Category: A Rose For Emily

In his tale, “A rose for Emily”, William Faulkner maximizes on the final paragraph to reveal to the audience the theme of his story. As a gothic horror story, the author relies on Emily as the main character to ascertain that mysteries are evident on earth. The author does not prepare the reader for the tragic or horrific end of the story. However, at the end of the story he confirms the mysteries about Emily’s life in terms of her character. The following text expounds the significance of the last paragraph to the reader.

The horrific end of the story captivates the audience and subsequently makes the story interesting. Although he uses the aspect of foreshadowing to relate to the tragic end of the story, the final paragraph comes as a shock to the reader. The anxiety together with strange behavior of Emily motivated the people of the town to search her house.

Other people only get access to the house after Emily’s death. Using the first narration, Faulkner confirms the mystery about Emily’s behavior when he writes “then we noticed in the second pillow was the indentation of a head” (5), which means Emily was sleeping beside a corpse.

The disbelief that Emily had an intimate relationship with a dead person for about forty years propels the reader to want to know more. Through the last paragraph, the reader clearly understands the mystery behind the house and the life of Emily. Consequently, after reading the last paragraph, the reader will understand that the mind is so secretive, and sometimes nobody can account for his or her behavior.

Initially, Emily is a vibrant young woman with a bright future. She conducts painting lessons to children while in her house. Unfortunately, the death of her father takes away her happiness. In the last paragraph, the reader understands the secretive life of Emily. Besides killing Homer, she also preserves the body for about forty years. Therefore, her weird behavior categorizes her as a person suffering from psychological imbalance.

How could she live with a decayed body for forty years? Apart from the foul smell a rotting body exudes, most people fear corpses. From the last paragraph, the audience will first understand Emily as a mad person mainly because she has guts to sleep with a dead person for over three decades.

Only an insane person will live, sleep and have a sexual relationship with a dead body. Secondly, Emily is a murderer and an evil person because she did not only kill Homer but also did not accord him a befitting burial. Emily was against Homer’s decision to leave the house and the only decision to stop him was by poisoning him using arsenic. Could she think of a better way to restrain him?

Furthermore, the ability to conceal her actions for over four decades makes the reader understand her as an exceptionally secretive person. As a lonely old woman, she could not confide in anybody. She talked to people like the Sheriffs without making them suspect about her darkness part of life.

Furthermore, she invited children in her house but did not give them a clue of what had happened. In addition, even the parents of the children did not suspect her as a murderer. She lived a double life. It is only after her death that the truth about the whereabouts of Homer comes to life.

For instance, the author writes, “They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened” (Faulkner 11). The town people accessed the room, which no outsider had entered for about forty years; therefore, only death revealed her secrets.

Faulkner surprisingly reveals about the horrific character of Emily at the end of the story; why not in the beginning? Before the last paragraph, the reader gets a chance to know about the youthful life of Miss Emily, her background and her relatives. He also gives a detailed description of the town, Old South.

Therefore, if the reader learns about Emily’s evilness at the beginning of the tale, then the story would automatically be tragic. None of the parents in the neighborhood would have given her children to Emily to teach them on painting. Thus, the surprising ending is not only to attract the reader but also enables him to uncover about historical facts about America especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

In summary, the last paragraph in the tale a rose for Emily has tremendous significance to the reader. Faulkner gives a tragic end to his protagonist to proof the theme of gothic in his story. Besides the ending being tragic, the reader uncovers the mysteries of the story and understands the protagonist of the story, Emily.

By reading the last paragraph, the audience understands the role and character of Emily. In the last paragraph Emily’s secrecy, conservatism and deviant from normal behavior becomes clear. Finally, by placing the paragraph at the end of the story, the author enables the audience to familiarize with the setting of his story.

Work Cited

Faulkner, William. “A Rose for family.” Forum, 1931. Print.

In this passage, close to the end of the short story A Rose for Emily, and at the end of Miss Emily’s life as an eccentric figure in the life of the town, Faulkner literally lays out the dead woman for the reader. In a mere two sentences, one very short, and the other very long, this passage shows how the environment of this small Southern community could foster colourful personalities and peculiar behaviours.

It also hints at how a character such as Miss Emily could survive so long, and so unfettered by the constraints that seem to limit others in the town, shielded by an obsession with the past. The author uses vivid language, extended metaphor, and a rambling sentence structure to achieve this effect.

The first sentence is almost abruptly brief. The relatives do their duty, promptly and correctly, just as they should, and the first, minimalist sentence signals that. There may be little love between these relatives from Alabama, who were, as noted earlier, “even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been” (Faulkner). However, they do what is expected for relations and no more, just like the sentence itself.

The second sentence is discursive in the extreme. It begins by announcing the funeral, describes Miss Emily’s bier, the many attendees, their states of mind and their deportment. It ends by disclosing the overall confusion of past and present that Faulkner portrays as seeming endemic to the American South.

This prepares the reader for the later revelation of Miss Emily’s madness. After hearing about her unwillingness to acknowledge her father’s death, and the Confederate veterans’ blithe mental abolishment of several decades of history, the reader is not totally surprised by Miss Emily’s ultimate gruesome preservation of the past in murdering her lover and then co-sleeping with his corpse for the next several decades.

While he does not use any obvious similes, Faulkner uses an extended metaphor to compare the elderly veterans’ foggy perception of the past to an ever-green field. The images he evokes are of a fondly recalled antebellum golden age of courtship and dancing.

He personifies the crayon portrait of the senior Grierson, referring back to the ill-fated visit by the Aldermen regarding Miss Emily’s taxes. This are yet more references to the story’s theme that the dead and the past linger on unwholesomely, relating backwards to her refusal to relinquish her dad’s remains, and forward to the funeral attendees’ discovery of her nearly mummified lover.

Faulkner effectively evokes the susurration of whispered gossip by the use of ‘s’ sounds, for example, second, Miss, mass, face, musing, ladies, and the onomatopoeic sibilant. The devices he uses change slightly when he begins speaking of the Civil War veterans in attendance.

Here he uses parallelism in indicating where around the house the veterans are chatting, and in the three verbs that describe their foggy state off mind; talking, believing, and confusing. He uses antithesis to introduce the central metaphor of the passage (not…but instead). At the end of the passage, he could have said ‘untouched by the years’, but he stretches out the idea and suggests tentativeness by saying “never quite touches” (Faulkner).

The passage includes concrete words, describing the veterans’ well-groomed old uniforms for example, and abstract ones describing, for example, their state of mind, or the physical impossibility of the inanimate portrait actually thinking. He uses polysyllabic words (e.g., macabre) when he needs them, and short simple Anglo-Saxon words (e.g., courted) when they are necessary. His verbs are active, but in this passage, they are not words describing physical action.

They describe internal, mental, or emotional activity. What distinguishes his writing is his mastery of carefully constructed balanced subordinate clauses, creating beautiful and meticulously correct run-on sentences. This approach conveys, in this instance the sound of an older person rambling on about something, recalling items in mid-speech.

In general, throughout Faulkner’s work, as in this passage, these stylistic devices convey the complexity and nuanced nature of relationships in the small towns he portrays. The result is an evocative and utterly scary murder mystery – solved.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction. Ed. Jon C Stott, Raymond E Jones and Rick Bowers. 2nd. Toronto, 1998. 144-150. paperback. 2013. Web.

Various forms of ambiguity are common in literature. Authors may do this on purpose to improve the reader’s reading experience, or such ambiguities may result from linguistic ambiguities. William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, set in Jefferson during the decades preceding and following the start of the twentieth century, depicts how an innocent girl, Emily Grierson, is driven to madness. The author exploits ambiguity in his text by describing Emily’s life as “incredible”, general definitions of which range from “unlikely to occur or be true” to “too unlikely to be believed”. The author conveys by this ambiguity that she is “isolated” from her community and, in fact, from her family as well as from the patriarchal society depicted in the story. It dictates that the only acceptable way a young woman like Emily can escape a selfish, overbearing father is to get married. Mr. Grierson, the overbearing father, believes he has the exclusive right to Emily and her future. He made important decisions about Emily and limited her choices. Many of his decisions about Emily have profound consequences in her life, often negative ones. “And Father had rebuilt the house too, on the same blackened spot, over the same cellar, where the other had burned, only larger, much larger”. This dream story is also ambiguous, since it can mean both the restoration of dependence and, vice versa, renewal and getting rid of it.

In The Man Who Was Almost a Man after the whole Jenny ordeal, Dave is feeling unhappy. He got his gun, just like he wanted, but everyone still treats him like he belongs at the kiddie table. This makes Dave feel more like a man. He shoots off his last remaining bullets and this time, “the gun still in his hands” after he fires. Dave’s increased skill represents his growing maturity: He might not be a man yet, but he’s taken the first step in the right direction.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. (2017) A Rose for Emily. The Modern Short Story.

Introduction

One of the most appealing aspects of William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily is that the readers’ exposure to the main character of Emily Grierson provides them with a better understanding of what accounts for the effects of the socially oppressive circumstances onto the process of an individual becoming mentally insane.

There is, however, even more to it – the concerned story makes it possible for readers to gain an in-depth insight into what the notion of ‘grotesque’ stands for. In my paper, I will explore the validity of this idea at length, while arguing that the character of Emily can indeed be referred to, as this notion’s actual epitome.

I will also aim to show that this character’s grotesqueness is being extrapolated by the fact that, throughout most of her life, Emily used to actively defy what the 19^th century’s conventions of public ethics in America.

Body of the paper

Probably the main qualitative feature of the notion of ‘grotesque’ is that it is being essentially synonymous with the Freudian concept of ‘uncanny’: “An uncanny experience occurs either when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed” (Freud 2). These primitive beliefs derive out of one’s unconscious fear of the ‘unnatural’, as such that presupposes danger. And, it can hardly be argued that the story A Rose for Emily does in fact emanate the strongly defined spirit of ‘unnaturalness’.

The validity of this suggestion can be well illustrated, in regards to the utterly unnatural lifestyle of Emily, who consciously strives to act in the socially withdrawn manner: “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her” (Faulkner 2). After all, in order for a person to be able to maintain its sanity, he or she must socialize with others periodically. This, however, is not the case with Emily – after having realized that she would not be able to live up to the patriarchal ideal of womanhood, she decides to cut just about all the ties, which used to connect her to the surrounding social reality. Yet, Emily continues to believe that there was nothing particularly odd about her socially secluded lifestyle. It is needless to mention, of course, that this alone makes it possible for us to discuss Emily in terms of a grotesque figure – the character’s very behavioral pattern reveals that she never experienced much of an emotional distress, while living in the ‘world of her own’.

Nevertheless, it is specifically the story’s shocking ending, which removes any possible doubts, as to the fact that Emily can indeed be deemed a strongly grotesque (in the sense of being unnatural) character. The reason for this is that, as this ending reveals, Emily used to share a bed with the corpse of Homer Barron – a man who was supposed to marry her: “What was left of him (Homer), rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay” (Faulkner 5).

The reason why Emily decides to poison Homer, is that she simply could not let him go, because it would result in the remains of her elitist sense of self-worth being thoroughly destroyed. Such a strong was Emily’s desire to live up to the socially constructed dogmas of public morality that, after having murdered Homer, she continues to sleep with his corpse for years. By doing it, she strives to reaffirm her worthiness as a ‘natural born’ wife. It is understood, of course, that Emily’s mental fixation, in this respect, cannot be described as anything but utterly grotesque, because it was prompting her to face life-challenges in the most unnatural manner, while nevertheless maintaining the posture of a well-respected ‘Southern lady’.

However, the sheer grotesqueness of Emily Grierson is not being solely reflected by the particulars of the character’s socially alienated lifestyle and by her ‘marital relationship’ with the corpse of a long-deceased Homer, but also by the fact that, without realizing it consciously, Emily tries to reverse backwards the flow of time – whatever improbable this may sound. Such Emily’s tendency is being extrapolated by the character’s mental fixation on trying to preserve the memories of her youth. Even though there is nothing unnatural about the fact that people do tend to cherish this type of memories, Emily’s preoccupation with the past appears to have a number of clearly pathological subtleties to it. For example, the character in question refuses to allow even the cosmetic renovations to be applied to the house where she resided: “When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it” (Faulkner 5).

When assessed through the lenses of psychoanalysis, such Emily’s mental trait can be interpreted as the indication that, ever since she decided to live as a hermit, it was namely spending time, while reflecting on the way of the past, which accounted for the character’s main preoccupation in life. Yet, those individuals who think too much of the past, are being known for their often clearly defined inability to address the challenges of the present, which in turn makes them nothing less of ‘walking zombies’, burdened by their physical existence.

It appears that the character of Emily Grierson fits this description perfectly well – it is not only that her existence could be discussed in terms of ‘decay’ in the allegorical but also in the literal sense of this word. While deteriorating physically, she made a deliberate point in ensuring the presence of the decaying corpse of Homer Barron in her bedroom – something that radiates the unmistakable spirit of grotesque. Hence, the story’s literary appeal – A Rose for Emily does not only reflect on the notion of ‘grotesque’, but it also reveals this notion’s actual mechanic, by the mean of exposing readers to their own anxieties, in regards to what their unconscious psyche deems ‘unnatural’.

Conclusion

I believe that the earlier deployed line of argumentation, in defense of the idea that the character of Emily Grierson is indeed utterly grotesque, is fully consistent with the paper’s initial thesis. Apparently, it is in the very nature of ‘grotesque’ to create an irreconcilable dichotomy between the affiliated person’s strive towards self-actualization, on one hand, and his or her inability to allow its existence to be affected by the environmental circumstances, on the other – the idea that has been explored throughout the paper’s entirety. This appears to be the main reason why the discussed character can be best described as both: tragic and somewhat frightening, which in turn creates the objective preconditions for her to be referred to as a rather grotesque but very memorable literary figure.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William 1930, A Rose for Emily. Web.

Freud, Sigmund 1919, The “Uncanny”. Web.

One of the most appealing aspects of William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily is that the readers’ exposure to the main character of Emily Grierson provides them with a better understanding of what accounts for the effects of socially oppressive circumstances onto the process of an individual becoming mentally insane.

This is because it was namely the fact that, ever since her early years Emily was indoctrinated to believe that she had no other option but to live up to the expectations of her traditionally minded relatives and neighbors, which caused her to murder Homer Barron in the end. Let us elaborate on this suggestion at length.

As it appears from the story, throughout the course of her young years, Emily did not exhibit even a single sign of being predisposed to act in a socially withdrawn manner. At that point of her life, she was nothing but a pretty girl who strived to attain happiness by marrying a man she could love. In fact, Emily’s father also wanted her to do this.

However, being the representative of a Southern aristocracy, he never ceased insisting that his daughter may only marry a ‘worthy’ man. In its turn, this prevented Emily from being able to find a husband, while her father was still alive. Nevertheless, being the product of an elitist upbringing, Emily was having a particularly hard time while coping with the fact that, after having turned thirty, she ceased being desired by men, as a potential fiancée.

This is exactly the reason why, after her father’s death, Emily choose in favor of leading a socially alienated lifestyle, while going as far as making a deliberate point in not even stepping out of her house. Apparently, such Emily’s decision reflected the fact that, because of her failure to get married, she never ceased experiencing an acute sensation of guilt for not being able to lead a life she prepared herself for.

Therefore, it is fully explainable why, after having met Homer, Emily decided to marry him, despite the fact that she did not truly love him and despite the fact that Homer was not taking much interest in marrying her either. Yet, it was only the matter of time before it would eventually dawn on Emily that her expectations, in this respect, were vain.

The realization of this fact proved little more than Emily could take. After all, just as it happened to be the case in all highly religious/traditional societies, single women that spend time with single men, without entering into a marital relationship with them, are being commonly regarded ‘unworthy’ and ‘morally wicked’.

This was exactly the reason why Emily decided to poison Homer – she simply could not let him go, as it would result in the remains of her elitist sense of self-worth being thoroughly destroyed. Such a strong was Emily’s desire to live up to the socially constructed and religion-based dogmas of public morality that, after having murdered Homer, she continued to sleep with his corpse for years. By doing it, she strived to reaffirm her worthiness as a potential wife.

Thus, the character of Emily Grierson can be well discussed as a victim of social circumstances, which triggered the process of her becoming ever more insane and which brought about Emily’s ultimate demise. Therefore, even though Emily did commit murder, the story of her life suggests that she cannot be held responsible for what she had done. Instead, the blame must be placed upon a moralistically oppressive society, in which Emily had the misfortune to be born to this world.

In the short story, A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner often resorts to the use of symbolism with the purpose of conveying its hidden implications. The symbol, which is most frequently met in this excellent piece of literature, is the symbol of the rose. A rose is a representation of love and confidentiality. Another symbol, which is commonly used in the short story, is Emily’s house. This is a representation of Emily’s entire life with its initial blossoming and final alienation. A yet another remarkable symbol to be noticed is hair, which is left on Emily’s pillow. Losing her hair is a tragedy for a woman, and this symbol is also an implication of Emily’s life tragedy as she loses her love and has a life of wasting. Overall, through a variety of effective symbols, Faulkner subtly tells the audience about his heroine’s life with all of its former glory and grief, faced during its final period.

Addressing symbolic implications in A Rose for Emily, the first sign to be discussed is definitely a rose because it is a central indication in the story, which is even seen in its title. A rose is a representation of Emily’s only true love, Homer. This man was the only chance for the main heroine to feel herself a woman, cherished and tenderly loved. Also, a rose is Emily’s secret because she never wanted the others to know about her inner feelings so she kept them as her treasure.

Next, it is important to give consideration to the symbol of a house. In the initial lines of this piece of literature we read, It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting it’s stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores (Madden 907).

These few lines are filled with meaning. First, they tell about the former glory of “Old South” with its rich houses lined in long rows, situated on the central streets of cities and towns. Before, Emily’s house was the most beautiful house in the street, and so was her life – full of light colors and laughter. However, in time, the former glory faded away, and the house turned into grey ruins just like Emily’s life. In addition, the house is also a symbol of changes in society. People became owners of cotton gins and garages, and houses, such as Emily’s one, were no longer affordable for them. Also, Emily isolated herself from the new society in her house, and thus, it is the symbol of Emily’s alienation. Lastly, Emily utilizes her house as a shrine for Homer’s body, which suggests that it is also a symbol of death and decay.

Finally, another important symbol in this story is “iron-grey hair” on Emily’s pillow (Madden 910). This is a symbol of tragedy, failed love, and frustration. Emily’s tragedy is caused by her father’s attitude. He always thought his daughter was better than all men around her, and thus, he kept her away from them. As a result, Emily ended as a wretched lady.

In conclusion, the short story A Rose for Emily by Faulkner is remarkable for its abundance of meaningful symbols. By means of these symbols, the author subtly reveals his heroine’s tragedy.

References

Madden, Frank. Exploring Literature Writing and Arguing about Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay (5th Edition), Harlow: Longman, 2011. Print.

A short story A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is known to be one of the most famous and most popular among his stories. The author managed to put a lot of different ideas in the short plot of the work. While telling the readers his story, Faulkner describes such issues as “race, gender, and class” (Anderson, n.d., para. 1), adding to his work a great deal of grotesque, irony and some mystery which appears in the last lines of the story. The work centers on the aristocratic woman Emily Grierson, who is one of the most discussed and famous people in the town. Having started with the announcement of her death, the author then reveals the main facts of her life from the point of view of the community of the city. Belonging to the very powerful family, she absorbed all qualities peculiar to it, such as arrogance, dignity and great self confidence. However, at the same time the author underlines her absolute loneliness, making it one of the key points of the story. Another crucial moment is the horrifying discovery of the corpse of her husband and the obvious signs of her lying in the bed with this body.

Another short story to be analyzed and compared is The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway. The plot and the main events seem to be absolutely different from the previous story. The main character, writer Harry is slowly dying from gangrene somewhere in Africa, near the mount Kilimanjaro, with Helen, accompanying him. The plot of the story is made from numerous flashbacks of main character in which he remembers his past full of different and interesting events. These flashbacks represent his thoughts about the peculiarities of human life, bright stories and his regrets about unfinished business. They are opposed to his current state, when he has to die slowly in a very dull place having nothing interesting around. The recognition of this fact makes him suffer even stronger. He suddenly realizes that he did nothing in order to become a writer and he just “has squandered his time and talent” (Miksanek, 2003, para. 4). Being not able to change his life now, he could just be angry and insult Helen, blaming her in his failure to become a writer. His last vision is connected with mount Kilimanjaro. His last breath coincides with the cry of the hyena.

From the first point of view an obvious similarity of the structure of two short stories strikes the readers eye. In both stories flashbacks serve to describe the lives of the protagonists better and to reveal some unknown facts of their biography. However, the difference is in the manner of presentation. The life of Emily is described by the inhabitants of the town, while Harry remembers his life on his own. The reader can draw a parallel between Harrys slow death and Emilys life. She was not living as she was dying slowly, enclosed in her house and loneliness and a gangrene torturing Harry can be compared with her tortures of being alone, imprisoned by herself in the same room with the corpse, having no opportunity to feel herself alive. Harry had a bright life, full of events and impressions, which can be opposed to the monotonous routine of Emily. There is one more common motif in both works. The authors show the reader the price of wasted abilities. No matter how bright mans life was in the end he would deeply regret him not being able to change it greatly and realize his potential.

Reference List

Anderson, A. (n.d.). A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner: Summary, Theme & Analysis. Web.

Faulkner, W. A Rose for Emily. (1930). Web.

Hemingway, E. The Snows of Kilimanjaro. (1938). Web.

Miksanek, T. (2003). The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Web.

Introduction

Emily Grierson, the main character in Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’, is a complex and mysterious character. She is a caricature of a character in a gothic story that Faulkner envisioned for his book. Emily’s story is told by a narrator who dwells within the same society. The narrator presents her as oppressed by her father, representing the female subjugation pervading the American society then (Fetterley 23). She endures the suppression by recoiling to her shell, an aspect that enshrouds her with a mysterious mien. The demise of her father leads her to seek company in Homer whom she later poisons in what critics have termed as an illustration of her necromania (Skei, Hans, and William 23). Given her eccentric demeanor, Emily’s character traits can only be discerned through her actions and words; towards her father, Homer, and the society that has largely misunderstood her.

Main body

A daughter of an unconventional father, Emily inherited a degree of her insanity from her family (Fetterley 24). The father was domineering and openly hostile to suitors who attempted to betroth his daughter. Consequently, Emily remained unmarried even after attaining the age of marriage. The death of her father comes as a relief to her. The narrator propounds that the death had restored humanity to Emily (Faulkner 243). She had been accustomed to the dominion to the extent that she accepted it. This is best exemplified by her actions towards Homer. When the latter attempts to desert her, she cannot think of any other means of keeping him rather than through death (Fetterley 23).

Through the narrator, it is understood that the Grierson family enjoyed high status in society (283). The society thus impressed upon Emily to retain a sense of mysteriousness that her family had kept for a long time. But the high status belongs to her past. Society wants her to live in the past that is already behind her. This explains her bizarre conservatism. She will not admit the death of her father, just as she did not acknowledge the death of a neighbor some time back. When she moves to her other house in Victoria, she remains impervious to the changes that are sweeping the community. She lacks a sense of transition rekindling Faulkner’s fascination with portraying characters caught between the present and future (Fetterley 27).

Emily’s oddity takes new heights when she exhibits what can only be termed as necrophilism. Necrophilia is a person who has strong sexual attraction to non-living people or objects. People with such tendencies are usually domineering and would do preposterous things to control others. Emily depicts such tendencies, first as a reaction to her father’s death and second as a tool to control Homer (Fetterley 23). Notice that his father controlled her in all aspects to the level of derogating her sexuality. When her father dies, she holds onto him by refusing to acknowledge his death. Long after it sank into her mind that her father was dead, she turns to Homer. Take cognizance that she killed him by poisoning and was found years later entangled in his arms.

Conclusion

Emily’s complexity baffles the reader especially those who are not familiar with Faulkner’s characterization. At one point, she appears like any other American woman of her time struggling in a male-dominated society. At another moment, she exhibits bizarre traits that confound society and the readers.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. Logan, Iowa: Perfection Learning Corp, 1990. Print.

Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. Print.

Skei, Hans H, and William Faulkner. Reading Faulkner’s Best Short Stories. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Print.

William Faulkner’s 1930 short story A Rose for Emily concerns the tragic life of the last remaining survivor of a powerful southern family, the Griersons, and the unhealthy relationship she has with memory and the past.

Miss Emily Grierson, the daughter of the overbearing and self-important southern gentleman Mr. Grierson, preserves a proud haughtiness in the face of her neighbors and refuses to pay municipal taxes, thanks to an arrangement made 30 years earlier with the former mayor of Jefferson, Colonel Sartoris.

Miss Emily Grierson’s unwillingness or inability to let go of the past and the prison of her father’s beliefs about her social station cause her to become a recluse. A man much beneath her social station takes an interest in her, but eventually leaves her, and the townspeople of Jefferson grow to feel sympathy for her and attempt to protect her from the reality of her situation – poverty, isolation, and spinsterhood.

The following essay analyzes the setting, characters, plot development, and symbolism of A Rose for Emily to demonstrate how William Faulkner uses these devices to develop the theme of memory and the past in the short story.

The fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi provides the setting for A Rose for Emily. In Jefferson, William Faulkner creates a town steeped in a storied pre-Civil War past that it struggles to relinquish. Though the Civil War and all of its supporters and participants are long dead, their memories crowd the pages of the story.

William Faulkner tells the reader at the story’s outset that Miss Emily Grierson has now “gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson” (Faulkner 49).

Miss Emily Grierson occupies a house of former grandeur on a street of former renown; both are dilapidated at the time that the story takes place. William Faulkner describes Miss Emily Grierson’s house as “a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street.

But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (Faulkner 49).

The frozen in time quality of the setting, combined with the images of “coquettish decay,” underscore Miss Emily Grierson’s inability to free herself from the memory of her father and of the past.

The characters in A Rose for Emily occupy two generations: the elders, including “the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old,” who understand Emily’s faded grandeur and think of her as “a tradition, a duty, and a care,” and the more youthful characters (Faulkner 51; Faulkner 49).

The members of the younger generation of characters do not understand the elder obsession with decorum and propriety, let alone why the town allows this woman to default on her municipal taxes. When a noxious odor envelops Miss Emily Grierson’s homestead, William Faulkner demonstrates the difference between these two generations.

“The next day [Judge Stevens] received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. We really must do something about it, Judge. I’d be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we’ve got to do something. That night the board of aldermen met – three greybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.

It’s simple enough, he said. Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don’t…Damn it, sir, Judge Stevens said, will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” (Faulkner 51). In this example, we see that through the use of character, William Faulkner shows how the obsession with propriety that transfixes Miss Emily Grierson’s generation is completely lost on the other generation.

William Faulkner describes the Griersons as a family that “held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough to Miss Emily and such. 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, the two of them framed by the backflung front door.

So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated” (Faulkner 52). Thus, both generations eventually develop pity for Emily as she sinks into decrepitude after the death of Mr. Grierson.

William Faulkner’s plot development uses the associative quality of memory to align the plot points in a non-linear fashion and tell the story as though it were being recounted from memory. After Miss Emily Grierson sends the aldermen away, William Faulkner tells the reader “so she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.

That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart – the one we believed would marry her – had deserted her” (Faulkner 50). William Faulkner uses seamless transitions between past and present, similar to the non-linear movement of memory across time, to move the action of the story.

The most potent use of symbolism in A Rose for Emily occurs in the description of the toiletries that Emily buys for Homer Barron. William Faulkner uses the strange admission from the townspeople that “we learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece.

Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt” (Faulkner 55). These symbols set up the idea in the reader’s mind that the marriage between Emily and Homer will take place.

When the story later describes Miss Emily Grierson’s death, whereupon the townspeople learn the appalling secret that the town’s last southern belle has been harboring for over forty years, the reader revisits the chilling symbolism of the “man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured…The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin…What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt” (Faulkner 57). The tarnished silver and rotting nightshirt symbolizes the death and decay that Emily’s obsessive refusal to release the past created.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Modern Library, 1951. Print.

Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner can be viewed as the most distinguished representatives of the literary style known as Southern Gothic. In their works, they often explore the lives of individuals who cannot adjust to cultural and social changes. In many cases, these people prefer to reject these changes or turn a blind eye to them. This argument is particularly relevant if one speaks about such short stories as A Rose for Emily and A Good Man is Hard to Find. In particular, one should speak about Emily Grierson described by Faulkner and the unnamed Grandmother who is the main character of Flannery O’Connor’s short story.

In both cases, the authors describe the tragedy or unavoidable fall of a person. Apart from that, the protagonists have many common character traits which eventually lead to the unavoidable demise of these people. In particular, the writers attempt to show that moral righteousness, unfounded sense of prestige, and unwillingness to recognize one’s mistakes result in the self-destruction of an individual. Nevertheless, the authors use different literary devices in order to explore this theme. These are the main questions that should be discussed in greater detail.

In the literary context, the term tragedy implies that the fall of a person is unavoidable. To some degree, this idea is stressed in both short stories. In turn, the readers can see that the tragedy is unavoidable because both characters try to reject reality. In order to highlight this idea, the writers focus on the values and worldviews of the characters who prefer to live in the imaginary world of their past.

It is much more convenient to act in this way; nevertheless, they disregard the dangerous consequences of this behavior on the lives of other people. These people want to emphasize the idea that they belong to the elite layers of the Southern society. For example, Emily states that she does not have to pay taxes. In particular, she believes that the previous mayor of the town, Colonel Sartoris freed her from this duty. Yet, she does not want to consider that Colonel Sartosis died many years ago, and her claims cannot be supported in any way.

Moreover, she does want to her house to be numbered as every other house in the town. In this way, she wants to distinguish herself from other members of the community. One should bear in mind that during the antebellum period, Emily’s family was among the most distinguished ones in the town. So, this character desperately tries to retain this legacy.

To some degree, this behavior is also typical of the Grandmother. In particular, she continuously says that she should be called a lady. In her opinion, this word is not only a polite description of a woman. More likely, this title has to emphasize her high social status and noble birth. Furthermore, she continuously recollects the so-called Old South, a highly-segregated society in which the status of a person was determined primarily by his/her birth.

Apart from that, the Grandmother is convinced that her moral values are principles are superior to the values of other people. Thus, both characters cherish the past without acknowledging the disastrous impacts of such worldviews. These are some of the peculiarities that can be singled out. Yet, despite the flaws of these women, one can still feel sympathy for them because their values or worldviews could be shaped by other people such as their parents or educators. This is one of the issues that should take into account.

Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that the authors rely on different plot structures in order to describe the tragedy of both characters. For instance, Faulkner relies on the non-linear plot structure. At the beginning, the unnamed narrator mentions Emily’s funeral and shows how town residents perceived Emily. This introduction is important for understanding the values of this character. Later, the story-teller tells how the main character slips into madness. In contrast, Flannery O’Connor chooses a linear narrative describing the tragic chain of coincidences that lead to the death of the Grandmother as well as her relatives. To a great extent, she prompts the readers to think about the underlying cause of these events.

It is possible to say that the concept of tragedy plays a more important role in Flannery O’Connor’s story. For instance, the Grandmother insists that the family should see a plantation house which is allegedly located in Georgia. Apparently, this house was constructed during the antebellum period. Nevertheless, she forgets that this house was actually built in Tennessee.

This decision leads to the tragic outcome; in particular, they meet a gang of runaway prisoners who kill them. There are several literary devices that eventually foreshadow the demise of the Grandmother. For instance, one can mention the description of Misfit’s cars that resembles a hearse. In this way, Flannery O’Connor tries to indicate at the impending disaster. It is necessary to mention that such tragic coincidences play an important role in the classical Greek tragedies such as Oedipus the King. Overall, Flannery O’Connor illustrates the cruel irony of the events resulting in the death of the Grandmother.

Such elements are not present in Faulkner’s short story. This author pays more attention to the use of symbols. For instance, one can mention Emily’s house which symbolizes the legacies of the past, especially the time when Emily’s family could play a vital role in the local community and the entire Old South as well. However, in both cases, the writers highlight that only by clinging to the past, a person can act in the self-destructive way. Furthermore, he/she can unwillingly harm other people. These are some of the details that can be distinguished because they throw light on some of the main ethical pitfalls that one should avoid.

On the whole, this discussion shows that William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor want to explore how and why a person can become doomed to failure. In both cases, this outcome can be explained by the fact that a person is not able to acknowledge changes. Furthermore, one should speak about the failure to recognize one’s errors. Admittedly, the writers apply different plot structures and literary devices. However, in both case, the unavoidable fall of a person plays a key role in the narrative.

This theme is important for understanding the ideas expressed by the authors who want to show that the demise of both characters can be explained by their worldviews and values. Much attention should be paid to a person’s self-righteousness and unwillingness to recognize changes. Finally, both writers are able to evoke compassion for the characters, even though these people have many moral flaws. This is one of their major achievements. These are the main details that can be distinguished.