Sylvia Clemons
Dr. Phyllis Hunter's
Intro to Fiction
ASU, Jonesboro, AR.
Feb 15,2012
To give the house a deep ghostly quality Faulkner uses place symbolism to illustrate Emily’s own personal isolation, emptiness, and death. The house is described as being away from the rest in town. It relates to Emily who also isolates herself from the town for years at a time, “her front door remained closed, save during a period of six or seven years” (319). She becomes trapped in the house as her father chases away suitors that attempt to call on her. Three deaths are mentioned taking place inside the house, thus giving the house the eerie setting of a ghost story. Homer’s lying in the bed decaying. Faulkner states, “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace” (320) illustrating Emily’s emptiness as well as being one of the deaths. This scene leaves the most eerie impression of all as it implies that the protagonist had lain with the body in an embrace even after she murdered him, “the second pillow was the indention of a head” (320) and the hair they found on it was the same color as Emily’s, “iron-gray” (320).
Dr. Phyllis Hunter's
Intro to Fiction
ASU, Jonesboro, AR.
Feb 15,2012
Analizing "A Rose for Emily"
William
Faulkner is an American novelist who won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1949
for his powerful and artistic novels.
Most of Faulkner’s stories were written about an imaginary town called
Jefferson. This town reflects the
history of Oxford, Mississippi where he had lived since his childhood. In 1959 during an interview he was asked
where he got the idea for the short story “A Rose for Emily” and he stated, “It
was a ghost story” (939). The setting
for this story is the 1900’s when modernism was
overtaking traditional lifestyles and many changes were occurring that are symbolized
throughout this story. Faulkner views
Mr. Grierson as the older traditional ways of the south of Emily when she was a young woman, “Miss Emily a slender
figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the
foreground” (316). Through this passage the image of male dominance is introduced
revealing Emily’s lost dreams of having her own family. The theme of a lost world full of death and
decay is illustrated through concrete imagery, place symbolism, and flashback
technique.
Faulkner builds his theme using
concrete imagery to evoke an emotional response towards Emily through movement,
smell, and sight. The use of movement
shows how modernism changes the town surrounding the protagonist and her house
in order to show abandonment. For example,
the second paragraph describes the house, “had once been white, decorated with
cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the
seventies” (314) on a select street. The
house is then seen as, “an eyesore among eyesores” (314) among cotton wagons
and the gasoline pumps where other beautiful houses had once been. The description of smell is used to
emotionally connect the stench of death and decay between the house and Emily’s
life, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad”. It was the house which smelled not
Emily. Faulkner then uses visual images
to similarly relate the house and Emily as being old, lonely, and an inherited
obligation to the newer generation of town’s people, “Alive, Miss Emily had
been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town” (314). To give the house a deep ghostly quality Faulkner uses place symbolism to illustrate Emily’s own personal isolation, emptiness, and death. The house is described as being away from the rest in town. It relates to Emily who also isolates herself from the town for years at a time, “her front door remained closed, save during a period of six or seven years” (319). She becomes trapped in the house as her father chases away suitors that attempt to call on her. Three deaths are mentioned taking place inside the house, thus giving the house the eerie setting of a ghost story. Homer’s lying in the bed decaying. Faulkner states, “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace” (320) illustrating Emily’s emptiness as well as being one of the deaths. This scene leaves the most eerie impression of all as it implies that the protagonist had lain with the body in an embrace even after she murdered him, “the second pillow was the indention of a head” (320) and the hair they found on it was the same color as Emily’s, “iron-gray” (320).
Faulkner uses the flashback
technique to reveal the motive, and to show key moments of Emily’s life through
time and space. The flashback technique
allows Faulkner to present the ending first, “When Miss Emily Grierson died,
our whole town went to her funeral” (314).
Faulkner then proceeds backwards through time to explain the most
important pieces of her life. This
technique makes it possible to create a space between two generations that
allows the story continue to flow. In
the third paragraph the old mayor invented a story to keep her from having to
pay taxes, “Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town” (314). By using the flashback technique Faulkner is
finally able to present parts of Emily’s life to explain the motive behind Homer’s
murder. Homer was a traveling
construction foreman and was not looking to settle down, “that he was not a
marrying man” (318). He was about to
leave town, “the streets had been finished some time since” (318). Emily took control and went to visit the drug
store to buy some poison. The druggist
questioned if it was for killing rats, but Emily never replied. After she got home with the poison he had
written on the box, “For rats” (318) suggesting the druggist was suspicious
with her purchase.
Finally, Faulkner’s use of concrete
imagery, place symbolism, and flashback techniques work together to create this
tragic story about a lost world of youthful hope, love, and family. Emily’s life was filled with emptiness,
death, and decay, “She died in one of the downstairs rooms” all alone in her
own bed. In the end after Emily was
buried the mystery lurking throughout the whole story was revealed by the
town’s representatives. Everyone wanted
to know what was in the room, “no one had seen in forty years” (320). They violently opened up the house’s most
hidden secret. As Emily’s bridal chamber
was opened, it was as though the house and Emily were finally released from
their most treasured secret and the bondages that held them so closely
together.