“A Rose for Emily” is a piece about a southern, aristocrat woman who becomes increasingly less stable as she ages. Emily lives a more secluded and a more interesting life than the other people in her town. The narrator of the piece plays a large role in the meaning of the story and contributes to the overall whole of the story in various ways. We get to see Emily’s life from not only the narrator’s personal point of view but also from the viewpoint of the entire town. The way that the narrator structures the piece contributes to the overall meaning as well. To start, the narrator contributes to the overall meaning of the piece by telling Emily’s story in a different kind of structure. Instead of explaining Emily’s life in the order in …show more content…
In part two, the narrator starts telling about a strange smell …show more content…
The narrator writing as a bystander and as a regular person of the town lets us see Emily’s life from a more personal point of view, as well as all the opinions and assumptions that the people make about Emily. The people of the town make assumptions about the smell coming from Emily’s house, about Homer Barron, and about the poison that Emily buys. They also assume that “she will kill herself”, “she will marry him,” and that “she will persuade him yet.” Another effect of the narrator writing from a first person perspective is that we see, along with the people of the town, how Emily doesn’t leave her house. For example, the narrator writes, “a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol.” This adds to the gothic scene of the story because we see Emily as creepy and secluded from the alive town. From these personal assumptions and opinions of the town, we can feel sorry for Emily and we can see how secluded and lonely her life really is. Again, because of the assumptions and opinions of the narrator and the townspeople it becomes more understandable why Emily killed
In the end, with her death, which is where the story begins, Miss Emily is the talk of the town. Not because people truly mourn her, but because people are curious about the life she had lived in secret, in her big house, for all those years. People pitied her, it was as had been left alone in the world and seemed to have wished it that way.
Meyer, Michael. "A Rose for Emily." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. Ninth ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. 84-90. Print.
2) What does the title of the story suggest about the townspeople’s feelings toward Miss Emily? Why do they feel this way about her? (Or: What does she represent to them?) Is there anything ironic about their feelings?
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.
William Faulkner has done a wonderful work in his essay “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner uses symbols, settings, character development, and other literary devices to express the life of Emily and the behavior of the people of Jefferson town towards her. By reading the essay, the audience cannot really figure out who the narrator is. It seems like the narrator can be the town’s collective voice. The fact that the narrator uses collective pronoun we supports the theory that the narrator is describing the life of “Miss Emily” on behalf of the townspeople. Faulkner has used the flashback device in his essay to make it more interesting. The story begins with the portrayal of Emily’s funeral and it moves to her past and at the end the readers realize that the funeral is a flashback as well. The story starts with the death of Miss Emily when he was seventy-four years old and it takes us back when she is a young and attractive girl.
In Faulkner's story, an onlooker tells of the peculiar events that occurred during Miss Emily's life. The author never lets the reader understand Emily's side to the story. Instead, the reader is forced to guess why Emily is as strange as she is. In the story, Emily had harbored her father's dead body in her house for three days (par. 27). The reader is told of how the town looked upon what Emily had done, but the reader is never able to fully understand Emily's actions until the end of the story.
Throughout the story, “A Rose for Emily” the narrator tells the story from an unnamed narrator's perspective while sharing the town's feelings. This makes the reader feel immersed in the town they are reading about
The narrators talks about the conflict between Emily and the “new generation” on the tax notices they send and she is not willing to pay due to theColonel Sartoris, the town’s previous mayor who suspended Emily`s tax after her father`s death, because once he had loaned to the city. In the next section, it is flashbacked thirty years ago. The time when her father has already dead and she has just abandoned by her beloved man. In section three and four, after her father`s death, the summer after. She was sick for a long time. The streets were being paved by new contracts with a northerner, Homer Baren who was Emily`s beloved. She poisoned and murdered him. Many years passes until her death. And in the last section, it is the funeral ceremony taking place and after when the secret is revealed after forty years when Homer was disappeared.According to Schwab, William Faulkner told the story after Emily's death in a series of flashbacks to show time standing still for Emily.The narrator seeks through the character`s mind and shifts the sign as an element of a modernism text. Another remarkable form of writing which is significant form of modernism text is the use first person narration while it is not usually seen in the traditional ones.
The story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner would be drastically different if it was written from the point of view of Miss Emily. Her intentions and thoughts would be more pronounced, and because of this, the ending of the story may not come as such a shock. In addition, Miss Emily would be less distanced from the audience, and they would be able to understand her character in a way that the townspeople could not. Miss Emily being the narrator would immensely change the reader’s perception of the story’s ending and her character.
The story "A Rose for Emily" is one of first William Faulkner’s publications. The action of this story takes place in a time filled with social and political turmoil, when Southern came into a historical lethargy, and when its glow start faded. The elements presented in "A Rose for Emily" make reference to that time and are a tribute to Mss. Emily Graiser. A dominant tone is shown by a footprint of the past and loneliness to which was added symbolism and melancholia. The author showed us through his words issue of life, love and death, a sensitivity which gets us closer of characters' life and struggles.
“A Rose for Emily” is a Southern Gothic short story written by William Faulkner. The main character, Miss Emily Grierson, has a story and personality that can be analyzed from many different viewpoints. Focusing more on the psychological perspective, Miss Emily is very erratic and idiosyncratic in behavior. She isolates herself in her home and locks up her house to prevent anyone from coming in. Her home hides many secrets, but the one that stands out the most is the corpse of Homer Barron, Miss Emily’s lover. For years, Miss Emily has lived and slept with the corpse, which was unknown for many years by all the townspeople. After this is discovered, Miss Emily’s mental health and stability became the main topic of interest to both the townspeople and the readers of this story.
It is a fact, that the narrator makes judgments both for and against the protagonist and also present outsides observations when he stays “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition , a duty , and a care ; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town “(Faulkner,82) being this to emphasize the responsibility that the people of the town felt whit her and stays also his point pf view in the situation . The narrator is sympathetic to Miss Emily, never condemning her actions. Sometimes unabashedly and sometimes grudgingly, the narrator admires her ability to use her aristocratic bearing in order to vanquish the members of the city and an example is when she go to buy the arsenic and the druggist ask her to tell him for what she is going to use it ,and she just look him eye to eye and the man go and give her the arsenic without ask her anything else . As we could see it is hard to determine the gender of the narrative voice because is talking as the people and never use a word for describe himself . He uses the words “we” and “they” and changes it continuously because he does not want to be involved in all the things the community did and he is blaming the community for Emily’s behavior. Faulkner uses the perfect kind of narrator for develop his genre , a mysterious and creepy narrative voice to develop
In "A Rose for Emily", a woman (for whom the story is named) confines herself in her somewhat large house in a small town during the early half of the twentieth century. For the most part, in order to understand the entirety of the story, it is vital to understand the setting and how each character develops it, and,or, interacts with it.
The narrator serves a variety of purpose in “A Rose for Emily”. As previously stated, the narrator forces the reader down the alternate route and, by disrupting the timeline, creates
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the story is revolved around the character Emily Grierson. The story is told by the townspeople where Emily lives. These people are attending her funeral and pitching in memories and tales they remember from Emily’s life. It is through the collective voices and opinions of the crowd that the reader is able to interpret Emily’s struggles. With Emily Grierson’s choices the reader can tell that she is a dependant woman, with psychotic tendencies, and does not take the thought of change and rejection lightly.