Who Does Nobody Know The Narrator's Identity?

This short story is from the view point of the towns people; you will notice a lot in William Faulkner’s writing of A Rose for Emily that it mentions the word “we” or “the town” talking about the people as a whole. From reading this story it seems the townspeople are revisiting old moments that have happened with Miss Emily in the past. It begins by talking about how the whole town went to Miss Emily’s funeral either out of respect or simply out of curiosity since no one had seen the inside of her house in over ten years. When Miss Emily was alive she was viewed as an obligation to the town, she was someone they always had a problem with, but they had to tip toe around to fix any problems involving her. They then go into talking about how

In a rose for Emily, the narrator was an unnamed younger townsperson. They didn’t identify with the women that went to comforted Emily after her father past or the men sneaking to her house chasing a smell. However, the narrator uses the words we when referring to the townspeople in whole. This also shows the narrator is participating in the story events like a fly on the wall. The narrator says thing like “we believed that she was fallen” and “we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing” to show the town’s objective. They dislike her even after the support her family had once given the town. These same family feeling of degust was shared by Emily toward the narrator. Emily keeps a barrier between her and the

William Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. He wrote short stories, plays, essays, and screenplays. He is mainly known for his creative imaginary stories that were based on Lafayette County, Mississippi where he spent most of his life. Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature and especially Southern literature. He spent majority of his childhood years sitting around listening to his elders and family members telling stories that included war stories of the Civil war and slavery. “A Rose for Emily was his first story that was published in a major magazine called the Forum.” When the short story was first published, it didn’t do that well in the

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.

William Faulkner’s style of writing evokes sympathy for his characters, regardless of how horrible the actions they committed were. The point of view in which he wrote the story determines how the story was told. Emily's version of the events would be quite different from someone else's version. Any person in the town would tell the story from his own experiences with Emily and his own attitudes toward her. By choosing a narrator who is not a part of the town, Faulker is able to achieve several things. He characterizes the town in addition to developing Emily's character. The town itself becomes a character in the story.

The clearest evidence is that the narrator is the first-person plural“we”. The rest of town is included in the “we”, while Emily is excluded from the “we”. Though she is like an alien in the town community, as long as she is in town as a member, the town should not let her be alone. This exclusion gives her a harder time as alone. Her seclusion from the town community, and separated point of view from the townspeople also acted as one of forces led to the

I think that reporters should just observe news events as they happen, and they should interfere in any way. Reporters should be able to interfere because they have a right called "Freedom of Speech". If someone was talking about them in a good or bad way, I think that person has the right to interfere. If it was a life or death situation, they should definitely interfere. Journalists, along with everyone else, have the right to know what is going on in this world. If reporters did not interfere at all, they might regret that moment for the rest of their lives. If journalists have a say in something, they should be able to say what they want to say. If reporters disagree on something, they have the right to speak about that specific thing.

In Faulkner’s “A rose for Emily” the story is told through more than one persons’ eyes even though it is being told through first person narrator. Since the story is told through more than one person’s eyes it makes the point of view plural. The townspeople of Jefferson (including many generations) tell the story from their point of view. The story shifts from telling the story from the point of view of Miss Emily’s father’s generation. This is shown through the statement “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (31). It then shifts to telling the story from Miss Emily’s generation, and then moves onto tell the story from the generation that followed her. The word “we” is used often and refers to who is responsible for what happened to Emily in the story. It is safe to say that through the point of view in which the story is told one can determine that not one person feels responsible for what happens to Emily in this short story. The townspeople as a whole feel responsible, which then sets the tone for the

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.

Burduck demonstrates the gender of the narrator is a female on account of the ladies’ emotional reactions toward Emily’s sorrowful situation. This empathy is only reflected “on a woman-to-woman basis”( Burduck, par.4). Correspondingly, when Emily goes to buy poison to exterminate rats, this is intrepeted as if she had in mind to intoxicate Homer so that he would never abandon her. Therefore, “Faulkner’s female narrator does not approve of Miss Emily’s methods, but she understands what prompted them: Emily’s weariness of being alone” (Burduck, par.5) Similarly, it is the loneliness that Emily has to live with that makes the ladies sympathetic toward her. After her father’s death, she was desolated, without her father and someone to love because

Many critics have claimed that the narrator is not a member of the community, but a person who had been told the story. However in my opinion this is not possible at all as in the story we have several dialogues, we have the words that the characters said. So it is very difficult to believe that the story has been told from generation to generation and we have the exact words said by Miss Emily or some of the inhabitants in Jefferson.

Another prime example of Faulkner's effective writing is his use of narration. Of course, in most stories the narrator is a key asset. In :A Rose for Emily" Faulkner uses the narrator not only as a story teller, but as an observer from the crowd as well. The narrator's point of view, which is third person, had a positive effect on the way a reader views the story. "Through out the story the narrator uses "we" instead of I revealing to us the way the townspeople judge Emily" (Madden 1988). The narrator thinks back in time throughout the story remembering particular events that occurred in the past. This is important to the reader in that it helps aid the understanding of how the townspeople viewed Emily. The narrator as one of the townspeople viewed Miss Emily as impervious, tranquil, and perverse. If the story had been narrated by anyone else, it may not have been as easy for the reader to completely understand. "With this spectator as the narrator, describing the events of the story through his eyes, one can detect a general impression of Emily" (Madden 1987). The view of the narrator is beneficial in understanding the things that Emily goes through. Also toward the end of the story the narrator gives the reader a feeling if sorrow and pity for Emily. It is apparent Faulkner's use of narration is critical to the enhancement and clarification of the "A Rose for Emily." After analyzing the

In different articles and videos, I have read and watched I learned that our identity is very precious. In fact, our identity is represented by our stories. Storytelling is different in everyone. Some people tell their stories depending on what they remember. Some people tell their stories only by telling the happy moments while some telling the unhappy ones. In Julie Becks article, she said: “it’s in the late teens and early adulthood that story construction really picks up.” So it is really important to learn how to tell a story in childhood because it represents the identity of the storyteller.

It is a fact, that the narrator makes judgments both for and against the protagonist and also present outsides observations when he stays “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition , a duty , and a care ; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town “(Faulkner,82) being this to emphasize the responsibility that the people of the town felt whit her and stays also his point pf view in the situation . The narrator is sympathetic to Miss Emily, never condemning her actions. Sometimes unabashedly and sometimes grudgingly, the narrator admires her ability to use her aristocratic bearing in order to vanquish the members of the city and an example is when she go to buy the arsenic and the druggist ask her to tell him for what she is going to use it ,and she just look him eye to eye and the man go and give her the arsenic without ask her anything else . As we could see it is hard to determine the gender of the narrative voice because is talking as the people and never use a word for describe himself . He uses the words “we” and “they” and changes it continuously because he does not want to be involved in all the things the community did and he is blaming the community for Emily’s behavior. Faulkner uses the perfect kind of narrator for develop his genre , a mysterious and creepy narrative voice to develop

A fascinating technique used by William Faulkner in "A Rose for Emily" was the use of an anonymous narrator whose role in the town and connection to Emily is a bit unclear. Within the story, Faulkner doesn’t rely on the standard linear approach when he acquaints his characters and their ambitions. There is a strong theme of death, beginning and ending the story with the death of Emily Grierson. The impact of this narrative, theme of time, and the power of death will be scrutinized through close textual analysis to determine the mental stability of Miss Emily.