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“A Rose for Emily” is a short story that was written by William Faulkner. Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897 and lived most of his life in and around the area of Oxford, Mississippi and Lafayette County, Mississippi. He is considered one of the best writers of American literature. The major themes of his writings were the history and the culture of the American South. Faulkner was known for his imaginative and innovative way of documenting the ability of people to endure and that made others take notice and acclaim his pieces of works. Faulkner is also known for his use of mental issues in characters, gross language, and the use of highly emotional themes such as what is seen in “A Rose of Emily.” Because of his unique contribution …show more content…
He also won two Pulitzer Prizes for his novels, A Fable, in 1954 and The Reivers, in 1963, which was awarded to him after his death in 1962. Other honors included the United States National Book Award in 1951 for Collected Stories and A Fable in 1955. His other most notable works include the novels, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and, Absalom, Absalom! Lastly, his short story, “A Rose for Emily,” which will be more closely examined in this paper, was his first piece to be published in a major magazine, the Forum, and at the time did not receive much attention, but later became known as the writing that helped to propel his career into full swing. Just like many of his writings, William Faulkner, used many emotions such as blood, time, sleeplessness, and fear in the text of “A Rose for Emily.” The character in this short story, Miss Emily Grierson, experienced all the emotions of blood, time, sleeplessness, and fear and endured them for awhile, but ultimately they killed her, because when a person has nothing to live for, dying is all that’s …show more content…
First of all, her father didn’t allow her to date men and develop other relationships. He feared her leaving him and having a normal life. Once her father died, she feared everything. She feared change, she was alone and a single woman who had never dated. She feared she would be alone forever. She was poor and so she feared the townspeople trying to collect taxes. When Homer Barron finally came along, she wanted to marry. When he made it known that he had no plans to marry, she feared his rejection and abandonment. She feared living a life alone in an old house in a judgmental town. The townspeople feared as well. They feared she would go crazy since there was a history of insanity in her family. They feared because they never saw her because seeing is knowledge and without it, people get scared of the unknown. That’s why they were so anxious to get in that locked room, only to open it and find a skeleton of the man she killed. If that wasn’t bad enough, the indentation of her head on the pillow and a strand of her gray hair lay next to the skeleton, that’s shows her ultimate fear was living out her life alone. In summary, “the breaking down of the door finding a room filled with dust and the appearance of a bridal gown and a man’s suit was nothing to the horror of
A possible reason for her unpopularity and wariness was because of her...
6. West, Ray B., Jr. "Atmosphere and Theme in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'." William Faulkner: Four Decades of Criticism. Ed. Linda Welshimer Wagner. Michigan State University Press, 1973. 192-198. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2011.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2013. 549-51. Print.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings. 2nd
Since she was fearful of her father, she then thought she passed that fear down to her daughter by some of the same actions her daughter had done that she had done herself. She stated, “Is that possible, that children can inherit fear” (46). This causes the woman to have problems with herself and think that she was the reason for her daughter to turn out the way she did. She also didn’t think about having another child to risk passing the fear on again. Her childhood and how her father wasn’t always a part of her life resulted in her future to be how it turned
The narrator explains that one night “I frightened two children in the woods, on purpose: I showed them my pink teeth, my hairy face, my red finger-nails, I mewed at them, and they ran away screaming” (Paragraph 25). That situation shows that people are understandably afraid of her, and she knows it. Another situation unfolds that show that even when the Narrator is trying to be friendly and not trying to frighten anybody that she still scares people. This happens when the Narrator reminisces “I detached myself from the brambles and came softly toward him (a man sleeping after having sex with a woman)… He woke up, he saw my pink teeth, my yellow eyes, he saw my black dress fluttering; he saw me running away. He saw where.” (Paragraph 36). This eventually leads to the Narrator’s death as the man then leads the mob of villagers to the Narrator’s house where they kill her.
Three key elements link William Faulkner's two short stories "A Rose for Emily" and "Dry September": sex, death, and women (King 203). Staging his two stories against a backdrop of stereotypical characters and a southern code of honor, Faulkner deliberately withholds important details, fragments chronological times, and fuses the past with the present to imply the character's act and motivation.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Compact 4th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. 81 - 88.
William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, tells a series of stories about the town's reclusive spinster, Miss Emily Grierson. The stories build up to a gruesome revelation after Miss Emily's funeral. She apparently poisoned her lover, Homer Barron, and kept his corpse in an attic bedroom for over forty years. It is a common critical cliche to say that a story "exists on many levels." In the case of "A Rose for Emily", this is the truth. Critic Frank A. Littler, in an essay published in Notes on Mississippi Writers regarding the chronology of the story, writes that "A Rose for Emily" has been read variously as ". . .a Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between North and South, a meditation on the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine." These various interpretations serve as a good starting point for discussion of the story.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose For Emily.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Ed. Nina Baym et al. Shorter 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2013. 151-55. Print. 2 vols.
In “A Rose For Emily”, by William Faulkner, plot plays an important role in how
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Collected Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Random House, 1950.
Emily is one of the strongest, strangest and memorable characters of Faulkner’s short fictions (Kriewald
In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.
A Rose for Emily appears to be a simple story that actually has a bigger meaning. Faulkner uses the characters and their actions to allude to the South’s history. The Old Southern high society was extremely elegant. Everything about it was extravagant and impressive.