SOURCE: “From Spinster to Eunuch: William Faulkner's ‘A Rose for Emily’ and Mario Vargas ‘Llosa's Los cachorros,’” in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 34, No. 4, 1997, pp. 328–47.

In the following essay, O'Bryan-Knight finds similarities between Emily and Cuéllar in Mario Vargas Llosa's Los cachorros.

At first glance the protagonists of William Faulkner's short story “A Rose for Emily” and Mario Vargas Llosa's novella Los cachorros appear to be exact opposites. The former is a mature woman from the semi-rural town of Jefferson, Mississippi, while the latter is a young man from a semi-urban environment, the Miraflores district of Lima. A quick comparison of the these characters' life stories yields no obvious points of intersection. Emily Grierson lives her youth under the watchful eye of her over-protective father. Following his death, she withdraws from the world and spends her remaining years shut away in the big house she inherited. Cuéllar...