A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose For Emily”, there are a few themes and symbols that are the most significant. The main character, Emily Grierson, is used to display the struggle against change while trying to keep old traditions alive. Emily’s house is a perfect symbol of old traditions. The theme of death is also displayed, as death seems to just follow Emily throughout her life. At the end of the short story, something as simple as a piece of long, gray hair becomes a huge symbol of the story, answering many questions for the community and, of course, the readers.

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.

In the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner, the reader recognizes the harsh reality of a woman’s inability to open up to a new and ever changing world. Emily Grierson is a lonely, mysterious woman, who lives with her father in a large, post civil war era home. Emily’s father was a controlling man and sent away each man that tried to court Emily. All Emily inherited after her father’s death was the house. However the town thought she had the right to “cling to that which had robbed her.”(Faulkner 311) Things started to look better for Emily when she met a handsome northerner.

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer, born on September 25, 1897 in Oxford, Mississippi. He died on July 6, 1962, of a heart attack. Faulkner is credited with many literary works including novels, short stories and poetry. He had a tendency to focus his writings on families, time, sex, the past and the south where he was born. He created voices for children, criminals, the mentally unstable and the dead (Faulkner, 2013). In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” he elucidates the effect of time versus tradition and looking at the world in a vividly obscured view through symbolic representations anchored to a rose and a house.

“A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner, is a story about a lonely upper-class woman who is struggling with life and the traditions in the Old South. Besides the effective use of literary techniques, such as symbolism and a first plural-person narrative style, Faulkner also succeeds in creating a suspenseful and mysterious story by the use of foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a device used to give hints about what is going to happen in a story without giving the ending away, which also allows the reader to become completely involved with the story and predict the outcome of the overall work. Foreshadowing gave a powerful description about death and the tragic struggle of Miss Emily and in general, the use of this technique often relates to the events in the story rather than to describe a character. The overpowering stench inside Miss Emily’s home, the second floor of the residence being completely closed away and the discovery of the iron grey hair when the bedroom door finally opened up, are all strong foreshadowing tactics that were used to achieve such a surprising and strong but also believable ending to such a twisted story. Faulkner’s use of foreshadowing is used ingeniously to achieve a shocking and powerful ending.

In William’s Faulkner story, “A Rose for Emily”, vivid imagery is used to describe the mysterious life of Emily Grierson. Emily Grierson, the main character, is portrayed as a mentally disturbed individual who is pitied among her community. In the story Emily Grierson exhibited behavior that would lead one to think she was insane. The main reason to Emily’s behavior comes from how her father treated her when he was alive. Emily’s father felt none of the “young men were quite good enough” for his daughter, therefore he kept her in the house and under his wing at all times. With this self-centeredness her dad annulled all desires of bliss for Emily leaving her stuck into her dad’s reality with no way out. This sort of family environment for women was normal in southern society. Emily’s constant isolation and deprivation of love contributed to the murder of her lover Homer Barron. Often described as a “fallen monument”, Emily is a convention, unfalteringly remaining the same throughout the years withstanding many changes in her town. Although, Emily is distant from the world she is someone people wish to regard and respect. Even though the people in her in community respect her she is mostly seen as a burden with a peculiar lifestyle.

Society must come up with a different way of judging people. The amount of people that get judged without fully understanding someone is unreal. People have their own experiences throughout their lives that makes them different, and society must come to terms in understanding everyone before they judge. In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner, people within the town attempted to understand Miss Emily’s struggles and tried to judge her accordingly. Throughout the story Miss Emily Grierson struggled as a developing character with many internal conflicts.

Readers can often times find that fiction starts prosaically, but ends unpredictably as shown in the short story “A Rose for Emily,” written by William Faulkner. This fictional story is an example of Gothic literature about the Antebellum South. It is narrated by an unreliable male character who represents the townspeople. It might seem like Miss Emily is the protagonist, however, the narrator and the townspeople are really the protagonists who stand for the force of the community. The narrator and the townspeople act on Miss Emily and her desire by denying her desire for love. In the portrayal of the Miss Emily’s role, the reader can see the conflict between her fantasy on love and the town’s fantasy on her. Miss Emily’s pursuit of her dreams, illusion, and community’s dysfunctional values lead to her destruction.

In the short story A Rose for Emily written by William Faulkner narrates a story of a woman’s life, death, and funeral. The short story is separated into five sections in which each section starts in a different manner. In the first section it depicts Emily Grierson’s funeral at her house in which no one had entered in ten years. In this section we also learn that the town’s previous mayor, Colonel Sartoris, had taken Emily’s tax duties to the city after her father died; mitigating the action by stating that her father had once loaned the community an exuberant amount. When it was time for new town leaders, they did not necessarily see eye to eye with Mrs. Grierson, in which they made several unsuccessful attempts to start paying taxes again. Soon the members of the board went to her house to talk with Emily, she then asserted she does not have to pay taxes in Jefferson. In the second section the narrator flashes back to about thirty years prior to her funeral. The main point in this section is the town’s people feel Emily will become reclusive. Her father just died and the man whom Emily was to marry just left her. It was to be said that the Griersons thought too highly of themselves, because Emily’s father drove away any man that seemed reasonable to marry his daughter. The day after her father’s death, Emily is met by the women of her town at her doorstep, the women wanted to give their condolences, when this happened Emily responded with her father was not dead. She

The way that “A Rose for Emily” fits into the genre of Southern Gothic literature is obvious in the mood of the story. The mood of this story has a rather volatile, grim setting with the house that is deteriorating and the festering body. This exhibits the struggle that the character Miss Emily is facing against a society that is rather oppressive.

William Faulkner is one amazing writing ,who is known for his many short stories .However, many has wondered what has influenced him in writing these stories . Like his well known, most famous short story “A Rose for Emily”, which has always been compared to “Barn Burning”, one of Faulkner’s other short story. It only make sense to compare them two together because these two stories has may similarities , whether it may be in setting , characters or style they favor each other . Nevertheless they also have many differences too, which make them even more interesting and unique. This paper is going to explore all those aspects including Faulkner’s past, to get a clear idea of how different yet similar these two stories are.

William Faulkner was a native of Mississippi who was born in New Albany on September 25, 1897. Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi as English major student 1919. He completed three semesters before dropping out of college in November 1920. During the time of 1929-1936 Faulkner wrote several novels, was a Nobel Prize winner and a literature writer, and until his death, he was infatuated by the south. One of his greatest short stories, “A Rose for Emily” is one of Faulkner’s novels that keep up with his theme of the south, but it mostly centers around the theme of death.

“A Rose for Emily” is a fictional short story written by William Faulkner, a Nobel Laurette of the American South. The story takes place in a fictional city of Jefferson, Mississippi. Faulkner portrays Emily, the main character in the short story “A Rose for Emily” as a strong, stubborn woman who spends most of her life indoors in her house built in the seventies and leaves the people of her town in assumptions. At first, people of the town are curious to know about her; as time passes by, they lose interest in her story. She denied paying her taxes; she overlooked every mail that was sent to her at the end of the year about the taxes. She repeatedly says, “I have no taxes in Jefferson.” She denies the changes in her life, which makes no sense because there is life after every storm and death is the master.

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize winner from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner has wrote many short stories, novels, screenplay, essays and this exquisite piece of literature “a rose for Emily.” An high-born woman deeply respected by a community that places her on a higher standard and sees her as "a queen " (in a way) In contrast to the community's view, Then we eventually see that she puts a hazards chemical which is very poisonous and kills, Homer Barron, but she also insist on keeping his rotted body for many years to come. The ending of the story emphasizes the length of time Miss Emily must have slept with her dead lover: long enough for the people in town to find "a long strand of gray hair" lying on the pillow next to "what was left of him,

William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Faulkner lived in Mississippi; where he went to college for two years after World War 1. An analysis of William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” uses character to show how everyone overlooks Emily as a suspect of the murder of Homer Barron by showing that people felt sorry for her, people thought she was suicidal, and her appearance.