6. West, Ray B., Jr. "Atmosphere and Theme in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'." William Faulkner: Four Decades of Criticism. Ed. Linda Welshimer Wagner. Michigan State University Press, 1973. 192-198. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1988. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2011.
Emily Grierson, a woman of stature and nobility of the once proud South; transformed to a mere peasant, through the fall of the Confederacy and the changes that ensued. Tragic in a sense, the story of her life as told from the author; William Faulkner, in his short story - "A Rose for Emily." (Faulkner 74-79). First published in the popular magazine of his time in 1930, The Forum; Faulkner tries to maintain her self image throughout the story through the narrators eyes as being repressed in nature through her upbringing in society prior to the war and the circumstances of the times as they unfold - while struggling to fill a void of emptiness inside.
“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...
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, the characters and theme are developed through irony, suspense, and symbolism.
As years went on Emily’s mental state deteriorated slowly. When Emily’s father died the town knew, but Miss Emily knew no such thing. Although the physical realization was obvious, the woman sat with her deceased father in the parlor for nearly three days. When the town was finally allowed inside the house, she showed “no trace of grief on her face” and “told them her father was not dead.” Emily was resorting to a mental self-medication, a psychosis in which to treat her pain. By denying what might be devastating, she lived in a “distorted or non-existent sense of objective reality...
Emily was drove crazy by others expectations, and her loneliness. ““A Rose for Emily,” a story of love and obsession, love, and death, is undoubtedly the most famous one among Faulkner’s more than one hundred short stories. It tells of a tragedy of a screwy southern lady Emily Grierson who is driven from stem to stern by the worldly tradition and desires to possess her lover by poisoning him and keeping his corpse in her isolated house.” (Yang, A Road to Destruction and Self Destruction: The Same Fate of Emily and Elly, Proquest) When she was young her father chased away any would be suitors. He was convinced no one was good enough for her. Emily ended up unmarried. She had come to depend on her father. When he finally died, ...
William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" is perhaps his most famous and most anthologized short story. From the moment it was first published in 1930, this story has been analyzed and criticized by both published critics and the causal reader. The well known Literary critic and author Harold Bloom suggest that the story is so captivating because of Faulkner’s use of literary techniques such as "sophisticated structure, with compelling characterization, and plot" (14). Through his creative ability to use such techniques he is able to weave an intriguing story full of symbolism, contrasts, and moral worth. The story is brief, yet it covers almost seventy five years in the life of a spinster named Emily Grierson. Faulkner develops the character Miss Emily and the events in her life to not only tell a rich and shocking story, but to also portray his view on the South’s plight after the Civil War. Miss Emily becomes the canvas in which he paints the customs and traditions of the Old South or antebellum era. The story “A Rose For Emily” becomes symbolic of the plight of the South as it struggles to face change with Miss Emily becoming the tragic heroin of the Old South.
period in her life. These parts are prime examples of how Faulkner jumps back and forth throughout Emily’s lifetime. Part one begins with Emily’s funeral while part two begins “thirty years before”, “two years after her fathers death and a short time after her sweetheart”, Homer Barron. (93) Part three begins with her meeting Homer. This is interesting because the part before takes place after he dies. This also shows how Faulkner keeps one guessing with his unorthodox plot order. The next part talks of how Emily is planning to supposedly kill herself. It tells of how she buys the...
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Norton Introduction to Literature. By Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty, and J. Paul Hunter. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1991: 69-76.
“A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner.” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jenny Cromie. Vol. 42. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 72-135. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
...rectly fit in with the good side of humanism when she finally was humanized after her father died. Although Emily seems to be reclusive and stubborn, she takes on a whole new character after the story is finished. “We did not say she was crazy then.”(Faulkner 311) The author basically says that Emily was not considered crazy until Homer Barron’s dead body was found in her upstairs bed. The realization occurs that something was considerably wrong with Emily. Connecting the dots, the reader can find that Miss. Emily was mentally unstable. Emily’s general raising for tradition, her father’s controlling behavior and her inability to become self sufficient and deal with death leads to her mental instability.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Story and Its Writer: An Introductory to Short Fiction. Eighth ed. Bedford / St. Martin's: Ann Charters, 2011. 409-15. Print.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." The Story and Its Writer: An Introductory to Short Fiction. Eighth ed. Bedford / St. Martin's: Ann Charters, 2011. 409-15. Print.
“A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, begins and ends with the death of Miss Emily Grierson, the main character of the story. In the story William Faulkner uses characterization to reveal the character of Miss Emily. Faulkner divided the story “into five sections, the first and last section having to do with the present, and the now of the narration, with the three middle sections detailing the past” (Davis 35). Faulkner expresses the content of Miss Emily’s character through physical description, through her actions, words, and feelings, through the narrator’s direct comments about her, and through the actions, words, and feelings of other characters. Faulkner best uses characterization to examine the theme of the story, we are the products of our environment.
To sum up, it need to be concluded that “A Rose for Emily” belongs to those fascinating narrative works, which offer the readers detailed studies of characters without providing them with all the necessary information in a too easy way. It is the readers task to discover subtle relations within the story, to link together certain circumstances and to create one, vivid picture of a woman and the society she lives in. In this way, “A Rose for Emily” indisputably becomes an exquisite feast for the mind, without any doubt deserving to be considered the best of the short stories ever written by William Faulkner.