The Trust of a Reader
Although "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner and "A Tell- Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe are both similar in that they tell a story of murder, both authors use a different approach with respect to point of view. In Faulkner's piece the narrator is in the first person but removed from the action, while Poe's narrator, although also a first person, is the central character in the story. Faulkner's character is someone that the reader can trust and identify with while Poe presents a character that is unreliable and may even be considered "mad". The identity of the narrator in "A Rose for Emily" is never revealed yet the reader seems to believe him. Since the narrator is not directly involved in the story, he has no reason to fabricate what takes place. The reader comes to understand that the narrator is part of the community or town in the first sen
The reader can infer this from the very first sentence he proclaims, "True! -nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say I am mad?" The reader can see from here that the narrator even questions whether he believes himself to be mad or not. " Since the narrator seems to know so much about the history of Miss Emily, it makes it even easier to trust that he is honest and knowledgeable, unlike the character in "A Tell-Tale Heart. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. " Edgar Allan Poe's narrator is crazy and untrustworthy. These introductory sentences make the reader begin to doubt whether the narrator can be trusted but it is during the narrator's account of his arrangement to murder the old man that the reader fully understands just how mad he is, "I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. It was open- wide, wide open-and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. This tells the reader that he has a wealth of knowledge about the community and the history of Miss Emily. " Finally, when the narrator talks about the "vulture eye" and how obsessed he is with it, the reader can call Poe's narrator insane, "until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of a spider, shot from out the crevice and full upon the vulture eye. " Edgar Allan Poe confirms that his narrator is deranged and because of this the reader cannot honor what the narrator contends as truth. From the initial lines in the story the narrator questions his own sanity. He also reveals his obsession with the "vulture eye" and his heinous assassination of the old man. On the other hand, William Faulkner gives the reader a knowledgeable and accurate narrator that explains Miss Emily's story. He conveys this when he shares several stories about Miss Emily, elaborating the alderman's visit to her house to collect the taxes: "A deputation waited upon her, knocking at the door through which no visitor's had passed since she stopped giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. tence when he says "our whole town went to her funeral" and that he speaks for the whole town. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**.
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