Nick Melczarek

Nature of the Narrator
Article Summary #1
In Nick Melczarek’s Narrative Motivation In Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, Melczarek explores Faulkner’s selected narration style in his short story, A Rose for Emily. Melczarek considers it Faulkner’s “most ingenious narrative innovations: a first-person-plural narrator.” He also explores the narrator’s suspicion of Homer’s murder while questioning the lack of implication that the neither the narrator nor the townsfolk took towards Emily. Melczarek goes on to ponder why the “story’s narrator goes unquestioned while obsessing over and interfering in Emily Grierson’s life, but the same narrator finds it impossible even to face what the townspeople’s own evidence allows careful readers to detect: their

He follows this up with his analysis of the underlying themes while also discussing the narration style. Skei discusses how A Rose for Emily “ is the first story about Faulkner’s townspeople in any real sense, and it is the first story in which a community point-of-view—through a first-person plural narrator, a “we”—is used with easy mastery and without any of the limitations that a first-person, outside narration may entail.” Skei continues with an in depth breakdown of the viewpoints used throughout the story. He wraps it up a conclusion that this short story is “another instance of man in conflict with his heart, or with his fellows, or with his

The author introduces the idea of “dead time” and the role it plays in the development of Faulkner’s story. Harris describes “dead time” as “a synthetic form or groundless foundation of time that lies moribund at the hollowed out core of the story.” He reflects on Faulkner’s technique for beginning the story with the funeral, followed by details from Emily’s past as a child, as an adult and even as an elderly lady, while still following the story of the mystery that surrounded Emily’s life in the mentioned years. Harris mentions that A Rose for Emily “is consistently punctuated by indicators of historical change...But on another level, the narrative consistently confuses the chronological order of these events.” Harris reflects on Faulkner’s ability to keep his reader suspended in the “peripheral zone of the timeline” which further helps to maintain the reader’s interest. Harris continues on with the effect this had on the theme of the story and Faulkner’s knack for entertaining his