Analysis of “A Rose for Emily”
“A Rose for Emily” reveals several literary dynamics worth analyzing. Faulkner wrote this short story in a nonlinear fashion, with an untraditional plot structure. The author uses unique symbolism, foreshadowing and narration to create suspense and mystery to an otherwise mundane story. Faulkner uses an interesting method to tell a dark and disturbing story, about a woman’s struggle to find love, and her resort to necrophilia when that love is threatened.
“A Rose for Emily” takes place right after the Civil War, and throughout the Industrialization Period. Faulkner uses a fictitious town located somewhere in the South, called Jefferson as the setting for Emily’s story.
The story is about Emily Grierson’s struggle
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Emily’s father kept her from having intimacy experiences with another man. Emily’s relationship problems eventually lead to her killing her prospective husband and holding on to the decaying body until she herself passes away.
William Faulkner’s short story is unique, as in it does not follow traditional story-telling plot structure. “A Rose for Emily” is broken up into five segments, which do not actually coincide with the chronological order the events take place. The first segment of the story plays the role of both exposition and resolution.
Playing the role of exposition, the first segment introduces Emily Grierson, and how the community collectively views her more of an object of interest, than as a person. To Jefferson, Emily was a representation of the community’s traditional values, a monument, untouched by modernization. While introducing Emily through her funeral, the narrator gives the history of Emily and her Family, explaining how the family became idolized, and the center of gossip. The first segment also presents itself as the resolution. It does this by telling the outcome of the story, Emily’s death. Faulkner tells how the story is going to end before the story is told. It was an unusual way to present the resolution within Faulkner’s
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The story is told through one individual’s perceptions of what is happening, by watching Emily for several years. The narrator is always speculating about what is happening, without actually knowing. This narration style adds to the mystery of the story, because of the lack of credibility the narrator possesses. Emily’s story is different if the narrator changed. Despite all the narrator’s speculations of Emily, the narrator never speculates the truth of Emily’s
The story "A Rose for Emily" is one of first William Faulkner’s publications. The action of this story takes place in a time filled with social and political turmoil, when Southern came into a historical lethargy, and when its glow start faded. The elements presented in "A Rose for Emily" make reference to that time and are a tribute to Mss. Emily Graiser. A dominant tone is shown by a footprint of the past and loneliness to which was added symbolism and melancholia. The author showed us through his words issue of life, love and death, a sensitivity which gets us closer of characters' life and struggles.
Faulkner provides the necessary pieces of symbolism, speckled through out the action of the story, for the reader to assimilate and assemble. Curiously, it is a broken time line that Faulkner follows, that allows him to achieve maximum effect at the end of the story. The placement of the conclusion or denouement at the beginning of the story, allows the curiosity of the reader to become strongly engaged on the character of Emily Grierson. As the narration begins with the funeral of Emily, the juxtaposition of the image received in the opening paragraph, is sharply compared to that of the information found in the third paragraph. Where in the first the town has come to pay respects to a fallen monument, in the third it is learned that she was really, "...a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town..." (276).
William Faulkner wrote A Rose for Emily in five different parts. The story begins with a description of Emily’s funeral and then moves into the “near-distant past.” Rather than writing this story in a chronological fashion, Faulkner shifts and manipulates time by stretching the story over several decades. We learn about Emily’s life through flashbacks. However, because the town of Jefferson is the narrator of the story, the reader is limited to only what the town knows. Faulkner wrote this story as if it were in a cloud of dust; many things are not clear. He once said: “given a choice between grief and nothing, I would chose grief.” Although this story is not about him, he details the loneline...
It is so terrible with "A Rose For Emily," the horrible feelings come up immediately when the story ends with two dead bodies in the old and dirty house. One is Homer Barron, Emily's lover. The other is Emily herself. What a pity for a woman like Emily. No, Emily is not really a woman. She is just a child (or a daughter). Since being born, her life was framed strictly by her selfish father." Miss Emily, a slender figure in white in the background, her father a large silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door." Miss Emily could not find her own real life. And then her father died. Everyone in town was very pleased that Emily might have a chance to be happy from then on. But very shortly after the shock of her father's death, Emily had another shock when her sweetheart left her alone and went away. Nobody was expecting that. Poor Emily! She was just a little girl having no experience over thirty years of age. Homer, the young man that everyone believed would marry her, was just a liar, as well. And as a result, Emily killed Homer and lay beside his dead body for years. At the age of forty, Emily was still a child -- an old child with loneliness and unfulfilled soul.
In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the role of the narrator and the interpretations of “A Rose for Emily”, it can be seen that this story is impossible to tell without a narrator.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Shorter 5th ed. Ed. R.V.Cassill. New York: W.W. Norton & Comp., 1995. 275-83.
The author of the story does not represent main events according to chronological time, which shows the dehumanization of Emily. This is done not only to create suspense or to make the story more interesting, but because Emily’s time has not any kind of importance. The author seems to present the existence of two kinds of times in the life of a person; one is the psychological time and another is the biological time. Emily’s psychological time has stopped since her father died.
First, why does Faulkner present the plot in the way that he does? There can be numerous answers to this question, but I have narrowed it down to one simple answer. He presented the story in this way in order to keep the reader guessing and to also provide some sort of suspense. By Faulkner telling the story in the way that he does, the reader has no way of knowing what might be coming up next in the story. The last thing that a reader wants to do is read a boring story that is easy to predict. Faulkner keeps the reader from knowing what might happen next by not placing the events in the actual order that they occurred. He goes back and forth throughout Miss Emily’s life. At the introduction and conclusion of the story, she is dead, while the body consists of the times when she was alive. The body of the story also jumps back and forth throughout Miss Emily’s life. Faulkner brilliantly divided the story into five key parts, all taking place at some key
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.
With every turn of the page, the dark and twisted storyline of “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner leaves the reader in a stronger state of shock and inevitably speechless. Faulkner cleverly uses symbols, characters, and theme to illustrate the inner thoughts of Emily Grierson and the community’s ongoing struggle between tradition and modernism. .
Emily’s isolation is evident because after the men that cared about her deserted her, either by death or simply leaving her, she hid from society and didn’t allow anyone to get close to her. Miss Emily is afraid to confront reality. She seems to live in a sort of fantasy world where death has no meaning. Emily refuses to accept or recognize the death of her father, and the fact that the world around her is changing.
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.
At the beginning of the story when her father died, it was mentioned that “[Emily] told [the ladies in town] that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (626). Faulkner reveals Emily’s dependency on her father through the death of her father. As shown in this part of the story, Emily was very attached to her father and was not able to accept that fact that he was no longer around. She couldn’t let go of the only man that loved her and had been with her for all those years. While this may seem like a normal reaction for any person who has ever lost a loved one, Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s dependence and attachment even further through Homer Barron. After her father’s death, Emily met a man name Homer, whom she fell in love with. While Homer showed interest in Emily at the beginning he became uninterested later on. “Homer himself had remarked—he liked men” (627) which had caused Emily to become devastated and desperate. In order to keep Homer by her side, Emily decided to poison Homer and keep him in a bedroom in her home. It was clear that she was overly attached to Homer and was not able to lose another man that she
Emily’s father’s death was a major tragedy for Emily. It seems as if she was in denial of his death. Faulkner explains, “The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead.” So Emily would not admit that her father had died. After she accepted his death, she had to endure life without a father. This must have been terribly hard, but she endured it. Many people also attempted to help Emily
A Rose For Emily is a short story that was written in 1930, by William Faulkner. It is considered to be among the greatest piece of literature that has been interpreted many times. This is a story about the life and death of the protagonist Emily Grierson. The story is arrayed in five sections. First, it starts with the death of the protagonist, and her encounter with the tax officials when they came to inquire bout her tax payment. Next, is her father’s death followed by Emily going to a local store to buy poison for an unknown reason that the author conceals. The fourth section talks of Emily and Homer Baron’s story of aging and isolation. Finally, Faulkner talks of Emily’s death and funeral, and the shocking discoveries that follow it.