I love William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” It contains literary devices that Faulkner uses to make the short story perfect. The three literary devices that Faulkner uses are symbolism, setting and point of view. These three literary devices are what makes it an enjoyable story to read. Symbolism is one literary device Faulkner uses and has major importance to the story. One big symbol in the story is Emily’s house. For most of the townspeople they only saw the house from the outside in never the inside out. Faulkner gives a good description of the house by saying, “it was a big squarish frame house that once had been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on …show more content…
The story is set right after the civil war. Emily and her father are high class people who owned slaves to do all the things around the house. Because of her social status everyone in the town would never think of Emily as someone who would sleep with a dead body. When everyone found out about Emily’s secret it was a shock to everyone. Necrophilia is not something someone who was first class would do. Everyone in the town thought of Emily has a wonderful person. Some people even described her as, “a tradition, a duty and a care.” (#) The town admired her wealth and her social status. After the civil war, there is still a lot of racism. When Emily’s body was found dead, her servant for someone who is visiting and as soon as he realizes she is dead he “walk[s] through the house and out the back and [is] never seen again.” To him he thinks that the town is going to blame him for Emily’s death even if he didn’t do it. He believes the town is going to kill him because that’s what they did back …show more content…
Faulkner writes the story as if it is through the community’s eyes. In just the first few sentences the town finds Emily’s body. She is dead and the entire town is at her house for her funeral that is, “set on what is our most select street.CHECK QUOTE”(#) Faulkner uses the word, our, to give the town their own sense of unity. Faulkner also tends to write the town as a single character which is why the point of view can also be described as in-we. While Emily is alive the story tells the readers about how the world around Emily is changing and evolving but she refuses to keep up with the new ways. For example, in the story it talks about the town and receiving mail. The story says, “Emily refused to let them fasten metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox.” (#) The town can see what lengths Emily went through to remain isolated from the changing world. If Faulkner had put the story in Emily’s point of view it wouldn’t have the same
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Show More-“Miss Emily Grierson died, the whole town went to her funeral,” (Faulkner I). -“. . .But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily 's house was left,” (Faulkner I).
“A Rose for Emily” is a dark, suspenseful Gothic tale in which a young girl is put on a pedestal by a town who sees her as haughty and scornful. Miss Emily Grierson’s father controls her and her love life, pushing away all people until he dies and Emily is left alone. As her life goes on the townspeople watch her and judge Emily, almost turning her life into a spectacle to be talked about. At her death, a gruesome sight is unfolded when her lover of over forty years ago is found decomposed in her upstairs room. William Faulkner effectively builds epic suspense in “A Rose for Emily” by the unchronological order of the story, the treatment of Emily’s father towards her, and her family’s history of mental illness.
Because her family was prominent in the town of Jefferson, Emily Grierson was watched her entire life and wondered about by everyone. The townspeople had a lot to do with Emily’s changing mental condition because they constantly gossiped about everything that happened in her life. It generally
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.
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,
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner we see how he foreshadows that Emily is the murderer of Homer. Within the introduction we are told that William Faulkner was a Southern writer who loved to write comedy and tragedy. I would definitely consider “A Rose for Emily” one of his best tragedy that he has written as it contains suspense and foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is defined as a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story.
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
Emily kept her house the same way it had always been and was letting it decay while she stayed in it. She refused to clean or change the house at all to preserve it in the Old South. She did not want to accept the death of other people. When Emily’s father died, she refused the town from taking his body and burying it. She wanted to keep her father’s body with her and the town was “about to use law and force, but she broke down, and they buried her father quickly” (453).
She told them 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." (247) This stubborn act is not only disturbing but displays the true madness of not only Emily but the tradition of the Old South as
By using unconventional plot structure, Faulkner has created a complex method of storytelling to explore the moral shortcomings of Southern values and ethics during the American Civil War through the means of Emily, a character who is socially and mentally trapped in the old
Necrophilia is described as a person having sexual feelings or performing activities that involve a corpse. Miss Emily Grierson, the protagonist in William Faulkner’s short retrospective Gothic “A Rose for Emily,” is a necrophiliac. In this Gothic work, Faulkner illustrates how isolation from society can drive someone to commit grotesque acts. Faulkner expands on the theme of loneliness in his Gothic, “A Rose for Emily,” through the interactions Emily has with the townsmen, the death of Emily’s father, and the death of Homer Barron.
In the story, the role of women in society was that men were their superiors, better than they were. Faulkner believes that women should take the backseat to men. At the very beginning of the story Faulkner makes the statement, "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 out of curiosity to see the inside of her house" (99). He makes the readers beliefs of gender roles clearer by basically saying men attended with honor and respect but the women only went to be nosey.
Miss Emily comes from an old wealthy line of family in the deep south. Faulkner story is highly symbolic, enhancing miss Emily’s values and character. “Miss Emily is described as a fallen monument to the chivalric American South”(Allmon). Faulkner uses the setting of the story to show the emotional state of Emily. The female-male relationship between Emily and her father is strict, oppressive, and controlling; Their relationship has a major impact on Emily’s character Throughout the short story.
In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” the historical context is important to understand. In order to fully comprehend the short story there must be some sort of understanding about the time period in which the story took place. This short story took place in the 18th/19th century during and after the Civil War in the South. In “A Rose for Emily” the historical context shows the social, economic, and the cultural environment of the background. Miss Emily was born during the Civil War.
As the story goes on, Faulkner describes Emily’s death: “When Miss Emily Grierson died the whole town went to her funeral: the men out of respectful affection for a fallen monument and the women mostly out of curiosity” (Faulkner). Faulkner emphasizes that while men are caring and respectful women act only based on curiosity. Indeed, the role of women in the southern society is less significant than the role of