Literature review and analysis

Conflict between Traditionalism and Modernism in a Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

More often, literature provides people not only with a medium with which to entertain themselves, but also to know, understand, and empathize with the characters as the audience place themselves in the social environment and realities that the characters experience in works of literature. These characters and social environment and realities are portrayed in a subjective manner, where the writer/author puts his/her subjective interpretation of a social event or phenomenon, illustrating events in a manner that will have a profound effect on the readers/audience.

This is exactly the main thrust centered in William Faulkner's short story, A Rose for Emily. The story centers on the character of Emily Grierson, a member of the wealthy Anglo-Saxon class that had been the dominant and prevalent class in American society prior to the emergence of the 20th century. Through a third-person narrative, Faulkner uses Emily's neighbor as the speaker of the story, to provide an 'outsider's view on the life of Emily. Primarily, the life of Emily is narrated to the reader in the context and opinion of her community; there is no chance where Emily, as the main character, was able to speak out for herself, to provide her own account of the events in her life vis-a-vis Faulkner's third-person (speaker) narrative.

In line with this kind of story, the main theme depicted in the short story is the 'unspoken' conflict between the traditional and modern society, where the traditionalist stance is subsisted to by the character of Emily and her community as the modern society. This is explicitly illustrated in the speaker's description of their community, where Emily's house represents the wealthy families of the past, but has now become only a remembrance of this past, as a new and more powerful class, the middle class, emerged in the Grierson's once exclusive community: "... garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left... eyesore among eyesores..."

The difference between Emily's house and that of her community's is not the only manifestation of the conflict between two generations, the past and the present. The community also looks at Emily as an adversary, mainly because she isolates and differentiates herself from her community despite her evident poverty, placing her on a much lower level than her neighbors are. Indeed, this is the opinion of the speaker, who observed Emily's change of fate when her father died: "... In a way, people were glad. At last, they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less." Emily's condition worsened, slowly retreating from society by isolating herself in the security of her old house. Her heartbreaking romance with Homer Barron is the only instance in which Emily is portrayed as 'human,' capable of expressing feelings of love and care for an individual. Even her romance with Homer did not last, since it became known that the man is gay. With poverty and heartbreak looming against her desolate self, and the shame and embarrassment that come with these unfortunate incidents, Emily "was fallen." Indeed, the community's reference to the old woman as "Poor Emily" illustrates the main character's sorry plight, as she battled the social changes happening around her, and tried to cling and survive with the prestige and wealth that she once had. The death and downfall of Emily illustrates the death of the traditionalist society in the 20th century, where intolerance to social change and difference is no longer subsisted to, but an accepted ideology and norm in the modern society.