A Rose For Emily Narrator Essay

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.

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?

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.

Why do other people’s opinions affect ours? Every time you hear another person’s perspective yours is effected in even the slightest bit. In stories or novels, the narrator is the one who affects our perspective with their own. The narrator in a ‘Rose for Emily’ is a perfect example of a perspective changing ours. In the short story by William Faulkner, the narrator approaches the story in his own perspective, which affects the reader's reception of the story. This is shown through diction and characterization.

Many critics have claimed that the narrator is not a member of the community, but a person who had been told the story. However in my opinion this is not possible at all as in the story we have several dialogues, we have the words that the characters said. So it is very difficult to believe that the story has been told from generation to generation and we have the exact words said by Miss Emily or some of the inhabitants in Jefferson.

Communication is what connects billions of people around the world. Industries are built on improving technology for sharing information; however, there were much simpler times. News spread through the gossip of townspeople before the creation of cellphones or the Internet. Speculation often caused miscommunication that could harm one’s character and create a negative atmosphere. The first person point of view in “A Rose for Emily” sways the reader to believe the narrator when he or she recounts the downfall of Emily Grierson, but the erratic storytelling indicates the mental instability of the narrator.

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

Another prime example of Faulkner's effective writing is his use of narration. Of course, in most stories the narrator is a key asset. In :A Rose for Emily" Faulkner uses the narrator not only as a story teller, but as an observer from the crowd as well. The narrator's point of view, which is third person, had a positive effect on the way a reader views the story. "Through out the story the narrator uses "we" instead of I revealing to us the way the townspeople judge Emily" (Madden 1988). The narrator thinks back in time throughout the story remembering particular events that occurred in the past. This is important to the reader in that it helps aid the understanding of how the townspeople viewed Emily. The narrator as one of the townspeople viewed Miss Emily as impervious, tranquil, and perverse. If the story had been narrated by anyone else, it may not have been as easy for the reader to completely understand. "With this spectator as the narrator, describing the events of the story through his eyes, one can detect a general impression of Emily" (Madden 1987). The view of the narrator is beneficial in understanding the things that Emily goes through. Also toward the end of the story the narrator gives the reader a feeling if sorrow and pity for Emily. It is apparent Faulkner's use of narration is critical to the enhancement and clarification of the "A Rose for Emily." After analyzing the

Even the townspeople assume that she is going to kill herself so they call a Baptist minister to personally speak with Emily. The minister tried his best to help but he couldn’t so his wife writes to Emily’s two cousins that live in

Faulkner’s narrative choice to present this incident at the beginning of the story allows the audience to intertwine their feelings of sympathy for Miss Emily with those of the distaste on would feel in for someone who treated them as she treated her guests. Additionally the reader becomes more observant of the tone and attitude Miss Emily has towards other people. This short, cold ability to intimidate people into doing as she wishes is something that continually developed as she became older. Furthermore, when this was combined with her status as a “high and mighty Grierson” (page 392 Norton) the townspeople never seemed to be able to confront her about any sort of insubordination she was the source of.

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

The author was very objective on how he wanted the story to develop. Both the reader and the narrator discovered the truth at the end when the secret was revealed. Only author Faulkner new the mystery in this story. A far as who the narrator was, Faulkner made it almost impossible for us to decipher, but thanks to literature experts, we made it possible to discover the narrator as close to our availability. The narrator in A Rose for Emily was not an archaic consciousness, nor Emily’s ghost. The narrator is an important person in town that observed Emily for three generations and gathered information from people in town. Therefore, the narrator is a first person plural point of

It was still a very important matter for the townsfolk, that Emily’s father had cruelly interfered in Emily's happiness, and even the town’ people additionally isolated her out of concern and disgust. Everybody pitied Emily, even though, that was lots completely different than the way they could charm her. Maybe the last scene was a verification of her last saying about life.

The point of view of each story is told from a firsthand account of the events that occur. In “A Rose for Emily,” the story is told from an outsider’s point of view, someone who has watched and observed all that is written down. Perhaps the narrator is one of Emily’s past lovers or someone who has heard these stories simply from small town gossip. Either way, we immediately trust this narrator because they are speaking directly to the reader. Faulkner uses words such as “we” and “everybody,” a communal point of view. In doing so, the narrator automatically appears to be more reliable because this is what “everybody” thinks.