Character Analysis: A Rose For Emily

III.

In section three, the narrator continues to talk about Emily’s love life and a possible affair she had with a man. The narrator in a rose for Emily talks about Homer Barron “…a Yankee big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face…” (Mays 632). Homer Barron is Emily’s possible spouse. According to the narrator and the town, Homer and Emily were seen together and there were signs of marriage. Because of the descriptive way the narrator expresses, we can infer that the narrator is talking in first person. Opponents of this idea, claim that the narrator is not human or humans. According to the article The Narrator in ‘A Rose for Emily’, “…the narrator is not persons at all but an archaic consciousness…” (Sullivan 166).

The narrator includes himself along with the town when he says “At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married” (Mays 633). The narrator along with community members assumed that Homer and Emily were going to marry soon because for months the couple had been together. The narrator in A Rose for Emily also talks about elapsed time since they the last time the community had seen Miss Emily saying, “When we next saw miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray.” (Mays 634). Once again, the narrator gives us evidence that time passed by telling us that “Daily, monthly, yearly, we watch…”, indicating that the narrator is first person plural because the information the narrator knows, is also known by the group of people the narrator hangs out with. Something very interesting is that the narrator shifts from just a community outsider to a respected authority by saying that “each December we sent her a tax notice which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed” (Mays 634). This is a very important clue that helps us find out who the narrator really is. The narrator is present in the three generations and shifts from we to they because the story is not told in chronological order. The narrator is still first person throughout the story. Another opponent to this idea comes from the article In Search of Dead Time: Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ that claims that, Emily … comes off as a ghost that haunts still…” (Harris 174). Many critics believe the narrator is not a human and that the narrator is a ghost of Emily telling her life in a different dimension. The author also believes that “the narrative is on one level written as a chronicle of Emily’s life: it opens with the phrase “when miss Emily Grierson died” …” (Harris 172). Although that sounds convincing, this does not explain many scenarios in the story like when the tax