William Faulkner was a modernist who mastered the ability to use dark, surrealistic humor to portray a particular character or situation, and he did exactly this when he wrote “A Rose for Emily”. Emily Grierson’s struggle with her town, her family, and herself makes her do things that are not what you would call normal. This struggle that she deals with makes her act deranged and inhuman. Emily lives a very sheltered life, and she struggles, in this story, with herself and the society she lives with around her. In the eyes of the reader, Emily becomes very heartless and even a little demented because of her closed environment, sheltered lifestyle, and conflict with the people of her town. She knows that the townspeople are talking about her. However, she ultimately lets their gossip influence her morality and her life. In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner uses gothic humor to portray a southern woman and her inevitable self-destruction, and the destruction of the Old South.
William Faulkner “has been credited with having the imagination to see, before other serious writers saw, the tremendous potential for drama, pathos,
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Emily is talked about and isolated from the town because of her strange appearance and attitude. She does things that are out of the sort that others would not normally do or approve of. For instance, in the period of post-Civil War, she is seen with a northerner in the South. Alongside this, Emily does not have a pleasant appearance. The narrator describes her face as a small woman who is thinner than usual with haughty black eyes that sunk deep into her face, almost giving her face the appearance of that of a lighthouse keeper’s face (Faulkner 1071). Emily Grierson is a woman who does not agree with reality, and the choices and morals of others. When something does not go her way, she refuses to take it as the truth. For example, Emily refused to bury her father