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A Rose For Emily By William Faulkner: Literary Analysis

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In, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, the author spins his story between past and present in a small southern town torn between its former traditional ways and new modern designs. He tells his story of Emily Grierson through memories of the past transitioning between reality and remembrance. Although most of the townspeople are embracing the idea of new technology, there is one specific person holding on to traditions in the past, Emily. Faulkner has shed a light on the difficulty between transitioning into a new present time. The author shows us just how hard it can be to leave the past behind us, and accept new ways. The extreme changes taking place in this aged southern town is what makes Emily go insane. She is simply an elderly woman stuck in her ways, but teaches her readers a deeper life lesson of adapting to new ways. …show more content…

Right away we as readers know that this short story is told through memory. He tells Emily’s entire life story in just a few short pages stretching time and remembrance. It is important that Faulkner starts off with Emily’s funeral because he ends with it as well in the form of a flashback. The author shows us Emily as a young woman living with her manipulative father, this shows the reader what it was like for Emily growing up. Faulkner shows us Emily as an elderly woman and all the changes she and the town have undergone. By showing us both the past and the present, the changes between the two become emphasized. He proves to his readers that even though Emily says firm in her ways, time continues on without

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In “A Rose for Emily,” the author, Faulkner, describes the life of a women after the death of her family and the abandonment of her friends. The story is about a female named Emily whose father dies of natural causes, and she is left with little money except for her house and an African American manservant. The manservant is a very loyal person who stays by Emily’s side till her own death. This story is depicted from the neighbor’s point about the lady Emily. It recounts her life as she lived it from an external perspective.

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In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, he portrays a power struggle between modernizing society and the ideals of the “Old South”. In this rapidly changing society, one individual refuses to conform to such change. Miss Emily, much like her house, stubbornly rejects change, in a desperate attempt to maintain the values of the “Old South”. Her house itself stands as a reminder of a past era. In a city that was moving towards a new age, the house stood stubbornly against conformity as a representation of the “Old South”.

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Because her family was prominent in the town of Jefferson, Emily Grierson was watched her entire life and wondered about by everyone. The townspeople had a lot to do with Emily’s changing mental condition because they constantly gossiped about everything that happened in her life. It generally

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Telling the story in an irregular order, Faulkner develops a sense of suspense by adding details to the mysterious Miss Emily. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care: a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (451). The reader learns that Miss Emily had been seen as an eccentric woman that the people of the town had to take care of and overlook, ultimately overlooking her as a suspect in Homer Barron’s disappearance. Miss Emily often disappears into her house for months and years at a time,

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He also shows the relationship between Emily and her dead father and how Emily cannot let go of people that show a love interest in her or the people who look after her in that she must be attached to them even after death. Faulkner depicts an Emily that was once young and vibrant, who maintained the Grierson home and kept it in a pristine condition. Faulkner relays to readers that because Emily was unable to control her own destiny and was powerless under her father’s hand, she became a recluse and ultimately went into a downward spiral. After sensing and believing that her first real love will leave her, Emily purchases arsenic and it is believed that she will kill herself because there is no point in living if no one will love her

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In "A Rose for Emily" William Faulkner uses old southern customs, refusal of change, and traditions. Faulkner uses the elements of modernism by telling how Emily is stuck with old southern customs. "She told them that her father was not dead", by not accepting the fact that he was, they felt like she had to leech on of what she had lost (724). "The structure itself of the story underscores the stagnant, repetitive nature of Emily Grierson's existence" (Schwab 217). She is stuck in the past and in her ways by "the house filled with dust and shadows", the same dust was there when her father died, her refusing to change (727).

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As in most of his works one of the overbearing ideals of A Rose For Emily is a sense of class and of elegance that was as evident as the sky in the South. The main character of the story, Miss Emily Grierson, is William’s way of exemplifying this bygone way of life in a more modern era; and both Nicole and I agree that this is the main plot in the story. Throughout A Rose For Emily the idea of monuments and age are extremely prevalent as both Miss Emily and her homestead are commonly referred to as, “relic.”

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As the story goes on, Faulkner describes Emily’s death: “When Miss Emily Grierson died the whole town went to her funeral: the men out of respectful affection for a fallen monument and the women mostly out of curiosity” (Faulkner). Faulkner emphasizes that while men are caring and respectful women act only based on curiosity. Indeed, the role of women in the southern society is less significant than the role of

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“A rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a short story about the life of Emily Grierson. The story, as told by the townsfolk, tells the present and past of Emily’s life and how unfortunate events affected her decisions and lifestyle. Faulkner utilizes the townspeople to narrate “A Rose for Emily” To portrait how the town covered Emily’s deeds and thus protected the town’s reputation. The townspeople are the narrator of “A Rose for Emily,” Along the story they are sometimes represented as a single entity that seeks to justify Emily’s actions.

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However, this is primarily focused on the manner in which Emily is metaphorically the portion of the southern side that requires change or will experience a terrible ending. First, William Faulkner uses various literary devices in the story to convey the themes of death and change. Death is evident in the story when the narrator opens by explaining the start of Miss Emily’s

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Time is one of life’s constants; never rushed, never biased, and never forgiving. Sometimes it feels as if we have too much, or too little, but it never truly changes. For Emily Grierson, time is nothing more than an illusion, and she is not subject to its effects, avoiding any and all changes to her way of life. William Faulkner uses A Rose for Emily’s setting, symbolism, and Emily’s character development to explain the crippling and gruesome effects of time on those who choose to swim against its current.

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Many critics have seen in Faulkner “a credible authority on the South, a writer of fiction who had something important to offer about the regions and the meanings of its past”. The story of “A Rose for Emily” is told by one of the townspeople. The protagonist is seen from the outside and described by a first-person narrator, who tells the readers his point of view and others’ from the town. The narrator and these people had always regarded the character from the outside.

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One of William Faulkner’s best short story of all time is “A Rose for Emily.” The story is a suspense and horror, that will leave readers in shock. Additionally, the story is in chronological order and cleverly broken down into five parts. The first part of the story is the current event that shows Emily’s funeral and the town people mourning. The other four part are pieces of puzzle that shows flash backs of Emily Grierson on how the everyone in town viewed her.

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“A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner, starts with a funeral for the main character, Emily Grierson. Emily was a quiet woman and very reserved. It was rumored that no one had seen her in nearly a decade except for her servant. She also has one of the nicest homes in town. Emily was also the only person in the town who is never forced to pay taxes, until near the time of her death.

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In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” the historical context is important to understand. In order to fully comprehend the short story there must be some sort of understanding about the time period in which the story took place. This short story took place in the 18th/19th century during and after the Civil War in the South. In “A Rose for Emily” the historical context shows the social, economic, and the cultural environment of the background. Miss Emily was born during the Civil War.

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