Race And Social Class In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

Faulkner describes black people by a derogatory term “negro” to emphasize the main issue of the southern mentality. However, author pays the equal attention to gender inequality. Starting from the very beginning Faulkner describes Emily’s unquestionable obedience towards the constraints that her father put on her life. Emily is the symbol of old American south, yet her character has a lot in common with women of younger generation “Only a man of Colonel Satoris’s generation could have invented it and only a women could have believed it” (Faulkner), it is not women’s competence to think by themselves; the statement that Faulkner wants make in this part is that men are superior gender. 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).

The same year slavery was abolished, The Black Codes were created. These laws oppressed black people and restricted their freedom. Because of the poor treating of African Americans and the Black Codes, The Reconstruction period was a failure. Some people were very unhappy when slavery was abolished. Southerners were frustrated that their property would be taken from them and turned into citizens.

Until 1865, the enslavement of African Americans was legal in the United States (History.com Staff). Most of the nation believed that African Americans weren’t equal to Whites and could be treated as property. Even after slavery was abolished, these racist ideals were ingrained in the minds of most Southerners. In the 1930s, racial ignorance still caused society to believe that African Americans were sinful and a lesser race. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee illustrates how important decisions are influenced by racial ignorance ingrained in a society.

When she told the men to see Colonel Sartoris, she was not aware that “Colonel Sartoris had been dead for almost ten years” (452) at that point. 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.

For example, the narrator states that Miss Emily went to a drug store with the intent to buy arsenic, though she did not specify to the druggist why she wanted it (35). This is significant because it was later revealed how Emily had murdered Homer. It is implied she murdered him with this arsenic, which means this event foreshadowed the murder of Homer. In addition, the story also foreshadows how Miss Emily would eventually lose her mind. For example, the narrator states that, “People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they were” (34).

Years ago African Americans and Caucasians didn’t get along due to slavery. Ralph Ellison is telling a story about a young African American ‘narrator” about him being invisible. The narrator seems that if you can’t be seen then you can’t be heard. He had to learn that he was nobody. As his grandfather is on his deathbed and he gives him a word of wisdom and it stuck with him throughout the story.

Faulkner uses Miss Emily, Homer Barron, and the town of Jefferson to symbolize progression in the South. Miss Emily, who represents a “monument” to the townspeople, is a member of the Grierson family, who are wealthy and highly respected. She is a traditionalist throughout the story, and does not progress or modernize. Even when she finds herself falling into poverty she still manages to retain her aristocratic manner, and when the town felt as though she was a “hereditary obligation upon” them Miss Emily still would not “have accepted charity”. “As the last Grierson” Miss Emily upholds her father’s wishes of not becoming romantically involved with anyone of a lower class, although the

Another example is Thomas Auld, having come into ownership of his slaves through marriage, he was not used to the power and responsibility of owning slaves. By using his religion as sanction, he could be a cruel and inhumane man while still having support. The alteration of kind to cruel is an important component to prove the dehumanizing effects of slavery on slaveholders. This characterization provides a powerful argument that slavery is not only bad for slaves, but slave owners

The red dress is an omen. All of this red is a reminder of the blood that will be spilt: hers and Lennie’s. It’s foreshadowing on another level, too, as George later tells Slim that Lennie had a run-in with a girl in a red dress in Weed. She gets three reactions her, which exemplify how men react to her throughout the novel. George avoids her, looking away, calling her ‘jail bait’ and a ‘rat trap’.

Claim: Because of Tom’s race, he was misjudged and looked at as a threat to society. 1. Primary Evidence: When Bob Ewell says, “I seen that black nigger younder ruttin’ on my Mayella,” it explains that people just saw someone’s skin color and assumed that the colored person was up to no good (Lee 173). 2. Interpretation: Tom was wrapped up in evil and was misjudged harshly by his skin color and was “shot down” like a mockingbird by racism.

Just a young african american boy, Fredrick Douglass has gone through the terrible morality of slavery. Douglass was cut off from getting an education as well as freedom. He believed the enslavers to be criminals and nothing less. At one point he wished to be a beast so he could get rid of the toughest of being a slave. During Fredrick Douglas 's time of being slave he was cut off from any education and freedom.

On the other side of the Reconstruction, it was filled with missteps. While the Reconstruction gave the slaves their freedom, the idea of it was pessimistic. To begin with, the Southern whites rejected all forms of equality and the African Americans wanted nothing but freedom and land to call their own. The differences between the two races led to inevitable riots. The Reconstruction failed when the states adopted the Black Codes.

On the other hand the North thought that the blacks were unfit for politics and that they need to forget about the conditions of how slavery was. “The blacks, as a people, are unfitted for the proper exercise of political duties… The rising generation of… blacks needed a period of probation and instruction; a period… long enough for the black to have forgotten something of his condition as a slave and learned much of the true method of gaining honorable subsistence and of performing the duties of any position to which he might aspire.” The North thinks that the blacks are unfit for politics but in the South the blacks are being held at gunpoint. The Reconstruction was about helping blacks not killing

The Mexican-American war is to be partially blamed for the civil war for a big reason, slavery. Slavery during the American-Mexican war was very problematic concerning the North and the South. There were problems between the NOrth and South concerning if slavery should be allowed or not, the North wanted slaves to be free but the south did not. The south benefitted from the slaves because in the south cotton fields and factories were more common and they would be handled by the slaves. The slave owners also referred to as masters, would say how labor work was only for slaves and doing their work would make the masters stoop down to the slaves level.

Segregation went back in history even after Civil War days of slavery. At this time, in history African were fighting for their freedom. Caucasians felt that African Americans should be inferior to white people, and they saw no reason why to respect black people or why to educate them. Noble facts of history were given by the early 1800 's Northern states had abolished slavery (Osborne 6). Due to the Confederate state losing to the Civil War in 1865 that same year, the Thirteenth Amendment had gotten approve for slave owners to free their slaves.