A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” (Twain) The Nobel Prizes were established all the way back in 1895 by a Swedish inventor by the name of Alfred Nobel. He established a foundation that was dedicated to encouraging achievement and diplomacy, this foundation most commonly referred to as the distributer of the Nobel Prizes. These prizes are awarded for outstanding contributions in a wide array of subjects including; physics, chemistry, literature, peace, physiology, medicine and economic sciences. Author William Faulkner is just one recipient of the prize for literature. He received his award in 1950, and while doing so, delivered a speech that will forever live among the most compelling examples of oration in history. Faulkner’s speech centered on the idea of what literature had become at the time, and what he felt it needed to be. The reception of this price immediately listed Faulkner as one of the most important individuals in literature at the time, one of his most prominent texts titled A Rose for Emily, just one example of what he discussed writing should be in his prize acceptance speech. In William Faulkner’s text A Rose for Emily he provides an incredible example of what he believes is a writer’s duty to his readers.

Within Faulkner’s acceptance speech, he states that courage and honor are the first two things a writer has a responsibility to remind the reader of within a text. The Nobel Prize acceptance speech provides a vast list of things that Faulkner believes every great writer should include within his texts, and the first of these things states, “He must teach him...

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... Literature during 1950 was not the same as it was in 1901, and Faulkner, being a recent winner of the time, was awarded a majority of the relevance. Through both his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and his text A Rose for Emily, it is obvious that Faulkner holds some very strong beliefs about what a writer is, and what his obligations are to his readers, and it is very possible that these proposed beliefs of his, will last far beyond his time.

Works Cited

Green, John. An Abundance of Katherines. New York: Speak, 2008. Print.

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner, 2000. Print.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. Print.

Snicket, Lemony. Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2007. Print.

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huck Finn. New York: Signet Classic, 1997. Print.