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Essays on Faulkner's A Rose for Emily
Gender roles in womens literature
Essays on Faulkner's A Rose for Emily
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Recommended: Essays on Faulkner's A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” is a story of a woman, her struggle with society after the war and her house. This woman, Miss Emily, lives in the Old South during a time where men dictated women’s life, but she was not one to live to the expectations of her family or society. In the end, she joined the man she loved by murdering him and living with him in her house in secret for the rest of her life. Faulkner may have deleted the two page revealing that Tobe, Miss Emily’s servant, knew of her secrets, because he might have felt the revealing took away from the mystery the story was following. Also, I believe the two page revealing doesn’t flow as well as the rest of the short story as the climax was meant to be at the end …show more content…
I believe Faulkner made the right decision deleting the scene. Miss Emily was raised to believe that nothing has changed after the Civil War and southern aristocracy was something to be proud of. She was brought up to think she was above the law, so she acts like an entitled spoiled rich girl throughout the story. The town has an image of Miss Emily which slowly fades to thoughts of pity and crazy. If the two page revealing was still left in the story the readers image of Miss Emily would be similar to the town’s view as we see she truly is crazy as she “imagining the community entering the room- she calls them fools, and declares that they can finally satisfy their minds that she is crazy.” (Volpe 3). This quotation of the revealing pages would make the reader see she’s truly a psycho bitch thus, Faulkner made the right decision. “He walked right through the house, and out the back and was not seen again (Faulkner 54). This quotation, leaves the reader thinking “Where the hell does he go?”, so Faulkner’s mystery continues even though the story ends. Also, as the scene were deleted it allowed the reader to be surprised as the town was, even though the town knew she was
After her sweetheart left her, the people of the town saw her very little. Faulkner then tells what might be viewed as the climax of the story. He explains that one day, Miss Emily went into town and bought rat poison. By revealing this so early on in the story, it challenges the reader to use their imagination. The readers’ view of Miss Emily could now possibly be changed.
...horrifying truth of Miss Emily's murder of Homer Barron for the final section of the story, and introducing Emily's necrophilia in the story's closing sentence, speaks volumes about Faulkner's abilities in his craft. He has successfully arranged the events of a disturbed woman's life to present them in order of interest and excitement rather than in traditional chronological order. This use of plot enables Faulkner to write a great ghost story, because a ghost story needs to end on this kind of high note. Faulkner creates a plot line that resembles the upper line of a crescendo, a graph of emotional tension that starts at the lowest of points and travels steadily upward to the highest of human horrors.
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a story that uses flashbacks to foreshadow a surprise ending. The story begins with the death of a prominent old woman, Emily, and finishes with the startling discovery that Emily as been sleeping with the corpse of her lover, whom she murdered, for the past forty years. The middle of the story is told in flashbacks by a narrator who seems to represent the collective memory of an entire town. Within these flashbacks, which jump in time from ten years past to forty years past, are hidden clues which prepare the reader for the unexpected ending, such as hints of Emily's insanity, her odd behavior concerning the deaths of loved ones, and the evidence that the murder took place.
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the main character named Emily is a women of high status and is the gossip of the town. Emily was thirty and remained unmarried. Soon she found a Northern man named Homer Baron and was spending most of her time with him until the town didn’t see him after he stepped foot into the house of Emily. The narrator/detective revealed at the end a very disturbing attribute about what was held in Emily’s house. However, William Faulkner’s idea of a detective story is far from becoming visible as the traditions make it stand. Based on William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” he used a unique style to re-create detective genres that clearly made him an extraordinary writer
Faulkner tells the story through primarily a first person narration, primarily through the eyes of the townspeople, which is a white southern society. They too have a type of love affair with "Miss Emily." Emily Grierson is known to the townspeople as an icon. They feel a sense of obligation to her, as the narrator explains, "Alive, Miss Emily has been a tradition, a duty, and a care; sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (404). The relationship between the town and Emily is symbiotic, in the respects that neither can exist without the other, this in turn, makes the narrator and Emily foils.
...s story he writes about how earlier in Emily’s life she refuses to let the town’s people in her house even though there is a strong odor that is coming from her property. In this section her father has just passed away and was abandoned by a man who she wanted to marry. This section she becomes very depressed. In section three it talks about how Emily is starting to come down with an illness after all of the depressing events she had to endure. In sections four and five Faulkner describes how there is fear throughout the towns people is that of which Emily is going to possibly poison herself. A while later she then she passes away. In section five is when the truth is revealed to the public about her sickness. Faulkner uses the view point of an unnamed town member while he uses a third person perspective to show the general corrosion of the southern town’s people.
Faulkner begins the story upon the arrival of Miss Emily's burial service. The state of mind is nostalgic as the storyteller thinks back about Emily's home and how it once enraptured the general population of the town, yet now lies in vestiges. We learn Miss Emily has been falling flat in her obligation by not paying duties, which Colonel Sartoris states is because of a credit that was given to the town by her dad. This we learn turns into an issue with Colonel Sartoris' successors and they in the end meet with Emily. The meeting happens at Emily's home, which is old, with worn furniture, and appears to have not been under any fundamental consideration. All through the meeting Emily is uncooperative, demanding the course of action in the middle of her and Colonel Sartoris, and declining to pay charges. Emily eludes the town's authorities to Colonel Sartoris, not realizing that
Through out the whole story of “A Rose for Emily” no one ever knows who the people are in her town and we never find out there age, size, color, and whether or not they personally know Emily or not. They are just townspeople, townspeople who gossip. We only know what the people are saying about her and how judgmental they are being through out the whole story. According to Faulkner, in his Short Story Criticism he says,
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.
Faulkner starts his story by showing the amount of respect that is shown at Emily’s funeral. It is said that the entire town attended this event, but also that some only showed up to see what the inside of her house looked like because no one had been inside in over ten years. “The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant- a combined gardener and cook- had seen in at least ten years”(pg.542). He explains this to show the mysterious interest of Emily. By explaining the mystery in Emily, he carries a dark tone that mystifies the audience.
First, why does Faulkner present the plot in the way that he does? There can be numerous answers to this question, but I have narrowed it down to one simple answer. He presented the story in this way in order to keep the reader guessing and to also provide some sort of suspense. By Faulkner telling the story in the way that he does, the reader has no way of knowing what might be coming up next in the story. The last thing that a reader wants to do is read a boring story that is easy to predict. Faulkner keeps the reader from knowing what might happen next by not placing the events in the actual order that they occurred. He goes back and forth throughout Miss Emily’s life. At the introduction and conclusion of the story, she is dead, while the body consists of the times when she was alive. The body of the story also jumps back and forth throughout Miss Emily’s life. Faulkner brilliantly divided the story into five key parts, all taking place at some key
“A Rose for Emily” is a unique story in which town people remember the life and death of an older woman named Emily. Emily lives alone in a large house with her black house servant named Tobe. Without him, Emily would not be able to live a normal existence. However, she really does not have a normal life with him since he adds to her oddity. Tobe is an important part of the story, yet he does not have a substantial role, other than the reality that he kept her alive, and kept her secrets from others.
As each scene unfolds in the story, curiosity about the main character, Emily Grierson, grows. By developing the story backwards (when she dies), and ending with even more detail around her death, Faulkner creates an entertaining yet morbid by the end plot line. As the reader continues the story, it begins to seem almost as if a bunch of old wives were sitting around at tea, telling gossip about Miss Emily. The way Faulkner wrote the tale of Miss Grierson seems as if he meant it to seem like a gossip circle, where each superstitious tale about Miss Emily is pieced together.
To liven the story, the author brought up important details regarding the protagonist and the antagonist in the story about, “A rose for Emily.” All the activities of the character are included to give a complete background of the scene. William Faulkner offers sufficient information in order to help the readers understand and visualize the setting surrounding Emily as the main protagonist in the story. The author further gives the misfortunes that surround Emily. This helps the reader to connect the background and the scene in the end.
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.