Analysis Of A Rose For Emily, By William Faulkner

726 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Themes and symbolisms of the story a rose for emily

William Faulkner’s Southern background plays a constituent part of the creation of his story “A Rose for Emily”. With his creative mind Faulkner created a county in Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha. Like the southern town he was born and raised in, Faulkner peopled this story with both African American and Caucasian people of the late 1800’s. Faulkner’s idea of writing this story was to focus on the events causing destruction and suffering in one’s inner and outer situations. Many of Faulkner’s people and a lot of his families that he makes known in his writing appear in many other of his writings. “Some of Faulkner’s major fictional families include the Sartoris, Snopes, Dee Spain, Compson, Sutpen, McCaslin, and Carothers families” (William Faulkner). All the way through Faulkner’s lists of favorite books and stories, these people are present. “ One of the strangest, strongest, and most memorable characters in Faulkner’s short fiction is the homicidal dowager, Emily Grierson, in “A Rose for Emily.” Generations of Faulkner devotees are familiar with the tale of the reclusive spinster who, by means of murder and necrophilia, wages a battle to the death with time and change in the town of Jefferson” ( The Widow of Windsor… Emily Grierson). They describe the many extending generations. Miss Emily, The Board of Alderman, The African American Servant, and Colonel Sartoris are all representations of the Antebellum South in “A Rose for Emily”. Homer Barron, and the townspeople were representations of the Modern South and the Greirson Family is the representation of the old South. “Faulkner’s structural problem in “A Rose for Emily” demanded that he treat all of miss Emily’s life and her increasing withdrawal from the community and... ... middle of paper ... ... important events contains the death of Mr. Grierson; Emily’s father in her younger days and the connection with a northerner Homer Barron. This story summarizes the most important South changes following the Civil War. Faulkner description of the Griersons’ rotting house corresponds with Emily’s emotional and physical rotting and too makes her mental decline clear to the reader of what is going to be the turning out of the story. Miss Emily is characterized by her effort to separate herself away from her community. "After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all" (395). The broken connection with Homer Barron and the ending of her father’s life lead her to wanting to stay away from the town people. The organization of Faulkner’s story and the description of Emily gave the story a real life meaning.

Show More
Related

  • Essay on the Structure of William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    647 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a story that uses flashbacks to foreshadow a surprise ending. The story begins with the death of a prominent old woman, Emily, and finishes with the startling discovery that Emily as been sleeping with the corpse of her lover, whom she murdered, for the past forty years. The middle of the story is told in flashbacks by a narrator who seems to represent the collective memory of an entire town. Within these flashbacks, which jump in time from ten years past to forty years past, are hidden clues which prepare the reader for the unexpected ending, such as hints of Emily's insanity, her odd behavior concerning the deaths of loved ones, and the evidence that the murder took place.

    Read More

  • Faulkner's Rose For Emily is a Portrait Of The Post War South

    1943 Words  | 4 Pages

    Growing up in Mississippi in the late Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century, young William Faulkner witnessed first hand the struggles his beloved South endured through their slow progression of rebuilding. These experiences helped to develop Faulkner’s writing style. “Faulkner deals almost exclusively with the Southern scene (with) the Civil War … always behind his work” (Warren 1310. His works however are not so much historical in nature but more like folk lore. This way Faulkner is not constrained to keep details accurate, instead he manipulate the story to share his on views leading the reader to conclude morals or lessons from his experience. Faulkner writes often and “sympathetically of the older order of the antebellum society. It was a society that valued honor, (and) was capable of heroic action” (Brooks 145) both traits Faulkner admired. These sympathetic views are revealed in the story “A Rose for Emily” with Miss Emily becoming a monument for the Antebellum South.

    Read More

  • A Rose For Emily Grierson

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    The protagonist of this story is Miss Emily Grierson, an old maid spinster without family who becomes a “tradition” and a “sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 299). The story begins with the death of Miss Emily, so I will rearrange my analysis of the character to begin with what we first know about Miss Emily.

    Read More

  • Clinging to the Past in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    1553 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Free Essay - Setting in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    Faulkner portrays the townspeople and Emily in the southern town of Jefferson during the late 1800's to early 1900's. The town is more than just the setting in the story; it takes on its own characterization alongside Emily the main character. It is the main reasoning behind Emily's attitude and actions. It gives the reader an easier understanding into why Emily makes the decisions she does as the story unwinds.

    Read More

  • The Resistance to Change

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kurtz, Elizabeth Carney. "Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'". Explicator. Heldref Publications. 44.2 (1986): 40. Academic Search Complete. Blinn College, Bryan, Lib. 18 Oct. 2007

    Read More

  • Interpretations of William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    1529 Words  | 4 Pages

    William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" has been interpreted in many different ways. Most of these rely solely on hints found within the story. I believe that his life can also help one analyze this story. By knowing that Faulkner's strongest influence was his independent mother, one can guess that Miss Emily Grierson's character was based partly on Maud Falkner.

    Read More

  • William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily is a Gothic Horror Tale

    1833 Words  | 4 Pages

    William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, tells a series of stories about the town's reclusive spinster, Miss Emily Grierson. The stories build up to a gruesome revelation after Miss Emily's funeral. She apparently poisoned her lover, Homer Barron, and kept his corpse in an attic bedroom for over forty years. It is a common critical cliche to say that a story "exists on many levels." In the case of "A Rose for Emily", this is the truth. Critic Frank A. Littler, in an essay published in Notes on Mississippi Writers regarding the chronology of the story, writes that "A Rose for Emily" has been read variously as ". . .a Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between North and South, a meditation on the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine." These various interpretations serve as a good starting point for discussion of the story.

    Read More

  • Narrative Worth in A Rose for Emily

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    As Faulkner begins “A Rose for Emily” with death of Emily, he both immediately and intentionally obscures the chronology of the short story to create a level of distance between the reader and the story and to capture the reader’s attention. Typically, the reader builds a relationship with each character in the story because the reader goes on a journey with the character. In “A Rose for Emily”, Faulkner “weaves together the events of Emily’s life” is no particular order disrupting the journey for the reader (Burg, Boyle and Lang 378). Instead, Faulkner creates a mandatory alternate route for the reader. He “sends the reader on a dizzying voyage by referring to specific moments in time that have no central referent, and thus the weaves the past into the present, the present into the past. “Since the reader is denied this connection with the characters, the na...

    Read More

  • Comparing the Setting of Barn Burning to that of A Rose for Emily

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    In many of Faulkner’s stories, he tells about an imaginary county in Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha. He uses this county as the setting for his story “Barn Burning” and it is also thought that the town of Jefferson from “A Rose for Emily” is located in Yoknapatawpha County. The story of a boy’s struggle between being loyal to his family or to his community makes “Barn Burning” exciting and dramatic, but a sense of awkwardness and unpleasantness arrives from the story of how the fictional town of Jefferson discovers that its long time resident, Emily Grierson, has been sleeping with the corpse of her long-dead friend with whom she has had a relationship with.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Plot in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “A Rose For Emily”, by William Faulkner, plot plays an important role in how

    Read More

  • Examples Of Characterization In A Rose For Emily

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Faulkner's “A Rose For Emily”

    715 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Faulkner’s tale “A Rose for Emily” there are many historical elements throughout the story; Faulkner uses them to give an authentic feel to the story and to add to the setting. A recurring theme that I found was reference to the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. The setting of the South after their demise in the Civil War adds character to the story and to the characters. The attitudes people had and the way people treated Emily with respect was a tradition of the “Old South” that is presented throughout this tale.

    Read More

  • William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

    1676 Words  | 4 Pages

    In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, he describes the story of a woman named Emily Grierson who was born into a high social class. Miss Emily Grierson came from a rich family who lost all their money when the Civil War came to a close and slavery was abolished. The short story shows how Miss Emily seems to be above the law considering she doesn’t have to give an explanation for buying poison or pay taxes; she has a very strange odor coming from her house, which was later found out to be her dead boyfriend’s body that she had been sleeping with. The story’s theme is that death and love is the only thing that can tear or mend anyone or anything. Faulkner uses this story as a timeline to show the effects that the Civil War had

    Read More

  • The Transition from Old to New South

    1288 Words  | 3 Pages

    The rise and industrialization of the South began with the end of the Civil War. This aided in the transition from Old to New South, from a time of poverty and slave labor to a more progressive time. The decline of the Old South was often unaccepted and ignored by southerners as they tried to cling to their past ways. Faulkner highlights the cultural shift from Old to New South through character relationships and personalities in his short stories “A Rose for Emily,” “That Evening Sun,” and “Red Leaves.” The main character in William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily, is a representation of the Old South.

    Read More

More about Analysis Of A Rose For Emily, By William Faulkner

Open Document