Emily Grierson and Ambrose Bierce In works of fiction, traditionally the sympathetic characters do actions that are heroic and those that are supposed to be unsympathetic perform actions that are decidedly less so. Given that humans are very judgmental creatures, authors have tried to change reader perceptions by providing plots where characters that may perform unspeakable acts are arguably the most sympathetic creatures in the piece. It is difficult to see a murderer in anything other than a negative light. In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," and Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," the two authors create antagonists that are killers, but who are compelling and developed enough that the reader cannot dismiss them as mere murderers. Instead, readers are challenged to look at the events surrounding the crimes to make their own determinations about each protagonist.

William Faulkner's 1930 short story "A Rose for Emily" tells the story of the death of a small southern town's most prominent old woman: Miss Emily Grierson. In the first sentence of the story, the narrator informs the reader that everyone in the town attended her funeral, "the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house" (1930-page 1). This is because no one has been inside the home of Emily Grierson in a decade and the woman herself had barely left it. Emily was a lonely woman in life with no friends and those who attend her service were not there to mourn but to gawk and gossip. She lived completely isolated from the world except for an old black man who worked as her servant.

Emily Grierson...

Specifically, Miss Emily lives as if she were forever in the past. The first indication that Miss Emily is living in the past is when the sheriff comes to see her about not paying her taxes. Under the old guard, she had never had to pay them and didn't see why she should now. Her invocation of the deceased Colonel Sartoris effectively ends the men's search for payment. Emily has always been able to vanquish anyone who would challenge her position above the other citizens of the town. "She vanquished them & #8230;just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell" (1930-page 3). The smell they are referring to foreshadows the end of the story when the reader learns that the sweetheart who supposedly deserted Emily so many years ago has actually been killed by her.
The acrid smell of his decomposition can be smelled from the street and it has come to the attention of the police. Being Miss Emily, however, she can dismiss their inquiries. The men themselves, rather than confront the premier member of the town citizenry, perform the task of deodorizing the outside of Emily's home with lye themselves (1930-page 4). The fact that Emily lives with the putrid stench and that it does not bother her, shows how mentally unstable she is. Emily is lost in her own mind in a time before she was abandoned and thus a time before she was a killer. To her, life is as it was before she killed her lover, an idea which is backed up by the fact that she has been sleeping beside his corpse for decades.

In Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," the main…