When director Christopher Noland ‘s movie “Inception” first came out in 2010, it quickly drew attention to those fans who are interested in science fiction and suspense. While enjoying the fantastic dreams that those dream stealers walk through, many people may have the idea that the film is about the transformation between dream and reality since the whole story develops with the element “dream”. That is true. However, what keeps going on with the movie is another important clue: the previous memory of the protagonist Dominic Cobb. Similarly, in 1890s, American famous novelist William Faulkner’s work “A Rose for Emily” also demonstrated the same potential theme as the movie “Inception”. They both discuss how the shadow of the past affect a person and lead them to different ending.

As a thief who has the ability to enter people’s dream, Cobb’s job is to invade the dreams of his target and steal secrets from their subconscious mind. Besides that, with his wife Mal they create a pure land in their dreams. In the perfect world this couple live without any stress and enjoy the sweet love. However, Cobb gradually realizes that this kind of life is not what he really wants. So he plants an idea in his wife’s mind to change it. Unfortunately, it finally leads to the death of his wife. Cobb has suffered so much since that accident happened. What is worse is that he can always see the illusion of his wife blaming him when in dream, which makes his pain even more serious. At the end pf the story, after the final mission that finishes his fugitive life, Cobb eventually chooses to forget the past and live his new life with children. On the contrary, in the story “A Rose for Emily”, Miss Emily is not as lucky as Cobb. As a higher class lady who was born in a traditional southern family, Emily grew up with the pressure from his father. Those rules and cruel education for a higher class woman finally change Emily’s characteristic and make her hard to approach. Even after the Civil War and her father’s death, the southern society begins to change. Miss Emily still obeys old traditions as a noble. She finally murders her lover Barron because he refused to marry her, showing a miserable ending. 

When comparing the two materials, they both have similar arrangement of suspense. As “Inception” doesn’t tell the viewers why Mal always appears in Cobb’s dreams in the first half part of the movie, viewer can only keep this question in mind when watching. However, as the important clues come out, in the last mission when Cobb and his team are trying to change the idea of Robert Fischer-a man who may inherit his father’s energy company and become a market dominant, Cobb finally tells the truth in front of Mal’s illusion that he plants an idea in her wife’s mind and take her out of their dreams. Although they have come back to the reality, Mal still couldn’t accept the huge difference between dream and reality so the hopeless woman commits suicide. Similarly, when “A Rose for Emily” begins, readers are told that Miss Emily is dead and the whole town fall into sadness because they lose a “model”. After further reading, the life experience of Emily is shown and all the reasons become clear. For viewers，Cobb is a complicated character. There is always something in his mind that affects his behavior when he is in dream, making the man blame himself frequently. Also, in Faulkner’s work, Emily is a strange character both to readers and people in town because she has barely approached others for more than 40 years. On this hand, Noland and Faulkner are successful because this arrangement makes their characters more complicated and their plots more attractive.

There are a few descriptions about Emily’s past life in the story. “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door” (Faulkner6). From this example，readers begin to know the cruel education from her father to Emily. Emily will be punished by her father if she approaches those men who do not have the same class status as her. Although the descriptions about the past of Emily are limited, from her behavior and the eyes of those people in town we can conclude that it is almost impossible for her to have a life as ordinary people since she was born in such a family. Emily is lucky because she was born as a noble and her family have the privilege to not to pay tax. However, the glorious past doesn’t work anymore since the Civil War ends with the failure of Southern Confederate. Miss Emily still follow the past as a noble and refuses to pay tax. To most people in the town she is hard to approach. The changing society doesn’t change her. Ironically, Emily become a model that southern women should learn from in some southern men’s mind. “and the very old man—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs” (Faulkner 9) is the sentence which describes the funeral of Emily. Just like Emily, many people in southern America still miss their former honor.All in all, Emily’s past leads her to a bad ending.

As the opposite example of Miss Emily, there is no doubt that Cobb suffers a lot from his painful past. Originally, he can live forever with his wife Mal in their dream and make their love eternal. However, it is his love to children in reality that finally leads him to run away from the dream. As one of the most important clue in “Inception”, Cobb’s love to children finally save him, drawing the man back from the former pain. At the end of the movie, when Cobb wakes up, there is a close up that his top, which helps him judge if he is still in dream, keeps rotating but shows a trend of stopping. This detail indicates that Cobb has successfully come back from the dream and it is time to forget the past and begin new life. Compared to Emily, Cobb is fortunate because he has his children as the last support of heart. On the contrary, Emily is always a lonely woman and all her memory about her family experience and environment around her is terrible. Even if Barron can be the protector of Emily, the result is that he refuses to marry her. Losing the last hope to change finally makes her crazy. She murders Barron and stays with his body for more than 40 years. 

As Christopher Noland talked about the ending of “Inception”, “I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with — they are subsets of reality," (Noland2015). The shadow of past, just like dream we ever have, sometimes make us feel panic but as people learn to how to face these influence and make it a good experience of life, they will finally overcome everything.

It’s never too late to put down the past and begin new life. Maybe the past is full of happiness, sadness, rage and loneliness, what people should do is to look forward because they are living at the present. Not in the past. The past can be good memory and lessons but it should never be the obstacle on the way to the future.
