she would marry him. Much later when she was well over thirty she was seen buying arsenic due to which the townsfolk thought she was going to finally kill herself. Instead she invited Homer to her house after which he was never seen again. Emily after his disappearance became a full reclusive and wasn’t seen again until her death (except for when the men in the town saw her in the window after they sneaked into her house and sprinkled lime all over the doors etc due to the horrid smell surrounding her house and for the brief period she taught china-painting). After her death the story goes back to present and reconnects with the opening passage. The women and men enter her house and go upstairs to the room that they knew was never seen in the last forty years. They see a room decorated as a bridal suite and see a man, whom we can assume is Homer Barron, dead.
The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust. 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-gray hair.
The ending was the second and the most crucial hint at necrophilia. Even so, Faulkner leaves a lot of gaps in the story giving way to various interpretations, I’m sure some of you may have read the end differently than I did.
Ocular (adjective) – perceived by the eye.
This was found in âYoung Goodman Brown,â in paragraph 13. âThis, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assigned by the uncertain light.â
Knowing the definition of the word, I can understand that Goodman Brown believed, because of the light, his eyes perceived the old manâs staff as a living serpent.
I hope you enjoyed Thursday’s holiday and have some good plans for Monday’s holiday as well. Remember that since Monday is a holiday, we do not have a discussion due Sunday night. Since Wednesday follows a Monday schedule, you’ll contribute to our online discussion by Tuesday night.
For this discussion, I want us to start thinking about our first formal assignment, Project #1. Read through the instructions and start brainstorming about what you might want to work on. Not sure yet? That’s fine, too. We haven’t finished reading all of the stories you might want to focus on. If you have questions, thoughts, or comments about the assignment, please use the commenting space on that page so we can read and reply to each other there. I am happy to revise the language of the assignment to make it clearer and more understandable.
Since a major aspect of this project is thinking about a story’s narrator and what affect the type of narrator has on the way we experience the story, let’s think about the narrator in “Young Goodman Brown” as well as the other stories we’ve read so far. If we look back at our list of different types of narrators, what do they offer us as readers as we enter and live in a given story world? Think about the definitions of the terms to help you understand what the narrator does and can’t do in a given story:
I’d like us to add a few other terms to our list. They come from narratology, the study of narrative, and sound more technical than these other terms:
A narrative is heterodiegetic if the narrator is not a protagonist or if the narrator  exists in a different sphere than the protagonist. Third-person narratives are most commonly associated with this term, but other narratives can be, such as you-narratives, they-narratives, and one-narratives.
A homodiegetic narrative is equivalent to a first-person narrative. If the narrator is the main protagonist, such as in an autobiography, that is called an autodiegetic narrative. That style of narration is different from a peripheral first-person narrator, in which a first-person narrator is a minor character. First-person narrators, whether homodiegetic or autodiegetic, are inherently limited in their perspective and are potentially untrustworthy.
These definitions come from Monika Fludernikâs An Introduction to Narratology, 2009, and draw on the work of Gerard Genette and Franz K. Stanzel.
To make them a little clearer, here are the building blocks of those words: diegesis refers to the story world. Hetero- means different; homo- means same; auto- means self. Therefore, we have someone different than the story world telling a heterodiegetic narrative, someone in the same story world telling a homodiegetic narrative, and even more specific than that, we can say that when the narrator in the story world is the protagonist, or main character, we have an autodiegetic narrative.
Getting back to our discussion here, what kind of narrator do we find in “Young Goodman Brown,” and what effect does that have on our experience in reading the story? What other narrative styles have we encountered in the other stories we have read, and how did those affect our reading experiences?
I believe that Emily’s actions are the result of her strong independence. She refuses to be criticized by the town when she gallivants around town with Homer Barron without being married to him even though it was frowned upon by the entire neighborhood. She refuses to be left by Homer, so she murders him by giving him the arsenic to drink in order not to lose control of the relationship that she has with Barron and she refuses to pay taxes because Colonel Sartoris told her she was not obligated to.
Put the following events in chronological order:
Today’s discussion will draw from our online discussion about race and the use of objectionable language in “A Rose for Emily,” as well as our further reflections about power in the short story.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized.
After reading âA Rose for Emilyâ, this story shows Miss Emily has power. When Miss Emily father died, the mayor and aldermen tried to find a way for to pay for her tax but she never did. Due to the fact she was an elderly women and all she had left to her name was her fatherâs house, they allowed her get away without any consequences. However, the authorities tried to find a way for to pay her taxes by inviting themselves to her house, they showed her respect by standing up when she entered the room. The men were also apprehensive to talk to Miss Emily about the issue when she had enter into room. âShe did not ask them to sit. She stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt.â Especially since her father had loan money to the town. Another detail that shows that Miss Emily has power is the negro man that is always by her side. âDaily, monthly, yearly, we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stopped, going in and out with the market basket.â This young man was committed to helping Miss Emily and wait on her throughout the years.
Another person who also had power was Miss Emily lover, Homer Barron a new guy that came in town. He took charge in reconstructing The South. âThe construction company came with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron.â He also became the center of attention in the town. âWhenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group.â This means he is more liked which can indicate for more respect which can be shown as a type of power.
I think the authorities shows a lack of power. When neighbors complained about a smell that was coming from Miss Emily house the Judge did not have the audacity to consult her about the odor. So some of neighbors took the matter into their own hands by sneaking onto Miss Emily property and sprinkling lime in all the outbuilding. The also could not get her to pay for her taxes. Every time she stated her comment, it was firm and preserved. â âBut there is nothing on the books to show that, you see we must go by the–â âSee Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.â â In the story, she keeps her decision made by giving back the same answer.
In âA Rose for Emilyâ by William Faulkner, âMiss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the townâ(section1, para3) when she was alive. She didnât have to pay taxes because Colonel Sartoris, the mayor, lied that her father had lent money to the town. Also when the tax notice was sent to Miss Emily later on, she completely ignored. Even when the deputation visited her house and âthe spokesman came to a stumbling halt,â (sec1, pa7) she didnât even talked back to the visitors. She vanquished them in her dry and cold voice. Not paying for taxes, and her reaction to the town and visitors shows that Miss Emily plays a role as power dynamic.
Also Miss Emilyâs power dynamic is implied in section 3 of the story when she went to the druggist to get poison. She didnât even ask the druggist to get arsenic but she just stated that she wants it. And the druggist said âIf thatâs what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.â Then the narrator describes that Miss Emily didnât tell the druggist the reason even if it is required by the law. âMiss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up.â (section 3 last paragraph) Even though druggist couldnât sell the arsenic without proper reason of using it by the law, he couldnât reject her. In this scene the druggist doesnât have power in contrast to Miss Emily.
The narrator in this story is one of the people in the town. Even though the narrator knows that the town thought of her as a duty or a care, they were not able to say anything in front of her because she is a tradition and last dignity in the town that they have to accept.
Even Miss Emilyâs death was powerful. Although some were not there to show her respect, because she had been a tradition and a duty to the whole town that they have to care, the town came to her funeral.
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