The Manipulation Of Time In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

In the story, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner the chronology of the story is chopped into pieces and moved around for the reader’s viewing pleasure. William Faulkner demonstrates how giving away part of the ending before the story has begun obligates the reader to investigate the story in order to get the rest of the ending, all the while building suspense for the reader, and building the storyline. The story starts off with part of the ending, which pulls the reader into the rest of the story.

William Faulkner paints a tragic tale about the inevitability of change and the futility of attempting to stop it in "A Rose for Emily". This story is about a lonely upper-class woman struggling with life and traditions in the Old South. Besides effective uses of literary techniques, such as symbolism and a first plural-person narrative style, Faulkner succeeds in creating a suspenseful and mysterious story by the use of foreshadowing, which gives a powerful description about death and the tragic struggle of the main character, Miss Emily. In general the use of foreshadowing often relates to events in a story, and few are attempted to describe character. Faulkner has effectively

The extreme example of her need to control change, to keep time "in her pocket," is her poisoning Homer and placing him carefully in the upstairs room. The townspeople have joined forces with the representatives of her own family and are on the verge o f separating her from him, just as earlier they separated her from her father. Homer alive and active in her life has become too serious an affront to those around her. The only way she can keep him with her is to arrest his activity and to suspend his vi tality. As a corpse, this Yankee outsider will be less offensive to the sensibilities of the closed Southern community. (Evidence exists of the town's complicity in Homer's murder. Their knowledge of Emily's purchase of the arsenic, followed by Homer Barron's disappearance and the subsequent odor surrounding the Grierson house indicate at least some level of community awareness of what had happened.) More important for Emily, however, Homer will now stay fixed as a part of her life forever.

The summer after her father died, the town hired contractors to pave the sidewalks. The foreman, Homer Barron, and Miss. Emily became quite fond of one another. On Sunday afternoons they could bee seen driving in his buggy together. Soon the people began to whisper about Emily and Homer. Emily held her head high; she would not be seen as anything other than respectful. The town's people believed that Miss. Emily should have kinfolk come to stay with her for a while.

Littered throughout the story is evidence that the murder took place. When Emily takes up with Homer Barron, a man whom the narrator makes clear was not the marrying kind; rumors start to fly about the two at a time when it was not considered proper for a man and woman to live together. The town, her relatives, and the Baptist minister disapproved of the relationship, and Emily was in danger of loosing Homer. A year after the relationship begins, and the pressures to either marry

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner tells the tale of Emily Grierson’s murder of her lover Homer Barron. Both Emily and the town of Jefferson were in denial of Emily having killed her lover, Homer Barron. This is demonstrated by the following threes aspects: first, the town chose to disregard the connection between Emily’s previous behaviour of keeping her father’s body when he died and the disappearance of Homer. Secondly, the nonlinear narrative and the reactions of the town towards Emily after Homer’s disappearance demonstrate the town’s understanding of Homer’s murder. Third, Emily murdered Homer because she could not accept the possibility of him leaving her.

Literary narration tells the events that happen in a story, but reveals the events in a order that will entertain the reader and sometimes leaves them to infer what happens in the story. In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner starts of by revealing to the readers that Emily is dead which would happen last if the story was in chronological order. Then Faulkner goes back in time to when Emily’s father dies, and her taxes are remitted. Faulkner proceeds to explain how the tax collectors come to Emily’s house. Through out the story Faulkner jumps back and fourth through time explaining other events in the story. At the end of the story Faulkner reveals that Emily has been living and sleeping with Homer Barron that has been presumably dead for some time. Faulkner uses this technique of literary narration to make the story more interesting to readers, rather than telling the story in a journalistic narration that would not be as entertaining to

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.

Emily?s life has been overtaken by time. And she has halted the passage of time. The passed passage of time creates a tension in her life. At first she cannot accept the death of her father. After that she creates tension in the community by refusing to pay the taxes. When the aldermen go to her house to collect the taxes, she refuses to pay and tells ?I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained to me.? (Charters 170) The halted passage of time causes her not to even recognize Colonel?s death. Emily also ends up killing; her only love Homer Barron due to her stubbornness. And ironically, preserves Homer Barron?s dead body for 30 years in her house. Emily?s father kept her sheltered longer than she was needed. When she was released, she was under the burdens of relationships and love. When she knew Homer would leave her, she killed him and kept him forever.

The townspeople felt bad for Emily and thought the reason for her craziness was because her family had a history of it. Emily also waits three days before revealing the death of her father. Emily allows the dead body of her father to lie in her home rotting away. Another crazy action that Emily does is when she goes to the pharmacy to purchase “rat poison”. When Emily goes to buy the arsenic she doesn’t tell the druggist what exactly she is going to use it for, but stares him down making him feel uncomfortable. “Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up” (213). One of the most extreme actions Emily performs is being responsible for Homer Barron’s death. But, after fully reading the story the reader understands that Emily not only kills Homer but sleeps with his corpse. “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay… Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (215) There the reader’s thought of Emily sleeping with the dead body and her psychotic tendencies is confirmed.

In addition, Faulkner uses the skewed timeline to capture the reader. Since the reader is expecting a chronological tale, the reader pays attention to the use of time. As Faulkner begins with the death of Emily, the reader expects the upcoming events to succeed Emily. Faulkner uses the expectations of the reader to create the voyage by immediately shrouding the reader’s expectations with various, disruptive links to time such as “ in last ten years,” “that day in 1894,” and the “next generation” (Faulkner 668). This method leaves “a residue to be organized by the reader (Perry 36). As the reader becomes more involves, suspense follows inherently. If this story were told from perspective of Emily, it would make sense for her to tell the story chronologically. Unless Emily is stricken also with Alzheimer’s disease or another memory-losing ailment, it is illogical for Emily to tell the story in a distorted order. Even if Emily did have illness, this changes the nature thus providing that the story is untellable without the narrator. The suspense of this story comes with the presence of the narrator who is allowed to distort the story as he sees fit.

Unfortunately, this led to a grotesque fate for her boyfriend Homer. When Miss Emily’s father died, she hid his body and denied his passing for three days. The townspeople had to work to get the body. This should have been the first sign that Miss Emily was a problematic individual. Another alarming signal that something was wrong was Miss Emily’s insistence that

Throughout the narrative, the distinguished theme that eluding involuntary changes in life can cause harmful and even fatal consequences is repeatedly expressed through previously mentioned character, plot, and setting symbols. Such as, Emily being introduced at her funeral as a “fallen monument” due to her timeless concrete foundation that never changes until her death. Next, Emily’s lack of progression within herself as well as her neglected physical appearance is expressed through the personification of her “stubborn,” house decaying into an out of date “eyesore.” This all furthering to the Death of Miss Emily’s beloved Homer Barron. Poisoned, only to have his corpse trapped in a room set up in a way that his bride can forever stay in that timeless moment; without worry of how to adapt to any of life’s involuntary changes that that she deeply resists.

The story begin by spiraling through series of events in Emily Grierson's life. After the tragic death of Emily's father, miss Grierson desperately falls in her own “dark hole.” A few years later Emily meets a man by the name of Homer Barron, the two seem to have a romantic connection. However it is not until a slight feud between the two that leaves us speechless and knowing less about his where abouts. According to the townspeople, Homer was last witnessed entering the Grierson house.