“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a suspenseful story not only because of its complex chronology and shocking ending, but also because of Faulkner’s unusual use of narrative technique. While the narrator is seen by many as a windows pane or mirror upon Emily’s life, there is more to the narrator than simply being an unnamed speaker or collective town voice. The rather unusual narrative perspective creates suspense and a sense of mystery as to the identity of the unnamed narrator, seemingly representing a collective town voice; furthermore, the narrative perspective significantly influences the characterisation of Emily. In this paper, I am going to deal with the following questions: Who is the narrator? What is his relation to Emily? …show more content…
When first reading it, the narrator comes across as a collective town voice, as he/she speaks for the whole town and tells us the gossip and ideas of the town people. He does so in a very detached way, as he is not commenting on the information he is giving us. However, it is obvious that the narrator is a member of this town, as he is using personal pronouns like “we” and “our”. Furthermore, one might get the impression that the narrator is all-knowing because he seems to know many things that he could only know if he either experienced the events himself or is omniscient. For example, on page 121 in the first paragraph, the narrator describes a visit of the Board of Aldermen at Miss Emily’s. When referring to these men, the narrator uses the pronoun “they”, rather than “we”, as he usually does. This means that he is not one of those men who visit Emily. But his precise knowledge about many details of this meeting leads to the assumption that he must be either all-knowing or – if he is not one of the men of the Board of Aldermen – he is another character present. This could be a first hint to the narrator’s real identity. Except for the men of the Board of Aldermen and Miss Emily, there was only one more person present: Tobe, Miss Emily’s black …show more content…
The title “A Rose for Emily” would suggest that something positive is going to happen to Emily, as a rose stands for beauty, youth, and love. However, the whole story is about all the terrible events and misfortunes that happen to Emily. So, one could say that the narrator talks about all the ‘thorns’ handed to Emily. In fact, the narrator confesses to all the town’s crimes against Emily. It starts right at the beginning of the story, when the narrator tells us about her funeral and the reasons, why the town people attend her funeral: “the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house” (Faulkner 119). This suggests that the people are not sad about her death, but rather feel obliged or have other selfish reasons to attend her funeral. Next, they blame her and her black housekeeper for the unpleasant smell that developed around her house. But instead of talking to her, they decide to solve the matter on their own and so they went to her house “like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and the cellar openings” (Faulkner 123) and then they even “broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there” (Faulkner 123), which is an actual crime. But the town people never get punished for it, on the contrary – the smell even goes away. Until the end of the story, according to the narrator, the town people never do
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a short story that describes the tradition and how it implements people through the idea of death. The protagonist Emily gave into the concept of death the minute her father passed away. Death prevented Emily from pursuing the greater things in life. On the long run, she died of a broken heart because of her father's death and regret. Faulkner presents an argument based of feminism and the nature of broken women. This short story covers the significance of the pursuing of happiness. Emily Garrison struggles to maintain her tradition and the rich status of her family in her small community. However, time change and Emily become a disgrace to her community when she was not married about the age of thirty.
Desperation for love arising from detachment can lead to extreme measures and destructive actions as exhibited by the tumultuous relationships of Miss Emily in William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily” (rpt. in Thomas R. Arp and Greg Johnson, Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 9th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2006] 556). Miss Emily is confined from society for the majority of her life by her father, so after he has died, she longs for relations that ironically her longing destroys. The despondency and obsession exuded throughout the story portray the predicament at hand.
"A Rose for Emily" is a wonderful short story written by William Faulkner. It begins with at the end of Miss Emily’s life and told from an unknown person who most probably would be the voice of the town. Emily Grierson is a protagonist in this story and the life of her used as an allegory about the changes of a South town in Jefferson after the civil war, early 1900's. Beginning from the title, William Faulkner uses symbolism such as house, Miss Emily as a “monument “, her hair, Homer Barron, and even Emily’s “rose” to expresses the passing of time and the changes. The central theme of the story is decay in the town, the house, and in Miss Emily herself. It shows the way in which we all grow old and decay and there is nothing permanent
In light of Homers feelings toward marriage Emily had been seen in town at the jewelers purchasing a men’s toilet set in silver with the letters H.B. on each
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.
The point of view of the story is a third person. The amount of information the reader knows would be somewhat that of a typical townsperson, since we do not find out right away what is really going on inside of the house, or have a deep view into Miss Emily’s feelings. From this point of view, we see things as how they would appear to a townsperson or viewer.
William Faulkner is a well-known author, whose writing belongs in the Realism era in the American Literary Canon. His writing was influence by his Southern upbringing, often setting his stories in the fictional Southern town, Yoknapatawpha County. “A Rose for Emily” was one of Faulkner’s first published pieces and displays many of the now signature characteristics of Faulkner’s writing. The short story provides commentary through the use of many symbols. In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, the author uses the townspeople as a representation of societal expectations and judgments, Emily and her house as symbols for the past, and Homer’s corpse as a physical representation of the fear of loneliness.
In the story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner makes use of a point of view that is seldom used in literature. He uses first-person plural narration to tell the tale through an unnamed character's point of view. Although the narration comes from the first-person point of view, the narrator often uses pronouns that are usually associated with third-person such as “they”, “she”, and so forth. Also, through an unconventional, yet brilliant manipulation of point of view, Faulkner was able to create a definitive impact on how the readers view and think about Ms. Emily Grierson. The pronouns and diction used by narrator, who collectively is representative of the thoughts of the townspeople, demonstrated the isolative nature surrounding Ms. Grierson,
In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner escorts the reader through the peculiar life of the main character Miss Emily Grierson. The gloomy tone of the story is set by the author beginning his tale with the funeral of Miss Emily. During course of the story, we are taken through different times in Miss Emily’s life and how she was lost in time, with the town around her moving forward. Through the use of southern gothic writing style, narrator point of view, and foreshadowing, Faulkner aids the reader in creating a visualization of Miss Emily and the town in which she lives while also giving an insight into her sanity.
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.
A suspenseful tale of tradition versus change is told with the help of literary elements in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily. Foreshadowing and symbolism develop Emily’s tragic fate in a way the reader is exposed to how deeply death and sociatal change have effected Miss Emily. Faulkner displays how effective these elements are for a short story to truly have an impact on the
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
A narrative voice is the heart of a story, it is the one that determines many important things about what is happening and can even have the potential to convert the reader in protagonists of the story. In this story “A Rose for Emily “ by William Faulkner the narrative voice is causing confusion on the reader because have many voices distilled into one . Many times, it seems that he/she knows everything that is happening and that he was very close to the protagonist Emily and at other times seems a complete stranger. It is not easy for the reader to determine the gender of the narrator, and even to imagine it is extremely complex. Faulkner develop in this story is genre Gothic Fiction, whit this unexpected narrator and whit
When she was just about to give up, the teacher came into the butterfly room and saw Tommy chasing after the butterflies. He had not noticed that everyone had been gone and was very surprised when his teacher ran up to him. The teacher was so relieved to have found him, and she could not stop hugging him. When they got back on the bus, everyone was very excited to see Tommy, and they were all glad that he was safe. They went and got him his food then raced back home to tell everyone the good news. When everyone back home found out what had happened, they were upset with the teacher, but their anger soon wore off. They realized that it could have happened to any of them, and they forgave the teacher. They all had a big party to celebrate everyone
“Who is the narrator? Not a single person because Faulkner uses a first- person plural point of view, "we"; that "we" is townspeople, but only such as are in position to watch Miss Emily constantly for fifty or sixty years; they are anonymous townspeople, for neither names nor sexes nor occupations are given” (Sullivan, 160).