Modernism is a period of writing where artists broke free from the traditional way of thinking. Works of literature revolved around experiences of loss, despair, and alienation. The format of writing also changed, the plot of the stories no longer unfold chronologically; the past, present, and future scenes are all blurred together. A portrayal of these characteristics can be found in William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily.” The main character, Emily Grierson, becomes a prisoner in her own home and the author or her own demise after the tragic death of her lover. Faulkner uses imagery of the Grierson house to depict how isolated and alienated Emily’s life was.
The use of imagery used to describe the extent to which Emily’s house
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The Judge received complaints from several people of the town about a terrible smell coming from the Grierson house, they urged him to, “do something about it” (301). The judge was far too respectful, perhaps even afraid, to confront Emily about the complaints he has received. As revealed at the end of this short story, this is the smell of death. Although Emily is in fact the one who inflicted this death, she decides to withstand this gruesome smell coming from within her house and continue to live her life sadly in desolation. “So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder” (301). These men felt that the situation was severe enough to sneak onto the property and sprinkle lime to cover the stench. Emily witnessed this event from her window, yet she does nothing about it. She is a very stubborn and callus woman, watching them creep through her property unauthorized must have been upsetting. Even at a chance to stand her ground, Emily cowers and remains confined in her …show more content…
The Grierson house was abandoned and left in shams, inside the house Emily was much the same, alone and unstable. The people in her community acted out towards her as she stood back, secluded, and watched it happen. Emily’s best kept secret is revealed after her death. It becomes obvious that the contents of the room above her stairs caused her an unimaginable amount of grief and was the final straw that led to her to secluding herself from the outside world. This lifelong sadness occurred undoubtedly as a result of using a coping strategy to deal with the difficult situations in life such as death and
Emily Grierson was not alone after her death, ironically, as all the town came to her funeral even though they never came to see her before. She was laid in the ground more near people than she had ever been in her life. William Faulkner refers to Emily as a “fallen monument” of the town that would also signify abandonment. The house that Emily lived in was on a street that was deserted, and she was the only inhabitant. The house she lived
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” Miss Emily Grierson holds on to the past with a grip of death. Miss Emily seems to reside in her own world, untarnished by the present time around her, maintaining her homestead as it was when her father was alive. Miss Emily’s father, the manservant, the townspeople, and even the house she lives in, shows that she remains stuck in the past incapable and perhaps reluctant to face the present.
Miss Emily’s isolation is able to benefit her as well. She has the entire town believing she is a frail and weak woman, but she is very strong indeed. Everyone is convinced that she could not even hurt a fly, but instead she is capable a horrible crime, murder. Miss Emily’s actions range from eccentric to absurd. After the death of her father, and the estrangement from the Yankee, Homer Barron, she becomes reclusive and introverted. The reader can find that Miss Emily did what was necessary to keep her secret from the town. “Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (247).
Considered in above symbols, Faulkner's story gives the idea with the changes of appearances and life of Emily Grierson by the time as an allegory for the changes in the old fashioned Southern ideals after the Civil War. Even though Emily is a strong woman, at the same time she is the victim of her resistance to change of time while the world went on without her and misperception of the people around her. In conclusion, this story “A Rose for Emily” tells the life, the love, the time, hopes, and destruction of Emily Grierson by using intelligent symbols. Emily never accepts that the changing world around her might be benefiting for her life "The newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town" (214), but Emily always in conflict with both her heart and her community, and modern world.
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
In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the role of the narrator and the interpretations of “A Rose for Emily”, it can be seen that this story is impossible to tell without a narrator.
In “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, Emily Geierson is a woman that faces many difficulties throughout her lifetime. Emily Geierson was once a cheerful and bright lady who turned mysterious and dark through a serious of tragic events. The lost of the two men, whom she loved, left Emily devastated and in denial. Faulkner used these difficulties to define Emily’s fascinating character that is revealed throughout the short story. William Faulkner uses characterization in “A Rose for Emily”, to illustrate Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted woman.
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” he uses many literary elements to portray the life of Emily and the town of Jefferson. The theme of the past versus the present is in a sense the story of Miss Emily’s life. Miss Emily is the representation of the Old South versus the New South, mainly because of her inability to interact with the present or come to terms with reality. Holding onto the past and rejecting change into the present led Miss Emily into a life of isolation and mental issues.
By using strong characterization and dramatic imagery, William Faulkner introduces us to Miss Emily Grierson in “A Rose for Emily”. The product of a well-established, but now fallen family, Emily plays common role found in literature- a societal outcast, who earns her banishment from society through her eclectic behavior and solitary background. Often living in denial and refusing to engage with others, Emily responds to her exile by spending the remainder of her life as a mysterious recluse that the rest of society is more content to ignore rather than break social customs to confront her. Emily’s role as an outcast mirrors a major theme of the story, that denial is a powerful tool in hiding a secret, however, the truth will eventually emerge. The mystery surrounding Emily’s character and the story’s memorable imagery creates a haunting tale that lingers with the reader.
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.
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...
As a child, Emily was unable make friends or even play outside because her father held his family to a much higher standard than other townspeople “The Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner 36). Emily’s father, selfishly held Emily back from living, loving, and freedom. She was unable to find a soul mate because her father believed that “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 36). Because of this, Emily stuck close to the only man she’s ever known like a newborn to its mother. Emily and her father had such a close bond that when he died, for days she refused to believe he was dead, and she also refused to let the townspeople dispose of the body. For the townspeople, Emily’s reaction to her father’s death was quite normal, but for readers it was our first glimpse at her necrophilia.
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.
One of the most prominent symbols in the story is Emily’s house. The house represents the destruction of the primitive Southern families and aristocracy that surrounded the neighborhood. The author describes the house as “a big, squarish frame…decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies” (Faulkner 668). Contrary to the time period the house was built, the setting of the story takes place much later than the 1870s when everything in the neighborhood has changed. The neighborhood which was once considered “[the] most select street” had “garages and cotton gins [encroach] and [obliterate] the neighborhood” (Faulkner 668). Nonetheless, the reader is able to conclude based on the house’s exterior appearance that it also represents mental illness and death. The house has been left untouched and as one of the very few visitors noted” [the house] smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell” (Faulkner 669). By leaving the interior of the house unchanged for years, Emily had created a shrine of the past. Consequently, the author has instilled another chilling symbol in the story: a single strand of grey hair. The hair, which is found on a pillow next to the decaying body, represents the loss of love and the perverse actions committed by people in order to remain happy. The strand of hair also gives perspective to Emil...
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.