...3/29/14 Miss Emily “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.” In his story “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner personifies this quote. William Faulkner is one of the most influential writers in southern literature, if not U.S. history. He spent most of his time in his home state of Mississippi in the northern counties of Lafayette, Holly Springs, and Marshall County which play a major role in his literature. Almost every book or short story he writes is set in Yoknapatawpha County, which some believe is based on his home county of Lafayette, which is where he spent most of his life. Because of this most of his books have a southern aspect of them and represent to some extent southern culture and hospitality. One of his stories with the most success is “A Rose For Emily.” "A Rose for Emily" is a gothic tale set in the American south. To first understand William Faulkner and his stories, one must understand what the term “Gothic” means. Gothic isn't just a term used in literature but in architecture, and even in art. Generally something is labeled “Gothic” when it is something that inspires dread in you, or a lesser sense or being. In its literal sense in literature it means a story that uses themes like gloom, the grotesque, and the supernatural. It is also usually based in a dark or dreary scene. In the story “A Rose for Emily” it encompasses all three of these themes and settings. First lets look at the setting in how it relates to the...
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...Emily Dickinson believes that conformity limits one’s ability. She has written poems about societies’ views on conformity and the containment society has on different ideas and people. She even gives examples of this by explaining how society expected women to act as a wife. Through her poems, Emily Dickinson portrayed her views of conformity through the explanation of domesticated housewives in “She Rose to His Requirement” and the views of conflicting new ideas in society in “Much Madness is Divinest Sense.” “She Rose to His Requirement” explores what women during Emily Dickinson’s time had gone through. As the title suggests, women were expected to become a domesticated housewife to their husband. The first stanza describes that these housewives have to give up everything for the husband, “to take the honorable Work / Of Woman, and of Wife“(line 3-4). The “honorable work” Dickinson writes about is that women were relied upon to be in charge of the house. The ironic tone sets up the following stanza. It talks about everything a woman gives up when she becomes a wife. The wife loses things, “Of Amplitude, or Awe – / Or first Prospective – Or the Gold” (6-7). She loses her potential of becoming a great person when she decides to marry. She is also not given the chance to experience new things or even get a job for herself. The last stanza expresses the wasted potential of the wife. Dickinson compares a wife’s potential to a pearl that, “lay unmentioned… But only to Himself”...
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...Gothic Elements Used in A Rose for Emily Southern Gothic became popular in the 19th century by famous short story writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ambrose Bierce. Unlike traditional gothic writing, Southern Gothic is unique to the American South and goes in depth about unpleasant Southern Characteristics. It focuses on details such as death, violence and grotesque aspects. These are all used to “explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South (Wikipedia).” Authors use Southern Gothic writing to show the brokenness of a character by giving them qualities such as isolation, freakishness and people that are “not right in the head (Oprah).” Authors analyze their character and want you to make your own decision about who they are by using characteristics that make them seem insane, though to the character, they are normal. Mortality is usually a possibility to most characters. Although authors point out a certain type of innocence, desperation usually overpowers any type of innocence given to a character. The sense of place in Southern Gothic is usually related to a dusty home with a front porch wrapped around, a screen door swinging on creaky hinges and your someone sitting in a rocking chair swatting at flies. The town would be small with a general store that is barely hanging on and the town drunk works there. The sense of place is a strong characteristic in Southern Gothic writing. It sets the feel for the writing...
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...nightmares, and death. Although in some stories, it also explores unmentionable topics such as murder, suicide, and incest. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a story of a spinster woman who has killed her lover and lain for years beside his decaying body. The story deals with a murder caused by possessive love, and it elucidates the face of death which results in repulsion and compassion. “A Rose for Emily” represents Southern Gothic literature through descriptions of Emily, her house, necrophilia, and the theme of death. To begin with, the narrator portrays Emily Grierson as a once prominent member of the community. However, after the death of her father, she is pitied and often irritating, demanding to live life on her own terms. In the beginning of the story, the author describes her as looking “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, [look] like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough” (Faulkner 53). Being isolated from the outside world since her father died and Homer Barron, her lover, went missing, Emily becomes a muted and mysterious figure. She begins to enforce her own sense of law and conduct, such as when she refuses to pay her taxes or state her purpose for buying the poison. Lu Ying Qian of Baidu Library states that Emily “was an unrealistic stubborn woman” (Qian 6). She continued to ignore the law, refuse to pay taxes, and not dispose of the dead. Emily’s eccentric...
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...300 December 10, 2014 A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner A Rose for Emily written by William Faulkner captures the life of a wealthy woman coping with life after the death of a loved one. Death is an indescribable feeling that can cause pain, anger, and sorrow for almost everyone. Early on in the story, Emily’s father passes away leaving her with all of these emotions concealed on the inside. After her father’s death Emily was left alone to grieve which caused her to react to his death in an unusual manner eventually leading to a state of depression. Emily barricades herself in her home away from the outside world for a long period of time trying to cope with her loss, but it seems as if life has moved on without her. Once she emerges from her home, it is like she is trapped in the past. Emily no longer has a sense of place and time. Emily finally finds happiness in a man by the name of Homer, but because of her family’s status in the community it causes a rift between Emily and herself on whether to keep him around or not. This caused Emily to go into a deeper depression, hiding from the world once again. Although death is a reoccurring theme in the story, it is not the only thing that has critics striving to understand the story even further. For starters, the title of the story has one scholar by the name of Laura Getty extremely interested because Faulkner does not come right out and say why he titled this story “A Rose for Emily.” It is almost as if one has...
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...that I choose to compare were Miss Emily Rose by William Faulkner and Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson. Both stories centered on the wealth and social status of the central characters. The stories focused on the cultural time of living in the South during the Pre-Civil War. A recurrent theme in the story. Despite the family's fallen fortunes, Emily's father resists allowing any suitors to propose to Emily. Th1is gradually erodes her chances of ever being married. She eventually settles for Homer, but the townspeople see this as an affront to her noble heritage, and she eventually murders Homer and dies a recluse. Emily's inability to realize her father's death and refusal to adapt to a changing world intensify her seclusion. Miss Emily’s story is certainly bizarre, suspenseful, sad, and mysterious enough to engage the reader’s attention. She is a grotesque, southern gothic character whose neurotic or psychotic behavior in her relationships with her father, her lover, and her black servant Tobe, allows many interpretations. For example, her affair with Homer Barron may be seen as a middle-aged woman’s late rebellion against her repressive father, and against the town’s burdensome expectations but Miss Emily is then symbolic of the religion of southernness that survived military defeat and material destruction.” “The children of Colonel Sartoris’s” (Page 125) generation are sent to learn china painting from Miss Emily “in the same spirit that they were...
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...Huntwork AP English 30 August 2013 “A Rose for Emily” Plot/Structure The plot of “A Rose for Emily” separates from the structure of most short stories by not following the typical chronological order. William Faulkner uses flashbacks to give a better understanding of the external conflict between the protagonist, Miss Emily, and society. The nonlinear plot structure of “A Rose for Emily” creates a different way of comprehending the narrative by keeping the true nature of Miss Emily questionable. Faulkner begins the first section in present time, giving a recap of Emily’s life as the local townspeople attend her funeral. The funeral is being held at her home, which no one had entered for over ten years, drawing the entire town to attend. Faulkner uses flashback in the second section to give you a hint as to what is to be discovered at the end. The flashback occurs thirty years earlier, when Emily refused an official inquiry when the townspeople detect a powerful odor coming from the property. The cause of the smell is revealed at the end. Another flashback occurs in section three, recounting when Miss Emily first begins seeing the man people believed she would marry, Homer Barron. Miss Emily ends up going to the pharmacy to purchase arsenic. This keeps the reader in suspense because the real reason of purchasing the arsenic is never revealed. The last flashback is in section four, when the people of the town believe Emily was going to commit suicide. This causes the...
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...A Close Reading of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” portrays itself as sort of a gothic sort of story. The elements of a gothic novel are meant to fashion a sense of trepidation, obscurity and unknown, which are vital in creating compelling stories. It has its fill of suspense and madness throughout its entirety, resulting in fastidious conventions in its type of writing structure, characterization, point of view, theme, and setting. Gothic novels are also known to contain an element of romance, which are often exaggerated to the extremes. I would say that the main point of view of this selected passage comes from an unknown narrator, told in the first person, who clearly is a resident of the town of Jefferson and knows the little-known life of the protagonist, Miss Emily. The “they” that is in the second sentence refers to the group of townsfolk who arrived at her house. The emotions of the crowd are a mixture of respectful condolences and curiosity. The men are present merely out of respect, giving off an air they only attend because it is an expected behavior and not because she was popular in the community. The women go out of curiosity to see the inside of the house. There certainly seems to be a general consensus among the group that she was living almost a secret life which was clearly meant to stay that way. The phrase “would have to be forced” makes it clear the group is anxious about finding out what has been kept from the...
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...[Document title] | Reader Response: A Rose for Emily Dr. Tina Good ENG 102 | | ARIA EDWARDS 3-10-2016 | In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner’s use of skilled literary techniques throughout the story work to create one of the most candid and organic experiences a reader can have. His narrative structure, use of foreshadow and flashbacks, and artistic execution of the shock ending all contribute to the mysterious and uneasy feel of the story. All of these literary elements also work together to keep the reader engaged in the text. The narrative styling lends way to the reader being taken on the very same journey the narrator is on, at points, at the same time. The back and forth descriptions of a couple situations at once feels like the narrator is telling us a story and remembering bits and pieces along the way sometimes having to digress slightly as to not leave out a single known detail. That point is just as important; the audience doesn’t know any less then the narrator, it is a shared experience with plenty of room for reader interpretation. By using the third person narrative in A Rose for Emily, Faulkner automatically draws the reader into the story by the word “we”. This inherently makes the audience feel like part of the story and creates a layer of empathy, as though the narrator is speaking directly to the audience. After Miss Emily agrees to allow authorities to dispose of her father’s three day old body, the narrator sheds insight into...
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...Mike-Irabor English 1302: Composition 2 David Glen Smith, Instructor November 29, 2012 Research Paper Miss Emily Grierson and Eveline The family and society’s expectation of a woman has led to some women becoming tragic heroes and anti-heroes who battled consistently with their true identity. Literary works of William Faulkner in the short story, "A Rose for Emily", and James Joyce’s "Eveline", reflects the negative impact of these expectations. Based on information, culled from Dr David Smith’s notes, tragic heroes are driven and obsessed with past deeds or by fate, they are neither entirely good nor entirely bad and are fated to cause grief to individuals or to the community, they are often leaders in the community or head of family (2). Faulkner shows these common traits of tragic hero in Miss Emily Grierson; a protagonist in self-exile from the modern world, locked away in her decaying mansion (3). In James Joyce’s Eveline, a protagonist is revealed as tragic hero who endures a dramatic and tragic life full of conflicts, but Smith thinks otherwise, he refers to her as an anti-hero and is of the opinion that antihero should not be confused with tragic hero because, “existentialist believed modern life does not allow the existence of a true hero. Modern life dehumanizes everyone”(3), short of this, Eveline is a classic example of a tragic hero. William Faulkner’s Miss Emily and James Joyce’s Eveline are women who in the quest of fulfilling the roles assigned to them by their...
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...A Rose for Emily Can you imagine being so lonely that you would do something unbelievable to prevent you from being alone? That is just what Miss Emily did. Miss Emily came from a wealthy family with a father who made decisions for her. He did not think the men that tried to date her were good enough for her, so he ran them off. John McDermott states, “In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily Grierson’s overbearing father forces her to live without love.” After her father died, Miss Emily became a loner. In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner uses Miss Emily’s funeral at the very beginning to show the separation between Miss Emily and the townspeople when he states, "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, which no one save an old man-servant a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.” From there, the house, her servant, and the bad smell are used to symbolize her secluded life. Miss Emily’s inherited her house, but nothing else according to the narrator, “When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad.” She lived alone for many years, except for her servant. People moved out of the neighborhood over the years and finally Miss Emily’s run down house is the only one left on the street. This is noted early in the story, “But garages and...
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...fictional elements is the setting of a story. The setting of a story is commonly taken as the environment where the event or the story takes place, i.e. Time, place and descriptions of the environment being inclusive. The setting of a story is of three types; the symbolic setting (book philosophy), the scenic setting (self-explanatory), and the essential setting (real environment of the story). As any other author, William Faulkner in his story “A Rose for Emily”, he borrows a lot from the setting as a fiction element. The paper highlights how important setting as a fiction element was important to William in the process of writing the story “A Rose for Emily.”...
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...A Rose for Emily: 1.) The irony of the “long strand of iron-gray hair” is in reference to a rat. Earlier on in the story, Miss Emily refused to say what the arsenic was to be used for, but the druggist labeled it as “for rats”. So for Miss Emily to use the toxic drug on him but at the same time placing a rat hair by him, it creates a sense of irony. 2.) The townspeople are the unspoken narrator. 3.) The main character in “A Rose for Emily” is Miss Emily, if the story would have been in her point of view, we would not have found out about what happened after she died. 4.) The smell mentioned in the beginning is definitely a form foreshadowing because the story states that the smell was gone after a week or two. Also, when Miss Emily buys the arsenic and refuses to state what she needed it for, it gave the feeling that she was not using it on rats. 5.) Miss Emily has outgrown her time. The settings around her are starting to move faster and she does not keep up. Her house needs work and gas pumps are starting to become the new neighbors. 6.) Miss Emily is considered part of the towns past growing up in the south while Homer is a Yankee that has a shady past. 7.) I do find humor in the end because it seems like no matter what happened, she still cared about him. Yes she killed him but she took care of his dead body, almost as if she was obsessed with him. 8.) I do not think Miss Emily would be conserved a “murderous madwoman” to the author...
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...The wind howls across the wide and open American great plains. The greatest of these three short stories at evoking a feeling similar to that of being in the American south “A Rose for Emily”, “Dust Tracks on a Dirt Road”, and “The Life You Save May be Your Own” is “Dust tracks on a dirt road”, followed by “The life you save may be your own”, and finally “A rose for Emily” In Dust Tracks on a dirt road, Hurstons use of imagery, telling us about her gingham dress and how most kids did not wear shoes evoked feelings similar to those that arose as a child when children would run around without shoes, get into a scuffle or two, and be home by dinner unless you wanted a bit of a whipping with a wooden spoon showed exceedingly well how rural the area was. None of that was said, however the idea of kids running around not wearing shoes or rolling around with each other in the dust and dirt made it easy to see, as well as also connecting emotionally with people of a rural background. This story also appeals in an ethical sense when you realize how horrible things were back then and the strides in human rights this nation has made. In “The Life You Save May Be Yours”, the author uses indirect characterization, such as when Mr.shiflet was fixing the nell’s car, or barn, and was exalted about everything he did, not worried in the slightest and being exceedingly manipulative of Mrs.nell, telling her how he’d marry her daughter if he could have the car, showing how useful he was around...
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...effects that their dominating influences have on the women they love. Women in these societies often experience alienation, isolation, low self-esteem, and even insanity. The protagonists in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” both portray the subordinate position of women in late nineteenth-century society. “A Rose for Emily” is an unsettling tale of an aging spinster, Miss Emily, who clings to the past and lives in a world of her own making. Miss Emily is a mysterious character who was once a hopeful young woman from an affluent family but is transformed into a reclusive, eccentric old woman through the acts of her controlling father. Her community views her as having “a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 30); and she is a monument to the past in a small, modernizing southern town in the late nineteenth century. Throughout her life, her father routinely dismisses all of her potential suitors until the day of his death. Alone and betrayed, Emily is unable to accept his passing; and it is several days until the body is removed. She lives alone for many years until she meets a man, Homer Barron, who becomes her first true suitor. In time Emily realizes that Homer is not willing to commit and is faced with the prospect of living a lonely, solitary life. She takes action, poisoning him with arsenic from the druggist, and tucks him into bed ensuring that she will never be alone again. The protagonist, Jane...
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