Who Is Flannery O 'Connor's Rose For Emily'?

The author of “Rose for Emily”, Flannery O’Connor, organized the short story into five roman numeral sections. He made an authoritative decision to formulate the major parts of Emily Grierson’s life into non-chronological order. This choice causes the readers to interpret the writing in a particular way. If written in any other sequence, it would change our perspective of Emily Grierson and the piece as a whole. Faulkner’s reasoning was to bring realization to why exactly she was seen “crazy” (Line 18), but on the other hand the town “accepted” (Line 15), making readers wonder whether her craziness was all her fault. By Flannery O’Connor starting the short story at Emily’s funeral causes curiosity about how she “died” (Line 1). Questions also start to arise on why she is described as a “fallen monument” (Line 4) and who caused her fall. Part one begins to make readers realize that an event must have occurred in Emily’s past that caused something to die inside her a long time ago. It was also made clear that Miss Emily is somewhat of a “duty” (Line 9) to the town. The author purposely choose

Now the readers start to believe that Emily might have had something coming to her, and don’t pity her as much as before hand. However in lines 1 to 3, nearing the end of part two, it is made apparent the person of clear blame was her father. Miss Emily was a “slender figure in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip,[...] framed by the back-flung front door.” (Lines 1-3). Readers begin to realize why she became “crazy,” (Line 18), and that it was partially not her fault, it was her father’s. The reason that O’Connor choose this order for his short story was to make it apparent that while she was crazy, her father caused something inside her to die long before she physically passed