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The use of symbolism in the rose for emily
The use of symbolism in the rose for emily
The use of symbolism in the rose for emily
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William Faulkner was a well-esteemed author of the 20th century who used many literary techniques to display messages in his writings. In his short story, A Rose for Emily, he used literary tools such as point of view, physical plot structure, and symbolism to develop his theme that the past is always wound into the present. Faulkner decides to use the point of view that the members of the town possess for Ms. Emily Grierson. This point of view works best in A Rose for Emily because it attracts the audiences' curiosity for the mysterious Miss Emily just as the town is lured. It is as if you are one of the societal members of the town. Because of the generations and societal changes that Miss Emily withstands and resists the audience is able to better understand the true mystery that the town feels towards her. She is a model of tradition to the town and by their acceptance of her they accept that the past is always the present. For instance, she exempted her taxes once therefore she will never owe taxes to the town, a means of the past always being part of the present. The unique structure Faulkner uses for A Rose for Emily makes the story confusing but more interesting throughout. The audience knows that Miss Emily is ultimately going to die as stated in the first few words, but the curiosity is prolonged with the details of the events leading up to her death. Part 1 of the story should follow Part 4 because of the order of events that occur. As the audience proceeds through the story, Miss Emily's death becomes further and further into the past but at the end of the story, amazingly, the past has again become the present, and again Miss. Emily is dead. The symbols used by Faulkner are subtle but when thoroughly comprehended each makes since and is closely tied to the theme. The simple and ingenious diction Faulkner uses when he explains the "iron-gray" hair on the pillow the same description he had used before to represent Miss Emily's aged hair, allows the audience to make the connection as to why Homer Barron's body was still there. Faulkner had already used foreshadowing to that exact occurrence with the details following the stench after Miss Emily's father's death where he was kept unburied until she was force to bury him.
...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.
Faulkner wrote many beautiful pieces of literature, including Intruder in the Dust, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Pylon, and many other works famous for their originality. One of his most popular novels is A Rose for Emily, which was inspired by his independent mother, one can assume that Emily’s character is based on Maud Faulkner. (“123”). Before Faulkner, writers had a basic structure with hardly any detail and emotion weaved into their writings. Taking after his great-grandfather’s footsteps, William struggled passionately to become a writer in his early years. His first novel published was Soldier’s Play, which was published in 1926. Soldier’s Play is a book about a group of soldiers, beautifully described in the opening scene, overflowing with detail. The novel is simply a dialogue between drunk characters, but Faulkner has a way of painting mental images with his words. “Faulkner has vey skillfully imitated the way the human brain processes images and puts them into words. As readers, we are really placed inside the various character’s heads.” (“Schmoop”). Along with his mother, Faulkner used previously succe...
In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner tells the story in A third-person pov from the perspective of A narrator who is a long-time citizen of the town. The town, described as a wealthy area inhabited by chivalrous/Aristocratic men and ...
The reader is baffled by what just happened, and then Faulkner ends the story with, “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, and we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (Faulkner 634). Faulkner did not use a short sentence to describe the what went on between Homer Barron and Miss Emily, even though this was a crucial moment in the story. Instead, William wrote, “we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair,” and that is what answered all of the reader’s unanswered questions throughout the story (Faulkner 634).
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.
William Faulkner, the author of A Rose for Emily, uses language, symbols, setting, and time to elaborate Emily's resistance to change and the conflict between the past and the present. In addition, Faulkner uses these elements to illustrate the power of death, which prevailes even when Emily refuses to acknowledge it. Even though the events do not appear chronologically in the story, the author's use of words helps the reader organize the scenes in order to make sense. Furthermore, the author's description of Emily, her house, and the people who lived around her makes it easy for the reader to understand secrets that are hidden in the story. The use of imagery and figurative language also help the reader to understand the extended meaning that is conveyed by the author, and create visual images in the mind.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, and Writing Compact 7th Edition. Boston: Waldsmorth, 2010. 209-215
Faulkner uses the modern short story form and A Rose for Emily can be put into the category of an "epiphanic" short story as described by Thomas M.Leitch . This is because the story comes to a "climatic revelation" without having a specific plot line with "purposive agents." Faulkner also writes close to the form of the short story as you can definitely read it in one sitting and he concentrates on a brief time span. This allows him to provide us with a deeper look at Emily and the society that surrounded her in a microcosm of what Faulkner witnessed happening to many Southern aristocrats. We know Emily is an aristocrat because of her behaviour towards the issue of tax, as she believes she is above paying because she is a "Grierson.
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
It can be observed that Emily, the protagonist of the story, never truly held herself to the same standards as her community. Also, that her community only tolerated her behavior because of who her father was to the town. (FAulkner) In the case of A Rose for Emily, the society rejects the individual, and even further isolates her a little more with every rebellious or questionable action she takes. In the story, Faulkner chooses to write Emily’s actions in a scattered way so that we don’t get the complete picture until the end of the story. This allows us to be able to see her in the way her town did. From Faulkner’s writing style, it can also be observed that the town isolated her and as a result of the isolation, rejected her from their
One of the only notable features in the book is when the townspeople observed a head on the second pillow in Ms. Emily's bed: "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair." This demonstrates how a dead body has been living with Ms. Emily for a very long time. Clearly, the author wishes to show how insane Ms. Emily is for laying next to a dead body for a long time. In this instance, the author expresses how much of a strange person Ms. Emily is for living with a dead
Faulkner’s writing style is not the typical writing style that authors often use. Stated by Houghton, “...Some of his novels ' narrative techniques are also present in the stories and include extended descriptions and details, actions in one scene that then recall a past or future scene, and complex sentence structure”. His gender has no influence whatsoever in his writing, his purpose is to mirror the complexity of the characters and issues within the short stories. “A Rose for Emily” is one of his many stories in which he establishes the depth of the settings and characters. He compliments an object and a character together. In “A Rose for Emily” Miss Emily has passed away and the whole town is aware of the tragedy, as a narrator Faulkner uses is complementing style to show that the house in which she lived in and her are inseparable and now that she is gone so is the house. He describes both the house and Emily, “And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows”(Faulkner#PT4) and Miss Emily, “She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of
William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” commemorates the bizarre and pitiful life of Miss Emily Grierson, an isolated woman overcome by desperation and fixated on the past. An unnamed member of this southern community narrates the pivotal events in Emily’s life that contribute to the development of her character and ultimately her psychotic act depicted in the story’s final scene. Time is a crucial element within the story. Not only are the events told out of sequence, but Emily herself seems out of place in modern times and she is lost in the past. During the progression of the story, the reader encounters three major symbols- the house, the bodies, and the watch-all of which Faulkner effectively uses to reveal the story’s central
William Faulkner's use of setting and description foreshadows and builds up to the view of the story “Arose for Emily”. Faulkner uses symbols that will prepares the reader for the touching ending. A great way to keep the readers on their toes. Make them think before the story state what will happen next. Death and being lost is the main theme of the story. Everything in the story can be seen as a symbol of death from the house to the rose at the end of the story. Death and flash back is what can be seen clearly in this story. She couldn’t let go of her past and tried to hang on to it throughout the story. Faulkner has carefully created a complicated work of art, also he uses setting, description, and theme to move it along.
...olism, and conflicts in William Faulkner’s “ A Rose for Emily” the theme that one must change within time and let go of the past is introduced. Faulkner uses these literary tools to illustrate that refusal to change can lead to deterioration of self. Miss Emily, in this case, resisted changes in extreme ways ultimately her reluctance to changes brought horrific consequences to herself and her loved one. “ A Rose for Emily” teaches moral lesson that life is filled with instabilities. People, places and things change all the time. If we keep holding on to the past, it will only cause us more pain. We might lose many things from the process of letting go. However, by letting go of the old life, we can gain a better future. Sometimes one must forget what is gone, appreciate things that are still remaining, and looking forward for something better that will come along.