Lack of Control - Essay Example

Lack of Control The three short stories under scrutiny here in this paper are “The Story of an Hour” by Chopin, “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Alan Poe, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Chopin tells the story of a woman with a weak heart, who learns that her husband died of an accident. To her utter surprise, he returns and she dies of a heart attack. Poe narrates the story of an Italian, named Montresors, who kills a person named Fortunato as he was the cause of some injuries to Montessori.

The story is full of wine and Italian emotions, taking crime to an unimaginable height. Faulkner, as usual, plays with his narrative style to reveal the story of a woman representing the victimized generation in South America after the civil war. This paper looks at how the lack of control on the part of these characters led to their tragedy and also tries to see how they could have avoided their misfortunes. “The Story of an Hour” is full of irony. This one-hour story is capable of revealing events stretching over many years. Mrs. Mallard is a heart patient.

Richard, her husband’s friend, brings the news of Mr. Mallard’s death, but he and Josephine, her sister, hesitate to reveal the tragic news, thinking that Louise’s weak heart may not be capable of receiving such shocking news. When it is finally revealed, Mrs. Mallard shuts herself in a room and she communicates herself only with nature outside. It is from this correspondence with nature that the readers have to surmise what happened in her married life. Mrs. Mallard, at last, feels “free, free, free”, but Brently, her husband, returns and at the sight of him she dies.

Louise is a victim of a male-dominated society. There was nothing that she could control in her life to achieve happiness. “A thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge”, says the narrator (Poe). How the revenge is carried out is the actual story. Poe does not reveal the injuries. The sense of urgency to be avenged is all that he indicates at the beginning of the story. The drunken Fortunato is led through a series of chambers beneath Montresor’s palazzo.

“Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris” (Poe). He is then tied to a wall and a new wall is plastered on him, thus burying him alive. Fortunato could have controlled himself, but no man can anticipate such cruel revenge. The chronology of the events given in the story, “A Rose for Emily”, is very complex. Emily’s father ruled her life by turning away every suitor. No one living nearby knows what really goes on in that house.

Only after her funeral come the exposure of events related to her house, her father, taxes, painting, etc. But the author prefers to present them in a muddled way. The readers have to rearrange the events in chronological time to know that Emily was an Angel and that she changed into a witch due to reasons beyond her power. To say that Emily lacked control amounts to a wrong interpretation of the story. “Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse”.

This is how the writer sums up her life (Faulkner). Not much can be done by an individual in a society that has already set its pattern. That is why the writers expect the readers to fill the gap in the events in their stories. The readers can hardly guess what actually happened to Mrs. Mallards, to Montresso, or to Emily in their life. The readers are free to speculate. Life is beyond one’s control is the message emerging from these stories.