Two examples of Gothic literature are Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily". Gothic literature usually includes eerie settings, pessimism, and evil generally prevails over good. Those traits exist in both stories. Since both stories are written in a similar style, the main characters share traits.
Both Roderick Usher and Emily Grierson deal with death; however they do not react the same way. One character, though dealing with death is remorseful and not mad, while the other is not remorseful and quite insane. A major similarity between Roderick Usher and Emily Grierson is death. Roderick's sister, Madeline, suposedly dies. He buries her in a tomb in his house and later realized that she is not dead. He unknowingly buries her alive! Conversely, Emily Grierson poisons he "lover" with arsenic, after discovering that he is not serious about a relationship. In a way, murder exists on both stories.
Despite some similarities, there are many differences between both characters. It is clear that Emily is insane and, contrastly, Roderick is not. Emily is in denial about paying taxes, kills a man, sleeps next to his corpse, and sees nothing wrong with it. Ms. Grierson is utterly mad. Roderick, on the contrary, is just ill. He honestly believed his sister was dead, and felt fear after realizing it was not so. Roderick says, "I have no abhorrence of dangers, except in its absolute effect-in terror". Basically, Roderick is just fearful and misunderstood, not a mad man. Roderick felt remorse over burying his siter alive; although he does not try to fix the problem, he felt sorry. Emily, on the other hand, shows no remorse and keeps a dead body in her attic and sleeps next to it. That is just crazy.
In conclusion, though there are many similarities between Roderick and Emily, there are more differences between both characters. Emily was clearly insane, while Roderick was just ill and made a (huge) mistake.