Theme Of Gothic Elements In A Rose For Emily

796 Words2 Pages

The short story by William Faulkner called “A Rose for Emily” is a thrilling piece of literary work, that shows many of the basic gothic elements. There is mysterious events, confusing aspects, and eroticism in this short story. “A Rose for Emily” shows the development of a crooked women’s life, written by the generations living around her, and has action to show Faulkner’s purpose in writing this story. Emily expresses many traits that are described as masculine gothic including oedipal, voyeurism, and isolating herself as if she is in prison. She faces many struggles in her lifetime with her father dying and not being able to have relations while her father was still alive. The sense of conflict with her overruling father is when the author points out, “We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip” (Faulkner 3). This is important because it shows how her father might have beat her as a child. That also describes how Miss Emily looked when younger and how she has changed after the alienation of the town and her isolating herself. “Bloated” (Faulkner 2) is …show more content…

This portrayed to be gossip that all the townspeople had been gossiping about for generations during Emily’s life. William Falkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, shows that the narrator is a part of the towns people: “Already we knew… no one had seen in forty years…They waited… before they opened it” (8). This is included to point out that the people around her are gossiping about what happened to her. He uses third person to describe how the people around Emily view the house as a dark and offset house in a growing society. “Decay” (Faulkner 1) is a word the unreliable narrator uses to describe Emily’s old home in Yoknapatawpha county,

Open Document