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William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” was originally published in the April 30, 1930. An unnamed narrator describes the strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her strange relationships with her father, her lover, and the horrible mystery she conceals. The action takes place in the town of Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is a critical setting in much of Faulkner’s fiction. The principal themes of the story are: bitterness, resentment, generation gap, disillusionment and suppressed forbidden love. The story helps understand the human psyche. The author touches various issues connected with dark aspects of human life. In Faulkner’s position I cannot find absolute evil or good. Both those aspects form human soul. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” tells a reader how a spinster is hoarding the body of the killed lover. The story deals with a murder caused by possessive love, showing the face of death which results in repulsion and compassion. The woman not only took away her lover’s life, she also kept the dead body in her house. As a result, I understand that she punished him by eternal life …show more content…

And then, the unknown narrator comments: “We didn’t say she was crazy then” (669). The author alludes to the tragic end when Miss Emily purchased the arsenic, she looked through her “cold, haughty black eyes…” (Faulkner,670). In conclusion I may say that Emily was not afraid of dying. She was not understood by her contemporaries. Her father was a stubborn man who thought that no one was good enough for his daughter. He drove away all the young men who were interested in his daughter. And when Emily fell in love with Homer Barron, later she found out he liked men and was not a “marrying man”. All these factors resulted in Emily’s decision to choose death as the only possible means.

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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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“A Rose for Emily” The story “A Rose for Emily” was written before the American Civil War, a time when wealthy Southern whites owned large farms and exploited slave labor to keep on operating at the lowest cost possible. Change in the south was very difficult and many people would not accept the change. Faulkner expresses how if you are not accepting to the new ways and changes in the south you will end up old and moldy, like Miss Emily.

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To compare, Faulkner shares a slice of evidence as to why Emily has an uncontrollable obsession for the dead, “After her father 's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” (Faulkner) Given these points, her father becomes arrogant and isolates her from society, or anyone who is willing to take Miss Emily from him. When her father, the only man in the world who has loved her,

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This pushed poor Emily over the edge of insanity and led her to commit the heinous act of murder. In the back of her mind, she probably had only one thought if she couldn't have him, then no one else ever

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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 Section II, we learn of Emily’s inability to accept death as a natural part of the life cycle, which is a major factor that leads to her perceived illness. The day after the death of Emily’s father, people of the town greet her at her door to offer her their condolences. Faulkner states, “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (Faulkner 796). Emily’s refusal to believe in death despite the entirety of the town recognizing the truth is another red flag pointing towards a mental separation from reality.

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In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men -Cicero. My parents are both physicians working long hours to ensure every person that sets foot in their clinic was treated and treated well. I grew up watching their dedication and commitment to their profession. Witnessing the flowing gratitude and respect in their patients’ eyes was not only touching, but motivating.

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The narrator or narrators emphasis on Emilys traits of being a hermit, antisocial, once entitled aristocrat show that anyone that knows her would assume she may have mental issues. Faulkner makes it clear that Emily is not a saint and serious consequences have resulted due to her never being held responsible for her own

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In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson, a prominent member of her small town, dies alone in her home. Upon her death, curious townsfolk entered her home trying to learn her secrets. It was thought she was crazy. Emily Grierson was not crazy; she was isolated by her father, which led to her odd social tendencies and unique interactions with others. A Rose for Emily is a short story based in a small town.

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Frank Guercio Mrs. Wagner English 102 19 September 2014 A Rose for Emily William Faulkner once wrote the short story A Rose For Emily, even in its time it was considered to be rather spooky considering the ending; however, since then there have been a great number of theories based around Faulkner’s story and I find Nicole Smith’s to be one of the few that stood out from the rest. Her article begins with a short summary of William Faulkner’s life, from his birth in the South in 1897 to his Nobel Prize in 1949. As his history draws to a close Nicole begins to shed light on the story itself and how his past is a heavy influence in his writing.

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William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” critiques the American South Describing Emily’s vibrant life full of hope and buoyancy, later shrouded into the profound mystery, Faulkner emphasizes her denial to accept the concept of death. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” takes place in the South during the transitional time period from the racial discrimination to the core political change of racial equality. Starting from the description of her death, “A Rose for Emily” tells the story about the lady who is the last in her generation (Emily Grierson). Being strong, proud and a traditional lady of southern aristocracy, Emily turns into an evil, unpredictable and mysterious old lady after the death of her father. Even though “A Rose for Emily”

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This can be seen from her perception and description of the man who shares her “special” seat as a “… fine old man” and the woman as “a big old woman” (101). Her Surname 2 remembrance of the previous Sunday’s patient Englishman and his nagging hard to please wife whom she wanted to shake also shows her envy for women with male companionship. In Faulkner’s story A Rose for Emily, Emily is seen as a person who suffers from isolation from her community, by tradition and by law. Her isolation from the community and love is what seems to perturb her most; she is unable to accept the idea that her father is dead and she remains in denial.

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975 Words | 4 Pages

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a short story about a woman named Emily Grierson. This short story is told through the first person perspective of an individual townsperson, since the narrator is never stated to be a main character within the story. Furthermore, the story is taking place in the following years of the Civil War. The Reconstruction Era in the Southern part of the country was also taking place around this time. Many families, such as Emily’s family in this case, were incredibly wealthy since they had owned slaves and forced them to work on their personal plantation.

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925 Words | 4 Pages

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is written about the change from Old South to New South and Emily refuses to accept the changes by living in her own version of reality. An analysis of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” will explain how Faulkner portrays the change in the social structure of the American South in the early twentieth century as a change from Old South to New South by showing the Griersons no longer hold power, the changes in the town, and Emily’s denial to change. In the New South the Griersons no longer hold power. Emily believes that her family still holds the power that they had in the Old South, so she never payed her taxes.

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