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Point Of View In Faulkner's First Person Plural

224 Words1 Pages
In using the First Person Plural point of view, Faulkner creates a scene in which the town's gossiping and neglectful attitude towards Emily is highlighted. It could have been accomplished in First Person Singular, however First Person Plural engenders the entire town as responsible rather than a single person relaying the story. Miss Emily had killed a man she was sweet on all because he "liked men" and "drank with the younger men at the Elks' Club." As well as keeping his body in a wedding suite to sleep with at night. Nevertheless, Emily's crimes pale in comparison to the entire town being aware of what she was doing and not doing anything to help or fix her problems. They were fully aware she meant to kill him when she entered the pharmacy
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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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Furthermore, the short story is written in a first person point of view by the community of Jefferson, which develops the irony that leaves not only Jefferson, but the reader in ‘awe.’ The community of Jefferson is left with a plethora of questions of Miss Emily’s mysterious lifestyle. Correspondingly, the community of Jefferson becomes very obsessed with Miss Emily. “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went 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)

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In the story, the role of women in society was that men were their superiors, better than they were. Faulkner believes that women should take the backseat to men. At the very beginning of the story Faulkner makes the statement, "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women out of curiosity to see the inside of her house" (99). He makes the readers beliefs of gender roles clearer by basically saying men attended with honor and respect but the women only went to be nosey.

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While Emily is alive the story tells the readers about how the world around Emily is changing and evolving but she refuses to keep up with the new ways. For example, in the story it talks about the town and receiving mail. The story says, “Emily refused to let them fasten metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox.” (#) The town can see what lengths Emily went through to remain isolated from the changing world. If Faulkner had put the story in Emily’s point of view it wouldn’t have the same

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