No Escape

Being entrapped from the world is something many of us fear in our everyday lives. Though it may not be are fault if it happens, it something we ultimately want to avoid. Being isolated, in many ways can wind up being the final judging factor of how our life is going to be run.

"A Rose for Emily" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" are two prime examples where the issue of isolation comes into play with the main characters. It not only shapes the way they live, but is the developing factor of the bizarre events that happen in these tales. Sometimes just leaving the problem be does not do any justice, or bring out a good conclusion in the end.

In "A Rose for Emily" we learn right away about this woman's problem involving isolation: That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her--had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a young man then--going in and out with a market basket." The death of her father, and the loss of her "sweetheart" is what leads to this characters ultimate isolation from the world. Other than her few appearances here and there, these two events in her life cause her to isolate herself from the world. It gets better. Not only did she isolate herself from the world, but we later learn of a little secret, derived from her isolation from everyone:" For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. 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 man that once came to town that everyone thought she had met, was murdered by her, so she would not "be alone" the rest