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Main theme in a rose for emily
Literary devices in A Rose For Emily
Literary devices in A Rose For Emily
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The stylistic choices such as themes, point of view, and figures of speech by William Faulkner in his short story “A Rose for Emily” are specifically chosen to illustrate the collective perspective the townsfolk have on Miss. Emily. The gothic story features moments of emotional vacillations that enhance the uncertainty and suspense throughout the entire story. Specific to the passage Faulkner uses particular writing devices to draw attention to key ideas such as traditional values, culture and gender roles, and the idea of pity. Throughout the passage it becomes apparent that tradition is valued deeply by the townspeople but keeping a watchful eye on Miss. Emily is just as relevant in their daily lives. The culture and surroundings people …show more content…
Themes that exhibit the importance and function of social values are another key feature in this passage. The reader is informed early on that Miss. Emily was brought up in a traditional, upper-class household. Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s status by having the narrator and characters exclusively refer to the her as “Miss. Emily”. Using this title throughout the passage reflects the townspeople’s traditional values in which they feel it is important to greet and speak of someone of such grandeur with the ought most politeness. Miss. Emily continues to project elite status when the women say “...Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner.” (Faulkner, pg. 148) By the ladies in the town stating this it becomes evident that Miss. Emily holds herself to a high standard and would never associate herself with someone of a lower social status. Paradoxically, Miss. Emily does allot time to converse with the “Yankee” (Faulkner, pg. 148) revealing her transition from traditional ways into a period of change. Her shift in morals is also disclosed when the ladies …show more content…
The term “noblesse oblige” (Faulkner, pg. 148) is an antique saying that projects one’s status and social values. By the women using this type of langue to describe Emily it is reflective of their customary character. The way Faulkner uses the terms “kinsfolk” and “kin” continues to establish this sense of a classical, old-fashioned time. The description “...rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies...” (Faulkner, pg. 148) is aiming to describe the women spying on Emily. Craned silk makes up high necked dresses women wore in this era putting the traditional theme once again in perspective. “Jalousies” (Faulkner, pg. 148) are referring to shutters on a house, another vintage word utilized by the author. Word choice in this passage is very crucial to the overall tone of the piece. Using new-age words in the context of the passage would not have made literary sense and therefore every word was meticulously placed with
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.
In “A Rose for Emily”, Charles Faulkner used a series of flashbacks and foreshadowing to tell Miss Emily’s story. Miss Emily is an interesting character, to say the least. In such a short story of her life, as told from the prospective of a townsperson, who had been nearly eighty as Miss Emily had been, in order to tell the story from their own perspective. Faulkner set up the story in Mississippi, in a world he knew of in his own lifetime. Inspired by a southern outlook that had been touched by the Civil War memory, the touch of what we would now look at as racism, gives the southern aroma of the period. It sets up Miss Emily’s southern belle status and social standing she had been born into, loner or not.
William Faulkner stories were usually written within the setting of his home town of Mississippi. Posed after the Civil War and with a twist as we see in “A Rose for Emily”. As a matter of fact, this particular story could be Faulkner’s own family with the similarities of the setting and the fact that both Emily’s and Faulkner family lost the influence it once had.
In his short story, “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner gives us a picture of female identity from a male point of view, showing compassion and forgiveness for his central character. Intriguingly, the writer uses the word “rose” in the title even though a rose does not exist in any part of his story; it has highly symbolic implications. Usually, the rose symbolizes love but in this case, it expresses a sympathetic attitude of society towards Emily. In reference to this story, Faulkner, in his interviews never admitted that the roses symbolized love. The story also focuses on the psychological exploration of the interior female world. Faulkner depicts the alienation of one repressed and isolated female in the South of the United States after the Civil War. Many themes might be explored in this short story, but a special interest is the focus on struggling to find love and the social interaction of a repressed female. The repression and isolation in the old Southern society causes degradation and dehumanization of Emily’s personality.
Faulkner then continues to build shape our opinion of Emily through the metaphorical comparison of her with a “Fallen Monument.” Such a comparison unsurprisingly leads the reader to think of Miss Emily as some sort of tarnished noble, or more appropriately, a tarnished aristocrat. The idea that Miss Emily is part of the aristocracy is then explicitly reinforced with the description of Miss Emily’s residence in the second paragraph (Page 391 Norton Introduction to Literature). Such a “big, squarish frame” (Page 391 Norton) house would not be something owned by anyone of mediocre social class, especially a woman of anything less than upper class when the contextual timeline of this piece is consulted. Faulkner’s pitiful description of the house leads the audience, yet again, to have a sense of pity for her.
The village people bust down the door on the second floor of Emily’s house in shock as they find more than they bargained for — the skeleton of Emily’s former lover. William Faulkner shows the readers what Emily struggles with from the beginning of her life until the end. He paints a vivid picture for his audience of who she is and the type of person the people in her village viewed her as. Her life creates the unique situations which influences her thought process and the actions that she takes. In “A Rose for Emily” the central conflict is Emily’s thoughts and emotions, which influence her actions.
William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” is considered a great story not only for its dark, almost morbid plotline, but also for its unique and interesting point of view. Faulkner’s distinct use of the first person point of view, through the eyes of one narrator illustrating generations of townspeople’s thoughts, provides an insight into Emily’s life that can not be replicated by any other perspective. The story spans three generations and includes the opinions and outlooks of both male and female townspeople, as well as people young and old, making Faulkner’s successful use of a single narrator to express the collective beliefs of all of the townspeople impressive. Had Faulkner set up the story around any other narration, the character composed of the conglomerated thoughts of all the townspeople wouldn’t exist and the confessional tone created through the narrator’s gossip would not be portrayed. The narrator conveys the eternal view of Emily’s life by what her acquaintances see and think, providing a stance that is necessary to the central idea that it is a part of human nature to assume the worst about someone who lives a withdrawn life.
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.
In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily,” he elaborates on the life of Emily Grierson, a white aristocratic woman from the Deep South. Faulkner uses many aspects of human life to create Miss Emily. The unique arrangement of the story in the form of flashback causes the reader to abstain from giving sympathy to Emily. As the reader begins to study Emily, he may feel less compassion for her once they realize the turmoil she experiences is caused by her stubborn attitude toward change. `In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner produces a solitary character through the aspects of Emily’s life such as the death’s of her loved ones, the theme of resistantance to change, and the different point of view.
Faulkner used her strange characteristics to make a claim that a woman is defined her her ability to complete her feminine objectives in society. Otherwise, she is more of an object than a person. This is supported by the story when the townspeople did not see Emily as a person and referred to her death as a "monument falling." The people that knew her, thought of her as something that stands out and doesn’t fit into their normal life. This has to do with her refusal or inability to find a living man and get married, as well as her reclusive nature. The strange thing about her is that she is isolated from the town, yet she is always being watched and talked about by the townspeople. As a woman, she gets gossiped about more than a man under similar circumstances would. She is also seen ridiculed behind her back by the narrator when he or she says that “only a woman could have believed” the far-fetched comment made by Colonel Sartoris about her taxes. The comments and actions by the townspeople exist either for the fact that Emily is a woman or for the fact that Emily does not fit into the defined expectations of the patriarchal society she lives in. If she was a “normal” woman—if she fit better into the society she lived in—the gossip and ridicule she experienced would cease to exist. Faulkner includes this to justify ridicule or gossip about a woman in
William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily depicts the need for a hierarchy by which to rank and organize individuals by merit of their importance. Class, gender and race each play a vital role in determining the interactions of Jefferson’s residents. Notably, these issues affect how Emily Grierson, Homer Barron, and Emily’s Negro servant Tobe are treated by the townspeople, as well as their behavior. Together race, gender and class portray and define the characters for who they are and act to elucidate their positions in society. The hierarchy in Jefferson dictates that class supersedes gender, which in turn, supersedes race.
Faulkner writes “A Rose for Emily” in the view of a memory, the people of the towns’ memory. The story goes back and forth like memories do and the reader is not exactly told whom the narrator is. This style of writing contributes to the notions Faulkner gives off during the story about Miss Emily’s past, present, and her refusal to modernize with the rest of her town. The town of Jefferson is at a turning point, embracing the more modern future while still at the edge of the past. Garages and cotton gins are replacing the elegant southern homes. Miss Emily herself is a living southern tradition. She stays the same over the years despite many changes in her community. Even though Miss Emily is a living monument, she is also seen as a burden to the town. Refusing to have numbers affixed to the side of her house when the town receives modern mail service and not paying her taxes, she is out of touch with reality. The younger generation of leaders brings in Homer’s company to pave the sidewalks. The past is not a faint glimmer but an ever-present, idealized realm. Emily’s morbid bridal ...
...le circumstances, alone in the world, as increasing age, no husband, no children, and no money but not for others to feel pity for her. She did not allow anyone to feel pity for her. As Faulkner might say Emily was a symbol of the humans never wither, always pride. Elements of horror: dead, iron-gray hair gives us a suggestion of the kind of man does not wither. Although Emily died but she has lived forever in the hearts and memories of people at the village of Jefferson, even the destructive love of Emily: killed her sweetheart to keep him beside her forever. Although she was always against the norm of the community, pride to place herself outside the norm, but the people of Jefferson from the old to the young man to the woman they love and respect her. Of course there are the whispers but people think of her as to think of a thing to be respected, maintained.
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” he uses many literary elements to portray the life of Emily and the town of Jefferson. The theme of the past versus the present is in a sense the story of Miss Emily’s life. Miss Emily is the representation of the Old South versus the New South, mainly because of her inability to interact with the present or come to terms with reality. Holding onto the past and rejecting change into the present led Miss Emily into a life of isolation and mental issues.
In William Faulkner’s pervasive story, the character in A Rose for Emily represents the idea of a woman’s place in society which questions the roles that were susceptible for woman. Due to a patriarchal power held over her for the majority of her life, she is unable to take control and spirals into a distortion of the way life and death is carried out. She represents the tension and struggle between the past and modernity taking the belief that people who have lived for years in a town and didn’t expect it to change instantly. This paper will analyze the literary theme of female empowerment and Emily’s struggle with societal pressure. Emily holds a high influence from the town due to her precedence over the several decades. She