Category: A Rose For Emily

The irony is a literary technique that and in our every story, it is used very well.

In The Wall, there is situational irony. When the prosecution occurs and they all sentenced to death. Pablo Ibietta starts to think that life is meaningless and existing does not make any sense for him. Then he decides to fool their guardians and wants to have fun before gone. He tells guardians that Ramon Grill is hiding in the graveyard, but when he says this he knows the true place of what Ramon Grill is hiding. At the end of the story he finds out Ramon Grill is really hiding in the graveyard. “I laughed so hard the tears came to my eyes,” says Pablo Ibietta at the end of the story. He reacts unexpectedly in this case and doing this the writer Sartre summarizes the irony spectacularly. This coincidence leads to an ironic resolution because although Pablo has cheated death, he feels he is already dead. This kind of an ending leaves us with curiosity whether or not he truly knew Ramon was in the cemetery, also whether Pablo was executed or not. Because he does not share his emotions when he heard to Ramon was in the cemetery. He just laughs.

Just like in The Wall there is also a situational irony In A Rose For Emily. The shocking end of the story is totally ironic. After Emily’s funeral, Jefferson people go into Emily’s house and break down the door to the bedroom. They are astonished what they saw when they entered the room. There is Homer Barron’s decayed body in the bed beside Emily’s grey hair. In the meantime, the room also seems like a wedding room. When reading the story, it is really annoying that they firstly complain about the smell, when it actually smells a dead body. Then Homer Barron is vanquished after Emily taking the rat poison. Then the people of Jefferson cannot put them together until the breaking down the door. The whole time they just think that he had left and she was alone, but she really had him with his entire life. This is the actual irony, I think. At first, it sounds ridiculous when you think about it, but with taking into the consideration to the circumstances of post seventeen Jefferson it sounds to be comprehensible. People do not even think about to blame because of Emily’s noble ancestry. Unlike her, Homer was a Yankee.

Unlike the others, there is no exact irony in the movie. Nevertheless, the judge who is under the pressure of not only his own countries’ politics but also the German people carries out what is written in the law. He sentences of life imprisonment for the defendants. He does not care what the others expect. The only person who respects his decision becomes Ernst Janning, who sentenced to life imprisonment. Even though confessed to the crime, he is waiting to hear a word that salve his conscience.“I didn’t know it would come to this. You must believe it.” he says. “It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent,” says Judge Haywood to Ernst Janning. This is what the irony in the movie. On the other hand, the actual irony is our human being’s life I think. As Herr Rolfe said at the end of the movie “In five years, the men he sentenced to life imprisonment is released”. This is the irony itself.

In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells a story that revolves around the life and death of Emily Grierson. Miss Emily is an elderly lady who is secluded from the rest of the town. Her overbearing father died around thirty years ago and since his death, she has not been able to find her own ground. Due to this, Grierson got stuck in her own timeframe. So much so that she kept her deceased father’s body for a short period after his passing. Throughout the entire story, it encompasses Emily’s whole life from young to her own passing. We learn as the story goes on that she was considered a member of the higher class in Jefferson, the town that she lived in. When she dies at seventy-four years old, the whole town goes to her funeral. “The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house” (Faulkner 1). Overtime, Grierson’s house became the most hideous looking home on the street, though her street was once considered the admirable in the city. The house used to appear sophisticated with a bright, white paint job and scrolled balconies but was now covered in filth and decay. Throughout the story, Miss Emily’s house becomes a symbolic feature in the story. William Faulkner brilliantly displays his ideas on paper and allows us as readers to understand his themes and symbolism, while keeping us intrigued even after the story has ended.

“A Rose for Emily” contains many distinctive, but I personally believe isolation is one of the main ones portrayed. The people in Miss Emily’s city chat about her and pities her absent soul. The theme of isolation infiltrates the entire narrative as the story follows her life. Emily is originally isolated from suitors by her father and from a high volume of the society by her higher status. This, consequently, resorts to self-imposed isolation. As a young woman, Emily lived alone with her father and never appeared to involve herself in relationships with the community because “the Griersons held themselves a little too high” (Faulkner 2). However, following the death of her father, Emily begins to voluntarily isolate herself from civilization as she starts to appear in public even more rarely. Her isolation becomes interrupted when she begins to date a young, unmarried man named Homer Barron. Barron works at the construction company that is paving the sidewalks on her street. As they begin riding buggies and spending more time together, the townspeople begin to gossip even more. Transitioning into Faulkner begins the story by describing Miss Emily’s house, one which was once lavish, is now aged and dusty. “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, [Now] an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 1). The house itself stands for tradition and wraps back around to isolation. The tradition being that it has aged, and instead of moving along with the rebuilding of the South, it has stayed the same. Isolation resembling a house that was once something beautiful and appreciated, was now covered in dirt and mold. “A Rose for Emily” showcases old versus new and traditional versus nontraditional, which is taken to light from the story’s plot, characters, and setting.

Briefly mentioning other characters then Miss Emily characters in the paragraph above, Emily Grierson is the protagonist. Miss Emily is a round character, though we do not learn everything about her from the beginning. By the end of the story, however, we as readers gain a much better understanding of this complicated, old lady. When the story starts to ventures out into Miss Emily’s past, it is understood that her family is still highly valued and respected in the town. In such extreme that when she walks into a room, people are expected to stand in admiration of her. Her father, who sheltered her significantly, had once donated a great amount of money to the own, pardoning Miss Emily of any upcoming tax payments. Again, the familiar theme of old versus new is seen when Miss Emily is requested to provide a tax payment. She refuses in such a way that it seems the question should not have even been directed towards her. “I have no taxes in Jefferson” (Faulkner 1). No further questioning is taken since they are aware this lady and her family is a monument in this town. Other characters like Homer Barron, Tobe and Judge Stevens would personally be considered flat characters. These characters were uncomplicated and did not undergo much evaluation. Although, each character had their own unique effect on the plot which made the story more appreciated and attention-grabbing.

The climax of this short story was intense. Emily Grierson was not maturing and changing, but the world around her is. After she and Barron start dating, she goes against the basic foundation and fundamentals that her father raised her on. As the story unfolds, Homer and Emily start to see each other less frequently which leads to him breaking up with her. This upsets Emily since she is not done with him and greatly wants to marry him. However, Homer was not the marrying type and did not have this same desire. Therefore, the only way she knew how to keep him was to murder him and that is exactly what she did. “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (Faulkner 5). Emily laid next to Homer’s lifeless, decaying body after poisoning him. For her, this was her way of stopping time, once again living in her own timeframe. In return, she knew that she could stay with Homer forever. The climax contained the murder of Homer and Emily killing herself as well, but it also reflected on the theme of isolation and encompassed how Grierson’s personality influenced her actions throughout the whole story.

William Faulkner was a brilliant Southern writer, who lived from 1897-1962. He was born in New Albany, Mississippi which is also where the majority of his works are based in. Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and the 1955 and 1963 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He wrote 19 novels, all staying in the three genres of fiction, poetry and Southern gothic. He is amazing at explaining his characters thoroughly and giving the reader a better sense of understanding. An example of this being, “A small, fat woman, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony can with a tarnished gold head” (Faulkner 1). Faulkner has often been titled one of the most essential writers in the history of American literature (Goodreads). This remains true by his famous short stories that revolve around themes relating to heartache, loss, love and everything in between.

“A Rose for Emily” is a popular and valued story that opened up many eyes. Digging into the setting, we see a major evolution period for the South in general, including Grierson and the townspeople. This story took place around the same timeframe as slavery coming to an end. The middle class was shifting into the more predominant class and society as a whole was becoming less exclusive. As mentioned earlier, the Grierson family was one of high status so they most likely owned slaves. While the townspeople seemed to understand and adapt to this new way of life, Emily did not. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 1). It all comes back to her father because after he dies, things continuously keep changing like the New South emerging. Miss Emily knew how to follow but did not know how to lead.

In conclusion, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is filled with character, charisma and symbolism. The townsfolk all seemed to agree that Miss Emily is trapped in her own form of time with no way out. I believe she poisoned Homer Barron because she needed and craved a male in her life to take the lead and make decisions. Once her father was gone, Miss Emily saw it fit to turn this duty over to Barron. Was the act of assassinating him out of affection and love or utter selfishness? Mentally and emotionally unstable, she could not be trusted to make her own rational decisions. Maybe this was her rational decision because she never wanted to lose him. Whatever the reason may be, she found a way to hold onto her ‘rose’, Homer Barron, forever and William Faulkner gave us this story to also love and remember forever.

Before reading Williams Faulkner’s gothic story, I imagined the story a little less on the spooky side. “A Rose for Emily” may as well be able a troubled young woman who was kept inside most of her life until her twenties. Because of her lack of being out in public and not having a suitor, she believed she was above everyone, along with her growing loneliness. After her father passed, there are signs that she maybe be necrophiliac, due to her rejecting her father’s death and leaving him in her home for three days straight. As the story goes on, we see Emily fall in love, kill her lover, and stay with his corpse for forty years until her death. So, what exactly is Faulkner getting at in this story, well we see comments on the conflicts between North and South, complications of a changing world order, and strict social constraints placed on women.

As the story begins, we are brought into a time zone of post-civil war, Emily living in the recovering South. A small town named Jefferson in Mississippi, is where Faulkner chooses to place Ms. Emily. By what the story says many workers from the South are still angry with the North, while the North is sending people over to reconstruct the South. Faulkner brings in this young gentleman that has all three of the hated characteristics in the south being that he is gay, a yankee, and from the North. The young man goes by the name Homer Barron, with him we see how disgusted the south is with the North Because when he begins to hang out with the town bell, Emily, they get furious. An example would be when some townsfolk said, ““Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.” But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige—without calling it noblesse oblige” (Faulkner). The people were saying that there would be no way that Miss Emily would choose a Northern man or even bat an eye to him because she was a much higher class. Instead what the people would do was whisper to themselves saying “Poor Emily” (Faulkner). Every single time she was out with Barron the townspeople would just badmouth her or feel sorry for her because of who he was and where he came from. Instead of the townspeople really dealing with the issue at hand they called in the priest to tell her instead. So, what Faulkner is saying is that even after the Civil War the South was still angry and upset with the North.

As we continue with the story, we see that as time progresses and time is accelerating, the town itself is modernizing, except for Emily’s home. Faulkner made Emily into this time capsule, as time kept progressing, she stayed behind in the past. For example, her house is the main symbol here in the story itself, as in the beginning we see it in a much richer part of town and beautifully kept. At the end of the story, since she did not want to move or change, we see the house old and detreating, next to what is believed is a gas station. Faulkner made it clear that she was stubborn, and change was not in her vocabulary, as we can see in her home itself. Along with the taxes as well “When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice” (Faulkner). As time went by even after Colonel Sartoris had died ten years prior we see that she still refuses to pay her taxes. Due to her still living in the past.

Miss Emily was a stubborn woman but even with that being said, people still treated her in a way different since she was a woman. Faulkner uses endless examples on Emily’s special treatment due to her being a female. The townspeople never confronted her on absolutely anything, not even when her housed reeked of a dead odor. Instead this is what the Judge says about it “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” (Faulkner). Instead of telling Emily that her house smelled horrid, they kept quiet since she was a woman and did it for her in the end. We see that Faulkner many times adds in the special treatment towards Emily simply because she is a female. Indicating that at these times, woman we’re basically just there and things were just either done for them or without them.

In all what Faulkner made sure to add in as many bold statements on the North and the South, Modernization, and special treatment towards the woman at the time frame. As we go on, it could be made sense of that he may be mocking this time period on how delusional they were towards certain situations.

In the short story A Rose for Emily the author William Faulkner focuses on the recent change in the old south throughout the whole story. The short story goes through the life of Emily Grierson, an older woman from the south, and reflects how she is after her father’s death. The setting in A Rose for Emily is William Faulkner’s idea of post-common war Jefferson a community in the south of the United States. Faulkner’s utilization of this specific timespan or sort, is effective in giving the reader a comprehension and foundation to the qualities and convictions of the characters in the story. the story uncovers such expansive thoughts as complexities of the evolving scene, strains between the South and North, and exacting social restrictions put on women. William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily shows and describes the diversity of the decay and change of the old traditional south.

In the story the author hints a small theme throughout story about change and not being true to yourself. Change is Miss Emily’s weakness, so she does not recognize it, regardless of whether that change is the passing of her dad or the appearance of expense charges. She did not want to believe her father died, “Miss Emily met them at the door dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them her father was not dead” (Faulkner 5). Miss Emily does not want to the accept the truth and the change of her father not being in her life and shortly later she would break down by realizing her father is gone forever. Besides, her frame of mind toward the demise of her dad portends her demeanor toward the passing of Homer Barron. Miss Emily is also related with the progression of time such as her ticking watch is covered in her chest head but, however never observed. Miss Emily seems to consolidate life and passing in her own individual from the recent events that took a toll emotionally. She does not want to accept the present and wants to stay with the past, “It is the past pitted against the present-the past with its social decorum, the present with everyone set down in the books” (West). Emily chooses not to move on, constantly a universe of falsity to us of the present, and she does everything in her power to convince herself that everything is fine when it is not. A lot of differentiation is repeated again and again. The distinction between the frame of mind of judge Stevens and the disposition of the youngster who comes to him about the smell at Emily’s home. For the youngster it is simple for him; Miss Emily’s reality has stopped to exist, and her mind is going crazy. Miss Emily’s mindset is not heathy throughout the whole short story and she does not accept the changes in her life that recently happened.

A Rose for Emily shows that Faulkner was impacted by Southern brutal ways as an abstract convention when the creators investigated outrageous, introverted conduct. Southern ways depended on the idea that regular day to day existence and the refined tempted surface of the social request was excessively not genuine, deceptive, concealing terrifying substances. There are a ton of subtleties that uncover the impact of the Southern Gothic ways such as, the entire cranky and restricting air, rottenness, rot. The Author portrays this throughout the story by, describing Emily and the love she had for the civil. The author also mainly focuses on, “the transformation of the south and, more generally, changes in social mores, particularly for women” (Watkins). Faulkner describes Emily as a fallen staue and the author shows that Emily is still thinking about the past such as when she joined the civil war soldiers in the cemetery that passed away during the civil war. Emily’s home is likewise an image of the perishing universe of the Southern gentry. The house is extravagantly enriched, yet it appears to be strange among modern environment – a similar path as the old South sensibilities are strange in the quickly evolving society. The house likewise speaks to the picture of dysfunctional behavior and passing.

Passing is a common subject in ‘A Rose for Emily’- there are 5 genuine passings in the story. Demise wins from the earliest starting point when a storyteller specifies Emily’s passing and the spoiling body in Emily’s bed likewise specifically mirrors the rot of the old South. Emily is a seal of the old South – she is a genuine excellent woman yet her decency and effortlessness decrease as the time passes, as obsolete emotions and qualities that the Griersons symbolize. Emily attempts to take control over death by precluding the very certainty from securing demise. These unusual endeavors are uncovered in Emily’s necrophilia. Faulkner recounts to the account of Emily’s finished physical and passionate separation which stimulates the interest of the town occupants. Emily is secluded and simultaneously, she is constantly seen by the townspeople as an individual from their locale.

A more elaborate understanding on the modes of narration is later on cleared as the narrator reveals how much he or she knows when said: “Already we knew” about the sealed room upstairs and what lies behind it; however, we never knew how he/she knew. More significantly, for one of the few times in the story the narrator uses the term “they” and not “we” as opposing to the previous sections; he/she originally said “Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (Faulkner 6); however, he/she follows it with: “They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it” (Faulkner 6). Even though this shift is very quick and subtle, it is important because the narrator always grouped his/her opinion and thoughts with the rest of the townspeople, yet now he/she couldn’t bring himself/herself to do it. The narrator distances himself/herself from unsealing the door because to him/her it is like breaking a certain bond with Miss Emily, a betrayal which shows the readers that the narrator genuinely cared for Miss Emily despite her actions. In a town that sculptured Miss Emily to be a horror figure, the gesture of looking away or leaving and never showing again after the narrator, presumably the servant opens the front door for the visitors to unlock the door shows a deep symbolic meaning of care and sympathy.

In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner does not attain a stable timeline for the plot. He does not approach his characters’ inner lives and thoughts in a conventional way. However, he shifts and manipulates time in a way that has stretched the story for a myriad of decades. Readers were able to decipher the egregious life of Emily Grierson through flashbacks. As mentioned before, the story starts with a description of Emily Grierson’s funeral and then shifts to the first flashback where Mr. Grierson refuses to let a man take his young daughter to a dance, and chases off suitors with a whip. Faulkner continually shifts between the past and present between young Emily and old Emily who has died at seventy-four. At the end of the story, we see that the funeral is as well a flashback following the unsealing of the upstairs bedroom door that held Homer’s body. Faulkner’s purpose for these timeline shifts has to do with the changes the South goes through, not only Emily; By this transition between forwards and backwards in time, Faulkner is able to convey to the readers how these timelines influence each other as the past and present coexist in the story. Through these shifts, the author creates a certain complex and multilayered dimensions to the story. Faulkner’s style of writing has categorized the story into two parts of time. One is based on the reality that no matter what happens, time and life moves on, and the other part is based on a personal level that time moves forward, but the experience or event a person went through sometimes holds a person in place and he/she cannot let go, leaving them in a distant active memory no matter how much the world around him/her evolves and changes. For Emily, the case was the subjective side where she was in denial when her father died and refused to believe that he died, in addition to her refusal of modernizing the house: “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 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-an eyesore among eyesores.” (Faulkner 1) As well as her non-acceptance to the fact that Homer was leaving her. This showed how life moved on, but Emily stayed planted in the past, clutching to her past memories that have affected her present.

As she stands by the window, her ghost eyes staring right back at her, she sees a rose, a form of her imagination because she knew she never possibly was ever able to grasp a rose…the symbol of love, romance, and friendship, for she was forbidden of this love by her father. The “Rose” found in the title was never a rose that she received but a symbol of the love she never got to receive, the absent love. As she stands by the window, she thinks of the ghost her painter drew for her in her story, the ghost Faulkner talked constantly about. As she comes to a realization…it turns out she was the ghost; “the carven torso of an idol in a niche” (Faulkner 6), “the disappeared Homer Barron, the wraithlike Tobe, the voice of the town is the most ghostlike: pervasive, shape-shifting, haunting. No wonder Miss Emily stayed indoors” (Klein 3). Many readers may have overlooked several details in the story, yet no reader can ever deny that Faulkner’s time shifts and the ambiguity in the narrator were marvelous and kept the reader hooked until he/she submerged into the story and became part of the “we” the narrator so excessively talked about. Symbols and imageries were represented at the beginning of the story that foreshadowed to upcoming events and Emily’s personality; words like “stubborn and coquettish decay” (Faulkner 1) which showed how Emily refused to upgrade like the rest of her neighbors because she did not accept change and wanted to freeze the grains of sand as they slip through the hour glass from one side to the other. The description of Faulkner of when Emily Grierson got visitors in the past, the descriptions of the “cracked leather”, the “faint dust” rising sluggishly, and the infamous “crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father”, as well as the odor her house possessed: “It smelled of dust and disuse–a close, dank smell” (Faulkner 1) this made it evident that she did not keep a clean and neat environment, resulting in an unconcerned state towards herself and the visitors. The narrator was able to leave the readers in a daze due to the inconsistent mode of narration and that enabled the readers to build numerous theories on who is the narrator. A Rose for Emily is not a story, but a journey every woman goes through; William Faulkner was able to speak about the reality of gothic literature, of the south and of life in such a stupefying way between the narrator’s word transitions and the time transitions that has rendered all readers and critiques speechless.

In the short story, “A Rose for Emily” we read from a unique narration point of view method by William Faulkner. The story is about an eccentric women who is rejected by society for the fact that she lives in the past. The main character is Emily from a collective point of view from many sources in which it makes it an unreliable narrator who throughout the story the narrator only has a partial point of view which lets the reader know that the entire story is narrated by the townspeople. From the start Emily was well protected by her father. As time moved on and her father died everything changed for her. Emily aged and lost touch with reality and time. Little by little her age started to show. Years after her father passed away Emily falls in love with Homer Barron who is a day laborer. However, their relationship is cut short when Homer gets tired of her and intends to leave her. Therefore, in order to keep Homer by her side Emily kills him with a poison called arsenic and sleeps with his corpse for many years. It ends with the death of Emily and the mystery being uncovered of Homer’s corpse locked in a room. . The horror movie Psycho was filmed in the 1950’s and is about an abandoned motel and the motels owner Norman Bates which is played by Actor Anthony Perkins. Norman Bates, was suffering from a dissociative identity disorder in which the two identities that were Norman as his own recessive identity and his mother’s main identity. He killed his own mother because she was trying to remarry. Due to the feeling of his guilt he ‘brings back’ his mother by imitating her and making decisions that his mother would make. Throughout the story many die due to the jealousy rage of his mother.

William Faulkner’s novel A Rose for Emily and Alfred Hitchcock’s horror film Psycho have many similarities such as the theme, symbols and characteristics

First, the novel A rose for Emily and the movie Psycho have some similarities in theme. Emily and Norman are isolated from other people other than their mother and father. They have a major conflict between the past and the changes that came along in the future. It is evident that the Emily lived haunted by her memories of the past living in her large empty house. Similarly to Emily, Norman explores the theme of human loneliness with insanity. In the Psycho film a young woman who is staying at the Bates Motel named Marion Crane asks Norman if he goes out with friends and Norman tells her that a boy’s best friend is his mother. It was obvious from that start that he was isolated from other people. Emily’s isolation makes the townspeople more curious about her life. Therefore the narrator is represented as a viewpoint of the town. Unfortunately Emily started to be isolated by her father and the day he passed away she was left alone. The narrator stated, “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will ” (311). This meaning she wasted so many years making her father happy that she didn’t think about how the future would affect her when it came to love. Emily ends up in a big house lonely surrounded by memories from the past.

Second, the novel and the movie show many symbols that have meaning to them. One symbol that is used in both sources are the character’s house. Emily’s house demonstrates her inner state. The house started as a clean beautiful home but decades later the house becomes dirty, smelly, old and dark. At the beginning of the story the narrator stated, “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 seventies” (Faulkner 308). Like Emily, she was kept young and decent away from men that wanted to date her. Then slowly she started to deteriorate which showed her age. On the other hand Norman’s house represents mystery and is a symbol of Norman’s psychological mind. Due to his dissociative identity disorder Normans life is full of death and mystery.

Third, Emily and Norman have similar characteristics such as losing their insanity. Emily poisoned her lover with a poison called arsenic and slept with his corpse. Likewise, Norman is a real psychopath that like to dress up as his dead mother and kills the motels guests. He had a sexual attraction towards a guest but triggered the jealous mother personality in him and killed the girl with a knife. Not only did he kill the guest but also his mother for the reason that her mother fell in love with another man. He killed his mother to fully keep her for himself. Norman created a weird inhumane attachment to his mother’s corpse and kept her body in a room for many years.

In conclusion, the story writers William Faulkner and Alfred Hitchcock created a shocking ending of the story that leaves everyone with questions and the urge to know more. A rose for Emily and the movie Psycho are more common than you can imagine starting from being a genre of Horror and thriller to having many similarities such as the theme, symbols and characteristics. Both are classic Horror stories that never gets old to read or watch due to the full amount of mystery and suspense. Both dynamic characters share the same kind of isolation or loneliness but full of resentment and stuck in the past.

Work Cited

1. Hitchcock, A., Leigh, J., Perkins, A., Bloch, R., Shamley Productions., & Paramount Pictures Corporation. (1960). Psycho. Shamley Productions.
2. Faulkner, William. “A rose for Emily.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Kelly J. Mays. W.W. Norton & Company, 2017. pp. 308-316.

As life begins to shift or change, people tend to hold on to things or traditions because they are not ready for a change that happens around them. In the story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main character Miss Emily shows many signs of her not moving on with modern life and the shift of things around her. She holds on to people, her lifestyle and does not accept the change, while her neighbors feel sorry and sympathy for her stubbornness. “A Rose for Emily” pinpoints to the reader how some people can not accept a change within their environment based off Emily’s home, Emily’s refusal to pay her taxes, and Emily’s denial of her father’s death.

At the beginning of the story, the narrator depicts within the reader’s mind of how Miss Emily’s house looks, describing it as “a big, squarish 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…; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-…” (page 658). Emily’s house is a simple representation of alienation from the economy’s change. Emily also refused to have metallic numbers affixed to her house when the town receives modern mail service. She becomes afflicted in her own timeless world, trying to hold on to the tradition of how things used to be.

Another way Emily showed resistance to change would be her refusal to pay her taxes. Later in the story, the narrator explains how Emily’s dad was high in power before the change of the economy and before his death. Her dad had a negotiation with Colonel Sartoris that he was not required to pay any taxes in Jefferson during his time of high power. The narrator quotes Miss Emily continued with that proposition for as long as she could, even after the city authorities sent her a letter to pay her taxes, she even exclaimed to the tax collectors “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me” (page 659). Now Colonel Sartoris been dead over ten years now according to the story, and now the new generation is composed of more modern ideas, meaning that the deal her father and Colonel had is not official anymore. However, she still refused to pay any taxes because she is going based off an old deal that been ended.

Not only could Miss Emily accepts the surrounding change, she could not bear her father’s death. When Emily’s father died, it was as if she lost her safety net because when she was younger, her dad kept her isolated from boys. Emily’s dad was so superior, that any guy was not good for her. Women in the neighborhood prepared to give their condolences, but Emily greeted them at her door, dressed in casual attire with no grief of expression on her face, “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” (page 661). She could not let go of her father and own up to the fact that he was dead.

Throughout the whole story readers can see how Emily was not prepared to let go of her former way of living to move on to better. She was resistant to accept the fact she had to pay taxes, she could not cope with the fact that her lover did not want to settle down, that she killed him and kept his body. She was lost within an old way of living and could not move on with her life. The story pinpoints examples how people cannot cope with the change of life by the way Emily’s house was depicted, her refusal to pay her taxes, and how she copes with her father’s death. In life some things seem hard to let go of to accept the change of course in life.

Psychological criticism is an approach to literary criticism that interprets writings, authors, and readers through a psychological lens. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, Emily Grierson is a lonely old woman faced with death, and her actions to satisfy her immense desire to retain her ‘love’ show psychological issues. The story is broken into five different sections in which at each point the narrator switches points of view. The chronological order of the story deceives the reader’s perception of Emily, which enhances the horror of Emily once the truth is revealed.

Emily is at first depicted as a sad lonely old woman who has trouble after dealing with the death of her father. In the first part of the story, Miss Emily has died. The funeral is taking place at her home and many people come to pay their respects and are also are curious to see the inside of the house. No one had seen the inside of the house beside the manservant for 10 years. Throughout the story, we see the struggles a woman has with loneliness, depression, and even necrophilia. Miss Emily’s character has many mental problems and is often compared to a woman Ms. Wyatt, who was known to be crazy. Ms. Wyatt is referenced to let it be known that psychological issues are present in the family.

We see further into the story that Emily has psychological problems when her father dies, and she tells the townspeople he is not dead. For three days his body sits in the house and only when the townspeople threaten to bring the authorities does, she let them in to retrieve the body. Emily becomes an introvert after her father’s death until she meets Homer. He comes into her life and the townspeople are concerned about them getting married which they think is going to happen, then he suddenly disappears. Emily goes and buys arsenic and will not tell the druggist for what. Then finally at the end of the story, Homer’s body is found upstairs dead with Emily’s grey hair found on a pillow beside him. Homer was known to be gay and to not be the kind of man to marry. Emily was scared to lose Homer and killing him was her own way to retain his love forever. This is shown in the way that she still slept with him, she never lost him.

The point of view that “A Rose for Emily” is written in is very acentric. The chronology that the story is written in is very deceiving to the reader. “the chronology deliberately manipulates and delays the reader’s final judgment of Emily Grierson by altering the evidence.” (Getty) “The one element that Nebeker’s study appears to ignore is motive—not Emily’s motive for killing and hiding Homer, which has been variously explored over the years through psychological, psychosexual, historical, metaphorical, and other various critical methods, but rather the narrator’s motive for presenting a text in which the clues, as Nebeker, states, “are all there as early as the second section” but are presented in such a way that when we reconstruct the timeline, we can easily predict for ourselves what seems to have surprised the “we” narrator. That is while exploring the effects of chronology on interpretation, or untangling the chronology, or setting the chronology into stylistic context, neither Nebeker’s nor any other scholar’s extant criticisms attend to why the tale is told in the chronologically convoluted way that it is.” (Mielczarek) The chronological order that the narrator uses delays the information that Emily is a killer. What is the reasoning for this, did the author want us to feel sympathetic for the lonely old woman before we learned she was a murderer? As an audience, we were naïve because clues were revealed so early, such as the stench in the house. The chronological order this story is told, sells the story, as the narrator leads up to the horrific truth the clues lead us along the way.

Another interesting and different aspect of the point of view in “ A Rose for Emily” is that the narrator never truly picks a position in the story. The story is rendered in the first-person plural creating ambiguity about the identity of the narrator. The narrator could be the voice of the community as he often uses the personal pronoun “we”. He also differentiates between “we” and “they” are suggesting that its collective identity might only represent a part of the local society. This may also mean that the narrator is in fact just one person, who associates himself with the opinion and knowledge of part of the community, but not all. “Nebeker examines the complicated use of pronouns in light of the story’s timeline. As she notes, “the truth of the Miss Emily episode lies … in the identity of the narrator,” which is textually comprised of the pronouns “our” and “we,” with references to “they. Faulkner here effects one of his most ingenious narrative innovations: a first-person plural narrator. But the narrative voice makes nothing simple: as Nebecker further notes, Within all five sections, we note a continual shifting of person, from our to they to us…. Thus, in the first two sections, we have ambiguously but definably presented before us three groups—the general townspeople of the inclusive our; they of a contemporary society functioning when Mis Emily was in her late 50s or early 60s and to whom she refuses to pay taxes, and they of an earlier group.” (Mielczarek)

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a short story about the main character Emily who has psychological issues with the loss of her father. The chronological order of the story eventually reveals that she secretly murders her lover, so that she will never lose him. She sleeps by his skeletal corpse until her own death. The chronological order and the ambiguity of the narrator make the story even more interesting. The way the story is told severely changes the interpretation of Emily.

In order to truly understand and appreciate a story, it needs to be taken and profoundly analyzed, different aspects need to be considered like settings, the time it is supposed to be taking place in, the location, even the writer plays a big role. Here comparing and contrasting the stories ‘A Rose for Emily’ by William Faulkner and ‘Everyday Use’ by Alice Walker, ‘A rose for Emily’ is written by William Faulkner in the form of a short story where the it is divided into sections that follow the life of Emily Grierson, the whole story takes place in in a small town called Jefferson in the early 20th century where as ‘Everyday Use’ was taken place on a pasture during the mid 20th century.

The ‘Rose for Emily’ mainly took place on the same site, but however throughout the story the site would change as time passed. The exact time it took place around is never really said in the story, but we can get to this conclusion based on the language and little context clues we get in the stories like for example how they derogatorily call dark skinned people or African Americans “Negros”. Knowing the time and place in which the story is happening gives us other information, in this case having in mind that they lived in the south during those years, there were certain distinctive culture aspects like the first being that everyone had their place in society in addition to that, we know that even after the civil war there were serious cases of racism and sexism happening there. In addition to this, there were many and judgmental and strict social guidelines that were supposed to be followed by women.

In A Rose for Emily the author uses the protagonist, Miss Emily to symbolize the old south aristocracy. Like her farther she is proud. She possesses a duty and doesn’t accept to many favors. When Emily’s father died, the mayor, Colonel Sartoris protected Emily by remitting her taxes. when the board of Alderman went to talk to her about her taxes, she ignored their request and pushed them to leave. It was her stature of superiority along with pride that made her turn others away. Her pride kept her from paying taxes since, Colonel Sartoris said it was the town’s way of repaying her father. The mayor even created a lie so Emily would not feel ashamed for accepting charity. The whole town expected for Emily Grierson to marry, but when she was still single at thirty the town pitied her.

Another example from Everyday Use is Maggie’s impending marriage to John Thomas. Even though John Thomas has “mossy teeth”, since Maggie is scarred with burns this marriage is considered lucky. Another aspect of the Deep South that affects and has big relevance because of the setting is the distrust of outsiders. After the Reconstruction era, Southerners, white and black, distrusted outsiders. White Southerners distrusted outsiders because of the war that destroyed their way of life, while African Americans distrusted outsiders because their ways. “Whites” had treated African Americans poorly in the South, this made African Americans distrust white people and vice versa. Faulkner and Walker both show the facet of distrust against outsiders. In A Rose for Emily, when Emily was seen taking rides with a Yankee foreman, the town thought it was scandalous; a preacher even went to speak to her about the impropriety. Alice Walker’s Everyday Use the mother distrusted Wagner’s boyfriend. She even distrusted him more when he said, “farming and raising cattle is not my style”. The Deep South culture was the tension between the races. Everyday Use showed this aspect when the mother remembered white men poisoning the wells of neighbors.

Faulkner showed this by the “negro” working for Emily not trusting white neighbors with Emily’s secrets. In these stories there is a lot of symbolism like in ‘A Rose for Emily’ by William Faulkner, Emily’s mansion is a big thing in the story “Emily’s house, like Emily herself, is a monument, the only remaining emblem of a dying world of Southern aristocracy. The outside of the large, square frame house is lavishly decorated. The cupolas, spires, and scrolled balconies are the hallmarks of a decadent style of architecture that became popular in the 1870s. By the time the story takes place, much has changed. The street and neighborhood, at one time affluent, pristine, and privileged, have lost their standing as the realm of the elite. The house is in some ways an extension of Emily: it bares its “stubborn and coquettish decay” to the town’s residents. It is a testament to the endurance and preservation of tradition but now seems out of place among the cotton wagons, gasoline pumps, and other industrial trappings that surround it—just as the South’s old values are out of place in a changing society.

Emily’s house also represents alienation, mental illness, and death. It is a shrine to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room where she preserves the man, she would not allow to leave her. As when the group of men sprinkled lime along the foundation to counteract the stench of rotting flesh, the townspeople skulk along the edges of Emily’s life and property. The house, like its owner, is an object of fascination for them. They project their own lurid fantasies and interpretations onto the crumbling edifice and mysterious figure inside. Emily’s death is a chance for them to gain access to this forbidden realm and confirm their wildest notions and most sensationalistic suppositions about what had occurred on the inside.” (Barnes and Noble) According to this, the house was more than just a house it represented Emily in many ways as of her mental health, how the house with the years got more and more deteriorated and with the person in charge of keeping it how it was before not really doing anything for it, how loneliness and everything she went through with the death of her Father as well as him not allowing her to get married or even be close to a man adjudicating her to a life of loneliness and not having a mom affected her was reflected in the house as the years went by, these things became stronger and the house got more and more deteriorated.

In ‘Everyday Use’ by Alice Walker we can witness a lot of symbolism too here with a different and maybe a less significant item as how the sisters fight for the quilts ““Everyday Use” focuses on the bonds between women of different generations and their enduring legacy, as symbolized in the quilts they fashion together. This connection between generations is strong, yet Dee’s arrival and lack of understanding of her history shows that those bonds are vulnerable as well. The relationship between Aunt Dicie and Mama, the experienced seamstresses who made the quilts, is very different from the relationship between Maggie and Dee, sisters who share barely a word and have almost nothing in common.

Just as Dee cannot understand the legacy of her name, passed along through four generations, she does not understand the significance of the quilts, which contain swatches of clothes once worn or owned by at least a century’s worth of ancestors. The quilts are pieces of living history, documents in fabric that chronicle the lives of the various generations and the trials, such as war and poverty, that they faced. The quilts serve as a testament to a family’s history of pride and struggle. With the limitations that poverty and lack of education placed on her life, Mama considers her personal history one of her few treasures. Her house contains the handicrafts of her extended family. Instead of receiving a financial inheritance from her ancestors, Mama has been given the quilts. For her, these objects have a value that Dee, despite professing her desire to care for and preserve the quilts, is unable to fathom.” (Barnes and Nobles)

Based on this it can be concluded that these quilts really meant something they were a very valuable treasure with an actual non-monetary value but a sentimental one, they represent heritage. And the “perfect” sister Dee wants them even though her sister Maggie had asked for them before but she argues that she won’t appreciate them giving her sister underestimating her sister and her abilities, it could be said that she sees herself as a superior human being than her sister because she has achieved other things in life while her sister is still home with their mom taking care of the house and focusing on other things. Dee’s mom even says that life has never learned how to say ‘no’ to Dee implying that what she’s achieved, she didn’t really have to work that hard in order to get them.

‘A Rose for Emily ‘ is a Southern gothic short story written by William Faulkner which revolves around the protagonist Emily Grierson. This short story was published on April 30, 1930. In this short story, Faulkner used some literary devices such as stream of consciousness, flashback, foreshadowing, symbolism, ambiguity, and allegory. This report will be focusing on how Faulkner used these literary devices in this short story.

Faulkner is famous for including stream of consciousness in his literary works. This story reveals Emily’s miserable life from the town’s people’s perspective. Because of this, the story is read like a townsperson is telling the story of Emily. That is why, it seems like listening to his or her thoughts. Faulkner has used literary devices, flashbacks, and foreshadowing to create an anomalous effect in the story. Flashback is used to comprise a background to the present situation in the text. For instance, the story begins at Emily’s funeral and then jumps to the Board of Alderman appearing at her house demanding taxes. Foreshadowing is another literary device used by Faulkner to create expectations that haven’t yet happened. One of the examples of foreshadowing is when Emily buys rat poisoning which is later seen as the cause of her lover Homer’s death.

Symbolism is one of the most important literary devices used by Faulkner in this story. ‘Emily’s House’ and ‘The Strand of Hair ‘ are the two most significant symbols of this story. Emily’s house, the Grierson house is used to symbolize Emily as one of the old guards of the town. Faulkner has compared Emily with her house and described her as a ‘fallen monument’ like her house. Because both Emily and her house are empty and lifeless. Faulkner has used the Grierson house as a symbol to give us the idea of Emily’s change in social status. In the beginning, the house was ‘big’, ‘squarish’, and ‘located on Jefferson’s most select street’. Over time, the house lost its glory just as Emily lost her grace over time. Faulkner also used Grierson’s house to symbolize Emily’s unwillingness to accept change. For instance, when the town representatives were sent by the new mayor to her home to collect her culpable taxes, she completely rejects her responsibility to the town. Instead, she refers to the men to a time when the former mayor, Colonel Sartoris ‘remitted her taxes’. At the end of the story, ‘ The Strand of Grey Hair’ symbolizes the love that is lost and also the things that people do for love and happiness in life. It also symbolizes the insight into Emily’s life and the way she lived her life without caring about what other people think of her and her actions. She has lived her life on her terms.

Ambiguity is another literary device used by Faulkner to confuse the readers. In this story, one of the examples of ambiguity is when Emily says to the druggist, ‘ I want some poison ‘. Here, the interesting fact is that she didn’t mention what she will use the poison for. It gives the readers a sense of ambiguity. Another example of ambiguity comes to the reader’s mind because of the way Emily treats her lover Homer Barron. Homer Barron is a Northern man. He is not married to Emily, but Emily treats him like a husband. Faulkner also used the literary device of allegory in this story. The allegory of relations between Northern America and Southern America is prominent in this story.