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Rose for Emily
Emily as a Symbol of the South in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a complex short story that investigates the conflicted nature of the post-War South. Emily Grierson represents the Old World aristocracy, refined in its manners and in its dignity. She represents the glory of the South. And yet the South is fallen; defeated by the Union, it has lost is glory. Its sense of order has been overturned and its hope for the future looks dim. So, too, with Emily, whose reclusion mirrors the South's withdrawal from the pursuit of the rights it fought for. This paper will analyze the way Faulkner uses Emily to convey the desperate and sad plight of South in the years following the Civil War.
Emily's supposed marriage...
Beneath the Southern State's dignity, surrender was viewed as inevitable but tragic. The land-owners of the South were different from the industrial North, just as Emily is different in class from Homer Barron.
But Emily's marriage to Homer does not go through, as the townspeople imagined it would. Faulkner does not give the exact details of what happens. Instead, he observes Emily and her actions from a distance, giving information as though he were only one more onlooker. He does not make use of the third-person omniscient narrator because he himself only wants to suggest, hint, give a sketch of who Emily and the South really are.
What Faulkner does reveal, however, is the fact that Homer disappeared, that Emily became a recluse; that she refused to pay taxes and that the community, out of respect, sorrow and pity, looked the other way; that a rotten smell began to emanate from her home and that the community took measures to mask the smell. All of these details, while important to the plot, serve…
Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" William Faulkner's 1930 short story "A Rose for Emily" is about the sudden death of a town's most prominent old woman; the last remaining person who had experienced the American South before the American Civil War. She had the memories within her of a period of white domination and black subjection, which is mirrored in the relationship she had with her handyman. Money was power. Even
Faulkner Stories William Faulkner's short stories were told by an omniscient narrator who probably represented the author, and in plot, characters and symbolism have often been classified of Southern Gothic horror. Certainly his characters were horrors, and often satirical, humorous and bizarre caricatures of the different social classes on the South from the time of slavery to the New (Capitalist) South of the 20th Century. They are often violent, deranged, frustrated,
Moreover, according to William T. Going "The treatment of the surface chronology of a Rose for Emily is not mere perversity or purposeful blurring; it points up the elusive, illusive quality of time that lies at the heart of the story; it is at once the simplest and subtlest of Faulkner's achievements in one of his best stories" (53). Other critics have observed that several times in the narrative, time
The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee -- a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face (Faulkner 53). It is Emily's hanging onto the past that is the resounding feeling
But the friction between her and her mother translated also to the society, to the 'good country people.' The good country people, represented by Manley Pointer, turned against her, victimizing her by using her own ideals and beliefs. Manley took advantage of her 'weakness,' being able to see through her tough self, knowing that within her, there is a part of her that wanted attention and love without pity.
The "original paraphernalia" (Jackson 618) from the very first occasion was lost "long ago" (618). The people in this small town instinctively know that something is wrong with the lottery but still they feared "to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box" (618). Here the people do not know why they gather every year; they only know that they have done it for a