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A Rose For Emily Narrator Essay

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Narration can be used to manipulate a story. The author chooses who and how a story is told. It can manipulate the reader’s views of characters and situations in the story. The point of view that “A Rose for Emily” was written in was third person. It served as a collective town voice and let the reader in on the thoughts and opinions the townspeople had on Miss Emily. This type of narration can be used to detach a reader from the story or characters, but in Faulkner’s case he wrote it in a way that the narrator is slowly pushing us to feel empathy for Miss Emily. The narrator is an unidentified voice that seems to work as a collective voice for the townspeople. The narrator is unbiased and gives out the town gossip with no side note on his/her thoughts. The reader can then take the information and do with it what they please. The unbiased thoughts can bring us closer to Miss Emily. They let us hear her story from an outsider’s view and we as readers are making up our own thoughts and opinions on Miss Emily as we read through the flashbacks of the story. The narrator conveys his/her disgust in the way they look at Miss Emily through the opening line of the story. “The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen …show more content…

The narrator uses he said, she said type of voice when talking about the town gossip about Miss Emily. In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner writes, “ So the next day we all said, ‘She will kill herself.” We had said, “She will marry him.” Then we said, “She will persuade him yet.”.” [35] I see that the way the narrator presents the information he or she does not side with the gossip all the time. Seeing that can make us as readers feel empathy for Miss Emily. Having rumors and gossip sent around about yourself could be quite upsetting, and for that we feel compassion for Miss Emily, just like the Narrator

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