A Rose for Emily tells the tale of a lonely woman named Emily Grierson and the events that occur since her father died up and up until her death. The unique thing about this story is that it isn’t told in chronological order. Faulkner transitions from the past to the present all throughout the story. The events being out of order make the story more interesting and it also creates suspense. The audience might be confused at times but at the end of the story everything adds up and makes sense. I think that if Faulkner had told it in chronological order it would have been boring and predictable. The story is divided into five sections. The first section says that Miss Emily has died and the whole town goes to her funeral. The men go to pay their respect and condolences but the women are more concerned with what is going on in her house. They are curious because no one has been in that house for so many years. The unknown narrator describes the house saying it was big and it was, “set on what had once been our most select street.” (Faulkner 209) In the next section, Faulkner goes back to the past to tell us more about Emily's life while she was alive. Her neighbor's smell a horrible odor coming from her house and they complain to Judge Stevens. Then later four men are sent at night to clean up. They arrived at her house, opened the cellar door and applied lime everywhere. Since the story is out of order, we don’t know that Miss Emily has killed Homer, who the hideous order is coming from. If the story was in chronological order there would be no suspense or curiosity about what’s causing the smell. In the third section, the narrator introduces the relationship that develops between Homer and Emily Grierson. Emily mee... ... middle of paper ... ...le dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.”, indicates that she has been sleeping next to a dead corpse. (Faulkner 215) This story was very unique and unlike anything I have ever read before. William Faulkner’s way of telling the story was both interesting and suspenseful. All throughout the story, I had mixed emotions because at first I felt sympathy for her because she was so lonely and unfairly scrutinized by the townspeople but then I found out she killed Homer and I wasn’t sure whether to still feel sorry for her. It was very clear in the story that Emily was a bit crazy. Overall, I enjoyed reading this story; the out of order events gave this story a unique touch. Works Cited Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, and Writing Compact 7th Edition. Boston: Waldsmorth, 2010. 209-215
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily". An Introduction to Literature, 11th ed. Ed. Barnet, Sylvan, et al. 287-294.
The story makes it harder for first time readers to comprehend what is going on since things are backwards, but in the movie version we see the courtship of Emily and Homer, see her buy poison, and then a rancid smell omitting from her house (Moore). That confusion is what makes the reader craving more instead of the expectedness that comes along with the film. When the reader is lost, he/she is more focused on trying to figure out where they are on the timeline and what is going on causing them to miss the subtle clues thought the story. In the story, Emily wouldn’t automatically be assumed as a murder, but rather she would be seen as a lonely woman secluded from the outside
William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" is perhaps his most famous and most anthologized short story. From the moment it was first published in 1930, this story has been analyzed and criticized by both published critics and the causal reader. The well known Literary critic and author Harold Bloom suggest that the story is so captivating because of Faulkner’s use of literary techniques such as "sophisticated structure, with compelling characterization, and plot" (14). Through his creative ability to use such techniques he is able to weave an intriguing story full of symbolism, contrasts, and moral worth. The story is brief, yet it covers almost seventy five years in the life of a spinster named Emily Grierson. Faulkner develops the character Miss Emily and the events in her life to not only tell a rich and shocking story, but to also portray his view on the South’s plight after the Civil War. Miss Emily becomes the canvas in which he paints the customs and traditions of the Old South or antebellum era. The story “A Rose For Emily” becomes symbolic of the plight of the South as it struggles to face change with Miss Emily becoming the tragic heroin of the Old South.
After being reclusive for decades, Miss Emily dies in her dusty house at age 74 (305). After her burial, they force entry into the “room in that region above the stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (306). They find the “bridal suite” and remains of Homer laying “in the attitude of embrace” along with evidence that Miss Emily had also been in that bed with him (306). Readers believe that Emily kills Homer with the arsenic. In her mind, she is not going to allow him to leave her. She prefers to have him dead in her house, rather than gone
...osition in regard to the specific problem of time is suggested in the scene where the old soldiers appear at her funeral. "The very old me-some in their brushed Confederate uniforms-on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as is she had been a contemporary of their, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression." These men have lost their sense of time as well as Miss Emily. The hallucinate; they imagine things which never occurred; there is no sense of time in their minds. Faulkner presents a very horrifying picture in this story, and he does this by playing with the chronology, using symbols and foreshadowing and presenting a detailed setting.
William Faulkner introduces the story with the gathering of the whole town at Emily's death. The author marks a big curious question for all readers. What happened and how? Then he goes back to the past of Miss Emily, leading us to travel around the closed time circle of her life: present back to past and past to present. This is an unusual order. The normal time order consists the progression of the human being from birth through youth, to age and final death. The confusion that Faulkner has given produces a confusion in Emily's life.
In the first sentence the reader is informed that the main character, Emily Grierson, has died and that the entire town has attended and everyone for a different reason. The narrator begins a flashback to ten years before her death when the “backbone” of the city began to harass Emily for her taxes; the reader is introduced to a situation. Then flashback another thirty years to when her father passed and that’s when Emily began to live for herself and met Homer Barron. The towns people began to interfere out of jealousy but always stated that it was them having pity on Emily and got her upper class family involved with the socially unacceptable relationship; the reader at this point has received the conflict. The reader receives clues throughout the second flashback to conclude that Emily has killed Homer out of fear; this is where Faulkner provided us with the climax. Years pass and nothing really goes on at the Grierson house which raises the mystery of what is going on behind closed doors; the falling action of the story. Upon Emily’s death the ladies of the town enter her home and discover Homer’s corpse in a shut off bedroom upstairs with one piece of Emily’s hair on the pillow next to him; bringing the story to an end and giving the reader the denouement.
The second foreshadow to be analyzed is Emily’s inability to perceive death as a finality. Around the middle of the story the narrator informs the reader about how Emily had handled her father’s death. In fact the passage is quite detailed; Emily tells the town that “…her father was not dead. She did that for three days…” (p.93) Faulkner uses this foreshadowing text to aid us recognize that Emily could not let go of things that brought her grief easily or at all in Homers case.
The main symbolism running throughout A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, is the theme of how important it is to let go of the past. Miss Emily clings to the past and does not want to be independent. The Old South is becoming the new South and she cannot move forward. The residents of the South did not all give in to change just because they lost the Civil War. In A Rose for Emily time marches on leaving Miss Emily behind as she stubbornly refuses to progress into a new era. In the story, symbolism is used to give more details than the author actually gives to the reader. Symbolism helps to indicate how Emily was once innocent but later changes, how her hair, house, and lifestyle, helped to show her resistance to change. The story is not told in chronological order. The events of her life are revealed slowly and create suspense over the telling of the story by the narrator. The narrator represents the town and its residents.
At the beginning of the story when her father died, it was mentioned that “[Emily] told [the ladies in town] that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (626). Faulkner reveals Emily’s dependency on her father through the death of her father. As shown in this part of the story, Emily was very attached to her father and was not able to accept that fact that he was no longer around. She couldn’t let go of the only man that loved her and had been with her for all those years. While this may seem like a normal reaction for any person who has ever lost a loved one, Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s dependence and attachment even further through Homer Barron. After her father’s death, Emily met a man name Homer, whom she fell in love with. While Homer showed interest in Emily at the beginning he became uninterested later on. “Homer himself had remarked—he liked men” (627) which had caused Emily to become devastated and desperate. In order to keep Homer by her side, Emily decided to poison Homer and keep him in a bedroom in her home. It was clear that she was overly attached to Homer and was not able to lose another man that she
In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose For Emily,” he tells a story in which Emily Grierson’s life is told by an unknown narrator. The Narrator tells how in Emily’s life, she has kept to herself inside her house for the majority of her life, causing the townspeople to grow more and more curious as the distance from her grew. He tells of her unsuccessful love life and how eventually they would find Homer Barron, the only man that she had showed interest in, dead, laying in a bed, in a room that had collected a large amount of dust.
Faulkner used the theme of Tradition versus death and change which are most commonly discussed in this story; since the story informs us of the passing of Emily, Mr. Grierson, the town's mayor and Emily's suitor. After her dad's passing Emily lost all hope and she becomes ill. The anticipation of Emily purchasing poison from the drug store is exceptionally shocking for the townspeople. They imagined that Emily purchased the poison to confer suicide, yet she murdered her suitor Homer and shrouds his body in the house until she is dead at the age of
„A Rose for Emily”, a story of horror first published in 1930, is considered by many scholars one of the most authentic and the best narratives ever written by William Faulkner. It is a story of a woman, Emily Grierson, and her relationships with her father, the man she was in love with and the community of Jefferson, the town she lived in.
The theme of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is that people should let go of the past, moving on with the present so that they can prepare to welcome their future. Emily was the proof of a person who always lived on the shadow of the past; she clung into it and was afraid of changing. The first evident that shows to the readers right on the description of Grierson's house "it was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street." The society was changing every minutes but still, Emily's house was still remained like a symbol of seventieth century. The second evident show in the first flashback of the story, the event that Miss Emily declined to pay taxes. In her mind, her family was a powerful family and they didn't have to pay any taxes in the town of Jefferson. She even didn't believe the sheriff in front of her is the "real" sheriff, so that she talked to him as talk to the Colonel who has died for almost ten years "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson." Third evident was the fact that Miss Emily had kept her father's death body inside the house and didn't allow burying him. She has lived under his control for so long, now all of sudden he left her, she was left all by herself, she felt lost and alone, so that she wants to keep him with her in order to think he's still living with her and continued controlling her life. The fourth evident and also the most interesting of this story, the discovery of Homer Barron's skeleton in the secret room. The arrangement inside the room showing obviously that Miss Emily has slept with the death body day by day, until all remained later was just a skeleton, she's still sleeping with it, clutching on it every night. The action of killing Homer Barron can be understood that Miss Emily was afraid that he would leave her, afraid of letting him go, so she decided to kill him, so that she doesn't have to afraid of losing him, of changing, Homer Barron would still stay with her forever.
Through the use of setting, characterization and theme Faulkner was able to create quite a mysterious and memorable story. "A Rose for Emily" is more than just a story though; her death represents the passing of a more genteel way of life. That is much more saddening than the unforgettable scene of Homer's decaying body. The loss of respect and politeness is has a much greater impact on society than a construction worker who by trade is always trying to change things. Generation after generation Miss Emily happily escaped modernism by locking herself in her house the past.