Moral Pronouns In A Rose For Emily

In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner employs a narrator to describe Emily Grierson, a recently deceased old woman. Apart from her manservant, she does not interact with others, save for a short period of time in

A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner - 91-96, point of view is the narrative point of view the first person. We realize in this story that we the audience don’t know if it is a men or a women. We are able to tell the character when the narrator says “we” in certain points of the text. For example in the text it states,” When we saw her again, her name was cut short , making her look like a girl (pg93).” The text never let’s us know the characters name. The character speaks for the community and it can consider to be the main character. The character shows sympathy for Emily. He as well shows humor when telling the story. Another sympathy the character shows it towards the town of Jefferson and feels the people of the town are unable to control their reactions. The stylistic element the narrator uses is talking about the climax throughout the whole story.

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,

William Faulkner; born in 1897, was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote short stories, novels, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. One of his most well-known short stories called “A Rose for Emily” tells a story about how a woman by the name of Emily Grierson poisons her husband, whose name is Homer Baron, and keeps his body in her house for several years. Nobody expects Miss Emily to be the suspect in Homer’s murder. Why did everyone overlook Emily as the suspect in the murder of Homer Baron? An analysis on William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” suggests three reasons why everyone overlooked Emily as the suspect in the murder of Homer Baron, which are gender, love, and isolation.

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a short story, believed to be one of the author’s best works, that depicts a very interesting outsider perspective, a first person plural narration, of the events of a very intriguing character’s life, Miss Emily. As a figure of speech, the town is personified and used as a collective noun, but it also assembles a unique independent personality of its own generated by all the voices that echo behind it – it can be at times judgmental, curious, cruel and indecisive, but sometimes comforting, caring and attentive. Communities, cities or places in general are often long-lasting and tend to serve as home for many generations over time, while accumulating a history of their own. In “A Rose for Emily” the

The narrator of "A Rose for Emily" serves as the town 's aggregate voice. Faultfinders have faced off regarding whether it is a man or lady; a previous significant other of Emily Grierson 's; the kid who recollects seeing Mr. Grierson in the entryway, holding the whip; or the town tattle, initiating the push to separate the entryway toward the end. It is conceivable that the storyteller is Emily 's previous hireling, Tobe—he would have known her personally, maybe including her mystery. A couple of parts of the story bolster this hypothesis, for example, the way that the storyteller regularly alludes to Emily as "Miss Emily" and gives stand out illustrative insight about the Colonel Sartoris, the leader: the way that he implemented a law requiring that dark ladies wear cook 's garments in broad daylight. Regardless, the storyteller holes up behind the aggregate pronoun we. By utilizing we, the storyteller can quality what may be his or her own contemplations and assessments to the greater part of the townspeople, transforming private thoughts into familiar ways of thinking.

In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, the author uses themes of death and loneliness to portray the character, Emily Grierson. The theme of death is used to tell readers how death in Emily’s life became a detrimental issue and how she took it too far to benefit her. The theme of loneliness will show how Emily takes loneliness and how far she is willing to go to in order to not experience it.

In Faulkner’s interview at Virginia, he confirms that his story is about a young girl that was controlled by her father. In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, Miss Emily’s father is described as “a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” Miss Emily’s father refused to allow any potential suitors to converse with Miss Emily; instead, he would send them away, as if they weren’t good enough for his daughter. At the same time, Miss Emily’s father was preventing Emily from leaving his control by placing her in the background. In A Rose for ‘A Rose for Emily’, readers are reminded about the “importance of Emily’s father in shaping the quality of her life is insistent throughout the story” (Fetterley). Even after Miss Emily’s father has passed away, the looming portrait of him in the house is a constant reminder that although he is physically gone, he still watches her every move. In addition to Miss Emily’s father watching her every move, the town is constantly observing Miss Emily’s actions. American critic Brooks proposes that “[Miss Emily’s] life is public, even communal.” Fetterley suggests the same idea as Brooks, “[Miss Emily’s] private life becomes a public document that the town folk feel free to interpret at will… her funeral… is also the climax of their invasion of her private life.” Throughout Faulkner’s story, the people in the town are consistently gossiping about Miss Emily and her actions. When Miss Emily died, the women in the town went to her funeral to see what she possessed in her house, while the men respected Miss Emily because she was an independent women. The individuals of the town knew everything Miss Emily accomplished, even her murder of Homer Baron. The town viewed Miss

In A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, both Emily and the town’s citizens continually

In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the

In “A Rose for Emily,” (DiYanni, 2007, pp. 79-84) Faulkner shows us a community that is very involved with each other. They are constantly talking about what Miss Emily does, what she says, and who she sees. The author speaks for the community using the pronoun we throughout the story. He describes how the community reacts to Homer Barron trying to court her, “At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest…” (p. 82). Everyone becomes very interested in Miss Emily’s love life. When she buys poison they become worried that she was

“When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to 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…” (47). Even in death Emily could not escape the eyes, the scrutiny, of the town she lived in. The town in Faulkner’s story seems to always be, “talking.” One statement or another states, “our town” (49) or “we all” (51), in reference to

“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).

In the eyes of the folks who lived in Jefferson, Mississippi, Miss Emily Grierson was a very eccentric woman. She kept to herself, only employed one servant in her house, and was a shut in for the last thirty years of her life. Even before she became a recluse, the townspeople found her odd because of how she acted towards them. Emily was considered eccentric because she did things no normal woman of her station would do, and yet she still tries to hang on to her traditional ways in fear of change. Renee Curry, author of “Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily,’” suggests that “Faulkner designs this narrative position as a reflection of his own stance toward patriarchal and societal structures and

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.