Theme Of Flashback In A Rose For Emily

In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose For Emily,” Faulkner strategically employs the technique of foreshadowing to suggest to the reader the outcome of the story. Faulkner uses the technique telling this story in flashback, by an unnamed narrator. This point of view allows Faulkner to insert certain small details or clues for the reader to connect the beginning of the story to the final outcome. What may seem like a surprise to reader was, in reality, the only possible ending that Faulkner had intended to have throughout the story. One of the first sentences about Miss Emily is that “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care.” When the tale of Miss Emily is being read for the first time, the reader may not even notice the clue hidden by Faulkner in this sentence. The start of the description begins with the word “alive”, meaning that after Miss Emily’s death she was no longer viewed in this way by the town of Jefferson. The placement of this word is done to inexplicitly prepare the reader for the gruesome outcome of the old woman they thought this story was about.
The narrator also describes the house she lived in vividly. The morbid and lifeless image of her house provided by Faulkner is

By playing close attention to every detail of Miss Emily it becomes evident that the ending of the story is the only plausible one. Faulkner tells the saddening and sickening condition of Miss Emily after the death of her father not to make the reader feel sympathy for her but for the reader to acknowledge that Miss Emily may not be the mentally sound old woman that they predicted. Telling of a woman that stays with a dead body for three days shows the reader a character that is capable of being somewhat insane and incapable of letting