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Change is Memorable

When readers read a book that they like, they will remember at least one character in the book for some specific reason. Authors have many different ways to make a character memorable but one of the most common ways that characters become memorable is the way that they change throughout the story. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Pet Dog”, and Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” all have main characters that are memorable because of the changes that take place physically and mentally in their respective stories.

In the story, “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner creates a mysterious yet respectable character. The changes that Miss Emily experiences in the story make her a memorable character. Faulkner uses symbolism in order to show the changes that take place with Miss Emily. The changes in Miss Emily’s hair can be taken as a symbol for the changes in Miss Emily herself. Before the death of Homer Barron her hair is “cut short making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows.” As the story moves on her hair “grows grayer and grayer until it attains an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray.” Her hair grows a dull color as Miss Emily turns into a dull person. Her hair, in the beginning, is described as one of an angel, and then described as one you would find on a witch. In the beginning of the story Miss Emily has no bad intentions and later, her fears of being alone lead her to turn evil as she poisons Homer

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Barron. As her hair’s appearance goes from innocent to evil Miss Emily goes from being innocent to evil. Her hair loses its life, foreshadowing the future of Miss Emily.

Another memorable character is that of the womanizer Dmitri Gurov in “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” Gurov is the protagonist in “The Lady with the Pet Dog” and the readers get to view the changes of a man who has fallen in love but then is forced to examine the way that he looks at the world. Gurov is memorable because the things that he does and says on the surface are not the way Gurov actually feels about the world. Although he looks down upon women and refers to them as "the inferior race," Gurov furtively admits that he feels more relaxed with them than he does with men.