Setting: Centered around the house that he fathered lived. Miss Emily lived in a town, Jefferson rooted in the South. Narrator: We, from different perspective. Not a single voice; female and male voice. Events in summary: (1) Miss Emily died. The whole town went to her funeral. (2) She is confronted by the city’s representatives regarding the taxes. She rebuffs them. (3) Homer Barron is introduced and he takes an interested in Miss Emily. They are seen together on Sundays driving in a buggy. She goes to the druggist wanting some poison. (4) After Miss Emily had been laid into the grave, the towns folks have to break down the door to a sealed room, only to discover a man’s corpse. Tones: The narrator, we, as in the community, addresses the gossips, innuendos and speculation of what happen to Miss Emily throughout the years. Style: Faulkner use metaphors to describe Miss Emily. At the funeral, the town attended: “the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument.” She was described as “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.” When four young men went to the house to snoop around, they saw Miss Emily sit, …show more content…
He is a high school teacher that had serve in the military service. He was raised and return to live in Harlem, New York. He is dealing an onslaught of emotions as an adult. He made promises to his deceased mother that he would look after his brother, Sonny. He is a family man, with a wife, Isabel and three children; two boys and one girl that died. Sonny, a recovery substance abuse addict. He is caught up with the wrong crowd and he was sent to prison on peddling and drug procession. Music was the center focus on his life. Sonny keep his thoughts, frustration and anger to himself. He was only about to channel his feelings, disappointment and joy expressively thought his music and connect with humanity on a spiritual
The end of the American Civil War also signified the end of the Old South's era of greatness. The south is depicted in many stories of Faulkner as a region where "the reality and myth are difficult to separate"(Unger 54). Many southern people refused to accept that their conditions had changed, even though they had bitterly realized that the old days were gone. They kept and cherished the precious memories, and in a fatal and pathetic attempt to maintain the glory of the South people tend to cling to old values, customs, and the faded, but glorified representatives of the past. Miss Emily was one of those selected representatives. The people in the southern small-town, where the story takes place, put her on a throne instead of throwing her in jail where she actually belonged. The folks in town, unconsciously manipulated by their strong nostalgia, became the accomplices of the obscene and insane Miss Emily.
Faulkner tells the story through primarily a first person narration, primarily through the eyes of the townspeople, which is a white southern society. They too have a type of love affair with "Miss Emily." Emily Grierson is known to the townspeople as an icon. They feel a sense of obligation to her, as the narrator explains, "Alive, Miss Emily has been a tradition, a duty, and a care; sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (404). The relationship between the town and Emily is symbiotic, in the respects that neither can exist without the other, this in turn, makes the narrator and Emily foils.
Setting is place and time, and often provides more than a mere backdrop for the action of a story. William Faulkner uses this device in his complex short story "A Rose for Emily" to give insight into the lonely world of Miss Emily Grierson.
Faulkner uses symbolic elements to compare the Grierson house with Emily's life- "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores"(Faulkner 29).
When her father passed away, it was a devastating loss for Miss Emily. The lines from the story 'She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days,' (Charter 171) conveys the message that she tried to hold on to him, even after his death. Even though, this was a sad moment for Emily, but she was liberated from the control of her father. Instead of going on with her life, her life halted after death of her father. Miss Emily found love in a guy named Homer Barron, who came as a contractor for paving the sidewalks in town. Miss Emily was seen in buggy on Sunday afternoons with Homer Barron. The whole town thought they would get married. One could know this by the sentences in the story ?She will marry him,? ?She will persuade him yet,? (Charter 173).
Faulkner first tells that shortly after her father’s death Miss Emily’s sweetheart left her. Everybody in the town thought that Emily and this sweetheart of hers were going to be married. After her sweetheart left her the people of the town saw her very little. Faulkner then tells what might be viewed as the climax of the story next. He explains that one day Miss Emily went into town and bought rat poison. By revealing this so early on in the story it challenges the reader to use their imagination. The readers’ view of Miss Emily could now possibly be changed. It has changed from feeling sorry for this woman to thinking she is going to murder someone.
As time went on pieces from Emily started to drift away and also the home that she confined herself to. The town grew a great deal of sympathy towards Emily, although she never hears it. She was slightly aware of the faint whispers that began when her presence was near. Gossip and whispers may have been the cause of her hideous behavior. The town couldn’t wait to pity Ms. Emily because of the way she looked down on people because she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and she never thought she would be alone the way her father left her.
"Respectful affection for a fallen monument" (Faulkner 145). Miss Emily was a lady portraying the pure essence of Southern refinement. This idol could not be understood or related to but simply uphold without question. Her way of life was not one of struggle but of status. She was lost in her own reality of the present, still as a rose frozen in time. This woman, the delicate flower of the community, was lost in her own perception and belief of the world. Emily was given compassion without request due to her label and status of being a lady that eventually contributed to her own destruction.
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, Emily, the protagonist, is shown as someone who’s life is falling apart and brought down by society. Emily in this story could be described as a victim to society and her father. Emily Grierson’s confinement, loss of her father and Homer, and constant criticism caused her, her insanity.
“Miss Emily constantly for fifty or sixty years; they are anonymous townspeople, for neither names nor sexes nor occupations are given or hinted at; and they seem to be naïve watchers, for they speak as though they did not understand the meaning of events at the time they occurred. Further, they are of undetermined age. By details given the story there neither older nor younger nor of the same age as Miss Em...
Miss Emily’s isolation is able to benefit her as well. She has the entire town believing she is a frail and weak woman, but she is very strong indeed. Everyone is convinced that she could not even hurt a fly, but instead she is capable a horrible crime, murder. Miss Emily’s actions range from eccentric to absurd. After the death of her father, and the estrangement from the Yankee, Homer Barron, she becomes reclusive and introverted. The reader can find that Miss Emily did what was necessary to keep her secret from the town. “Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (247).
In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.
William Faulkner used indirect characterization to portray Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted women through the serious of events that happened throughout her lifetime. The author cleverly achieves this by mentioning her father’s death, Homer’s disappearance, the town’s taxes, and Emily’s reactions to all of these events. Emily’s reactions are what allowed the readers to portray her characteristics, as Faulkner would want her to be
The plot of “A Rose for Emily” shows the later years of the main character, Emily Grierson, with flashbacks to her life interspersed between. It begins with the reader learning of her passing, developing into a story that provides insight in to her reclusive nature and past dealings with family as well as the town of Jefferson. Due to her reclusive nature and high standing in society she is often gossiped about by her fellow townsfolk. Throughout the story, the reader is told about her overbearing father, her reluctance to change her ways for the town of Jefferson, and her new love interest Homer Barron. With hints of foreshadowing and learning about Miss Emily’s past problems with letting her deceased father go, the reader finds the story ending at her funeral with the discovery of the body of Homer Barron kept in her house. Miss Emily did not want to lose her new love, so she poisons him and keeps his body around, letting her maintain a relationship with him even though he has passed on.
utation came to her house for her taxes, Faulkner describes how the house and Ms. Emily looks. "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", this statement explains how the house gives off such a depressing mood. "Her skeleton was small and spare;", this line shows us how her appearance showcases death also.