A Rose for Confusion
An Analysis of William Faulkner’s Writing
The early 1900’s were a time of unrest. Many were still in the recovery from the American Civil War. Authors abounded from this era, often writing stories about the personal mind, the tragedies one faces, the hardships one can produce within themselves. These types of things are often spurred on by tragedy struck to an individual. Many people don’t know how to handle their feelings when they arise, and therefore often hide them from society or push them away for fear of humiliation. This was an idea many authors pondered through their prose writing. William Faulkner is among these authors. He is an acclaimed author, one of his most famous writings is called, “A Rose for Emily.”
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Hobby understands this idea of individualism, as he so displays through Faulkner’s writing. William Faulkner clearly enjoyed exploring the individual mind as “A Rose for Emily,” was all about her and how she individually dealt with her tragedies. Understanding that a civil war can happen within one’s own mind seems to be the idea of Faulkner’s point in understanding the individual and writing about the individual. Clearly, he displayed in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech that he is fond of pondering and elaborating on the ideas and coping of a single person, and this is well done in his haunting short story, “A Rose for …show more content…
This is where the idea Faulkner lays of ‘love,’ comes full-circle. Though Emily did not appear to have any lovers in the story, she definitely had those who loved her. This love is what the story is based off of. Though it seems extremely gruesome and sickening, Emily is understandably a young woman who is confused and alone, but loved. This love seems to be what gets in the way and result in her horrifying demise. Love can be a trap; love can be a wonderful thing, either way, Faulkner understands that a wonderful piece of prose revolves around the idea of
The author, William Faulkner, has a collection of books, short stories, and poems under his name. Through his vast collection of works, Faulkner attempts to discuss and bring awareness to numerous aspects of life. More often than not, his works were created to reflect aspects of life found within the south. Family dynamics, race, gender, social class, war, incest, racism, suicide, necrophilia, and mental illness are just some of the aspects that Faulkner explored. In “A Rose for Emily” the aspects of necrophilia and mental illness along with the societal biases that were observed in a small-town setting are seen to be a part of this captivating story. These aspects ultimately intertwine with the idea of insanity that characterizes “A Rose for Emily.
Faulkner first tells that shortly after her father’s death Miss Emily’s sweetheart left her. Everybody in the town thought that Emily and this sweetheart of hers were going to be married. 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 next. 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. It has changed from feeling sorry for this woman to thinking she is going to murder someone.
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.
"William Faulkner: The Faded Rose of Emily." Mr. Renaissance. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2011 .
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature and Its Writers. 6th ed. Boston, New York:
Emily was drove crazy by others expectations, and her loneliness. ““A Rose for Emily,” a story of love and obsession, love, and death, is undoubtedly the most famous one among Faulkner’s more than one hundred short stories. It tells of a tragedy of a screwy southern lady Emily Grierson who is driven from stem to stern by the worldly tradition and desires to possess her lover by poisoning him and keeping his corpse in her isolated house.” (Yang, A Road to Destruction and Self Destruction: The Same Fate of Emily and Elly, Proquest) When she was young her father chased away any would be suitors. He was convinced no one was good enough for her. Emily ended up unmarried. She had come to depend on her father. When he finally died, ...
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings. 2nd
In Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose For Emily” it portrays the love of a woman who is disturbed and cannot
Kurtz, Elizabeth Carney. "Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'". Explicator. Heldref Publications. 44.2 (1986): 40. Academic Search Complete. Blinn College, Bryan, Lib. 18 Oct. 2007
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 takes us back in time with his Gothic short story known as, “A Rose for Emily.” Almost every sentence gives a new piece of evidence to lead the reader to the overall theme of death, isolation, and trying to maintain traditions. The reader can conclude the theme through William Faulkner’s use of literary devices such as his choice of characters, the setting, the diction, the tone, and the plot line.
Growing up in Mississippi in the late Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century, young William Faulkner witnessed first hand the struggles his beloved South endured through their slow progression of rebuilding. These experiences helped to develop Faulkner’s writing style. “Faulkner deals almost exclusively with the Southern scene (with) the Civil War … always behind his work” (Warren 1310. His works however are not so much historical in nature but more like folk lore. This way Faulkner is not constrained to keep details accurate, instead he manipulate the story to share his on views leading the reader to conclude morals or lessons from his experience. Faulkner writes often and “sympathetically of the older order of the antebellum society. It was a society that valued honor, (and) was capable of heroic action” (Brooks 145) both traits Faulkner admired. These sympathetic views are revealed in the story “A Rose for Emily” with Miss Emily becoming a monument for the Antebellum South.
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
In each of these stories, Faulkner communicates to the reader through very strange characters. In “Was”, we hear of a story that basically stems around a runaway slave. The two Uncles are very stereotypical. The other owner was also very stereotypical. Basically, in this story, the white men are trying to apprehend a slave that has run off to see his girl. However, the story then progresses into a standoff between the white owners. They bet each other on very arbitrary matters until finally, though the previous bets did hold some weight, the men turn to a deck of cards to settle their disputes. The ironic aspect of all of this is that they end up betting on the lives of the slaves. So, in order to prove their superiority over each other, they use their slaves as leverage. This was one of the times I felt that Faulkner was trying to illustrate the fact that these people seemed hopelessly lost in the old Southern way. What was also very interesting though is that they seemed to treat the slaves fairly humanely. First of all, if a slave had run off in early times, they probably would have beaten him or killed him. Here though, it is a kind of game. It’s a race to see who can get him first. Faulkner also throws into the story the woman who seems to be in love with one of the uncles. This too, was very clever because the new “southern Belle” was also being communicated to the reader. The Uncles though, are bachelors, perhaps signifying the dying southern gentleman, who is unable to deal with his past, and who will lead his genre of people to extinction. All in all, I liked this story. I didn’t see Faulkner as a racist and I didn’t see any of his charact...
All throughout his novel, Faulkner presents multiple narrators who all give somewhat differing versions of emotions and events that cause the reader to question their reliability. Because he strays from the traditional practice of having a single narrator, every account is completely subjective to whoever is telling it, and therefore a wide range of events are subsequently left up to the reader to decide who and what is most truthful. Readers must sort through the various interpretations of events and each character’s emotions, as they can no longer accept the story that is usually being told by one reliable narrator. Because of this narration style, there is no final truth or final universal meaning in the novel, as everything that happens is open to an individ...