The Search for Time in Yoknapatawpha County

Setting is an important aspect of any story, movie, poem and novel. Setting enhances many aspects of a story by adding time, location and mood into the works. Imagine how different Harry Potter would be if it took place in South Africa, instead of the magical kingdom of Hogwarts? Setting also enhances the tone of the narrator by adding effects, such as, weather changes, time of day, time of the year and the time period of the story. Furthermore, in the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the setting is a source of conflict. The narrator’s of the story, the town’s people, have an unknown entity, but because the story shifts between time periods and settings, the reader acquires different points of view from the same conflict. The theme of tradition and change in the short story “A Rose for Emily”, is enhanced by time, the southern gothic literature, and the post Civil War setting of the Yoknapatawpha County.

Yoknapatawpha County is an imaginary place, that is the seat of almost all William Faulkner’s novels, but more specifically, the setting of “A Rose for Emily”. Yoknapatawpha County is based on Mississippi, the state in which Faulkner originated from. The imaginary County only exists inside of Faulkner’s head and it is portrayed in his major works. The county is a parallel universe that Faulkner used, to escape into his own reality. A fictional reality with real world issues that closely mirror the American South before, during and after the Civil War.

…After the Civil War the South, having tasted military defeat and having seen its social and economic collapse, did not share in the optimism, industrialism, and commercialism that characterized the rest of the nation, In the history of the South and F...

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...hic”. In other words, the changes of tradition is not a simple transitional phase. For instance, a person who moves from a tropical and peaceful area, to the crowded, frantic state of New York, will have a difficult time transitioning. This type of person will often live in the past and may become depressed. Moreover, there are many aspects and points of view within the novels and stories written by Faulkner that people may still learn from. But, his major lesson derives from his life and the choices that he made. Faulkner was a man who followed his own intuition and imagination to create extraordinary fiction. He was a man who learned from mistakes, rather than being a perfectionist, and a man who never gave up on his work, even if it was rejected many times. William Faulkner is the definition of an incredibly successful man, both in life and in his writing.