Literary Elements in A Rose For Emily Essay

In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily’s house is a commemoration of the only remaining emblem of a dying world of Southern aristocracy. Faulkner wrote “It was big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated … in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies…” (217). When the story takes place, much has changed. The street and neighborhood, at one time affluent, pristine, and privileged, are no longer standing as the realm of the elite. He wrote about the old house that she lived in, “… only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps…” (Faulkner 217). The house is an extension of Emily: baring its persistent and coquettish decay to the entire town’s people. It now seems out of place among the cotton wagons, gasoline pumps, and other industrial embellishments that surround it—just as the South’s old values are out of place in a changing society. Emily’s house represents three haunting truths about Emily such as alienation, mental illness, and death. It is a

“Like Miss Emily it stands “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay” alone amidst alien surroundings. When the town complains about the smell emanating from the house, the judge equates house and woman: “Will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” Miss Emily becomes a fallen woman where she lived in a house that had “once been white… set on what had once been our most select street…lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps an eyesore among eyesores.” The house, like Miss Emily, has fallen from purity and like Miss Emily it is an eyesore, for

“Only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores.” Once, before the war this house was one of the most prized houses in the town, everyone was jealous of it, everyone wished they had it. After the war the house started to deteriorate, Miss Emily couldn't

Emily 's house represents old southern ideas because it sits on an plantation which as her family were once prominet slave owners. Although both stories involve creepy old structures, the setting in Faulkner 's story is specific to the South.

The most important thing in the story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner is the symbolic. Emily Grierson grows up in the environment that lacks of society and courtship because of her father. Emily’s life is symbolic of lacking communicate, fear of death. And Emily’s home is the symbolic of her past as well.

There are a multitude of disturbing facts in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” but some are more chilling than others. While the necrophilia and murder might take the cake on the creepiest aspect of the story, there is another that is less popular but very creepy. The story “A Rose for Emily” is from first-person perspective but this person somehow attains the most private information of Emily or other characters. Often times the narrator will refer to the townsfolk as “we,” giving them an identity that links them with the others. But this narrator’s knowledge of the town and people is not something a regular member of the town would know and sends chills down the spines of the readers.

“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.

As “A rose for Emily” by Williams Faulkner is read, it is really questionable as to what is really going on in the story. It is one of those story’s that allows people to think about what is going to happen throughout and during the end of the story because it’s hard to determine where the author is wanting to take his readers. It is really just a story about how depressing of a life Emily has until you reach the very last section of the story and then everything comes together and the story finally makes sense as to why the author wrote the story how he did. People don’t expect the story to turn out like it does because the story comes off in a different manner than how the story winds up in the end.

In “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner presents very disturbing instances and events that lead up to a shocking ending. Throughout the story, the narrator gives just enough information about Miss Emily’s past and present that leaves suspense until the very end. Miss Emily’s hardships throughout her life lead up to a mental breakdown. The author combines various literary elements to produce a brilliant and compelling short story. In his short story, “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner makes good use of foreshadowing, character traits, point of view, and setting to illustrate the toll grief can take on one’s mental health.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Rose for Emily,” the townspeople visit Emily Grierson’s house because it smells bad. Thirty years before this, her father has died and she states he is not dead. The town is calling the law to make her give up the body. She keeps the body in her house for three days then gives it up.

The Reason for my choice of story for “A Rose for Emily” to keep in the class curriculum is because, throughout the whole story, the Author presents the reader with a sense of themes to learn from by the end of the story. There’s more theme shown to us throughout the story by these three themes are the ones who stuck out to me the most. The themes presented to you are tradition vs progress, isolation, and memory and the past. The first theme that presents its self is tradition vs progress.

There are different components that come to play when writing a good story, amongst those, setting is considered one of the most important and significant. Settings refer to time, place, social and religious environment that permits the reader to understand the characters better. In the case of William Faulkner’s story “A rose for Emily” and James Joyce’s “Eveline” settings is crucial, because the readers would not understand the characters reactions and action without first, through settings, get a grasp of their way of life. These two stories have many differences and similarities in their settings, the main purpose of this essay is to distinguish and explain those similarities and differences.

This relates back to when Emily was young, she was full of youth and beautiful. As time passed “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left.”, but when her father died, Miss Emily’s life took a turn for the worse. After her father’s death, Emily became more of shut in, which was reflected in the house, “ The house itself was secluded from the town, much like she was. When she became old and ill, so did the house, “fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows.” The house became dilapidated and faded, the inside covered in dust by the passage of time. He uses the house to show her fall from grace; an aristocrat, to a peculiar solidarity. The aristocrats

William Faulkner uses A Rose for Emily to tell a story about a mentally ill, lonely woman who is stuck in her own time . After the passing of her controlling father, which occurred 30 years ago, Miss Emily never quite regained herself. Her house, that once used to be the most beautiful place, became one of the most run down, dust covered places in the city. Within the town that Emily belonged, people began to pity her soul and gossip about her life of disaster. Homer Barron, a man who works on construction of sidewalks, begins to date Emily and comes into her life to try to save her from self- destruction.They begin to spend a lot of time together to get to know one another but the people of the town continuously nag Emily due to social class issues but it doesn't stay this way for long. Miss Emily is seen less and less with Mr.Barron and is caught at a local drug store buying arsenic. After a while, Homer is never seen again, and at the age of seventy-four Miss Emily dies. After her death, people of the city remember a room in her house that hasn't been seen for 40 years, and their superstition arises. They end up breaking down the door to discover Homer`s dead, decaying body and another imprint of a body beside his, with a single strand of iron- grey hair. A Rose for Emily reveals a series of events that are open to interpretation. WIthin these series of events, the story begins to open the idea of old versus new and tradition versus progress through, symbols, Emily`s

The story “A Rose for Emily,” is set in Jefferson, Mississippi throughout the 1930s, which was deep in the post-Civil War South. The various leveled administration of the Griersons and the general class arrangement of the time where by statute of the chairman Colonel Sartoris, a Negro lady couldn't walk the road without an apron, had changed into a place where even the road on which Miss Emily lived, that had once been the most select, had now been infringed and obliterated, her home a blemish among blemishes. Both the town and herself, now looked upon Miss Emily as the main leftover of that more prominent time. This reality gives the reader a comprehension of the outlook of the "town," who is describing Miss Emily's story to us in what we could say is a gossiping circle, where stories of different townspeople are sorted out and of Miss Emily, the protagonist who lived alone with the exception of her solitary servant. The activities of Miss Emily extend from unusual to crazy yet it is the readers comprehension of the setting that keep the