A Rose for Emily: A Short Story by William Faulkner Essay (Review)

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In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Emily is depicted as a high class, southern belle that once upon a time was a beautiful young woman who had several male suitors. She comes from a family of wealth and status within her community. However, due to the overprotective and isolated behaviors of her father, she grows into a lonely, old, and bitter woman that refuses to follow law and order (Hsu and Ya-huei 87). This story is written in a non-chronological order because the author wants the readers to get the feel of what Emily went through by taking us back through her past, while also keeping us in tune with her present. Thus, it fluctuates between the two time dimensions and eventually brings the readers to the astonishing conclusion. Such non-chronological order keeps the readers in constant suspense of what will happen next and ultimately helps to resolve a puzzle at the very end of the narration.

In the beginning of the story, Faulkner describes a scene where everyone has congregated at Emily’s house for her funeral. The men came to show a “respectful affection for a fallen monument” (Faulkner 1), while the women arrived “out of curiosity” (Faulkner 1) just to see what was inside of her home. Then the narration quickly switches to Emily’s past, where the author describes how she “vanquished” (Faulkner 2) the deputies that knocked upon her door to collect the taxes she owed. A woman of such a high caliber and status that she was, she did not accept the changes that were made since the passing of her father. She quickly dismisses them and tells them to review the city records and “see Colonel Satoris” (Faulkner 2) who told her why she was exempt.

Throughout the story, Emily’s former wealth and status make her believe that she is entitled to certain privileges and that her perceived dispensation made her immune from the laws and rules that apply to others. She is far from the realities which everyone else faces, and people around town whisper and speak about her in an ill-mannered way. She is oblivious to this fact, and as Faulkner describes it in the third part of the story, she still carries “her head high enough” (Faulkner 3) even when others believe that she is “fallen” (Faulkner 3). However, even with all that she isn’t happy because she is a complete loner. She has never got married or had children, and the only prospect of getting into intimate relationship with a man is when she meets a day laborer named Homer Barron

The times in the story – past and present – coexist and influence each other. Faulkner first introduces Homer to the audience in the part of the story when the author mentions the contractors beginning the work on paving the sidewalks. Homer was one of the workers for the construction company. He was the foreman of the group, and the young townspeople got enjoyment when he used to “cuss the riggers” (Faulkner 3). At some point, people “began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons” (Faulkner 3) spending time together as if they were forming some relationship. However, in the course of the third part of the story, Faulkner quickly shifts from Miss Emily and Homer conjuring up some form of a relationship to discussing her purchasing the poison. She asks the druggist for “the best you have” (Faulkner 3) and decides to get some arsenic. This fact leaves the readers in a bewildered state of mind because they now begin to wonder what she plans on doing with the arsenic.

Still, in part three of the story, the townspeople began to whisper about the relationship between Miss Emily and Homer. Some even felt bad for her because a woman of her status “would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer” (Faulkner 3). However, when one moves on to read the fourth part of the story, one sees how the author jumps back and forth as now the people are whispering about the two of them possibly getting married. The plot twist in the idea of them getting married is when the reader finds out that Homer is, in fact, a homosexual and has no interest in women. The audience has to keep up with the time changes so that they don’t get confused as to what part of the time they’re reading about. The shift in time can become challenging, but the author manages to reel the readers back in by mentioning the new circumstances which explain the time dimensions.

The townspeople began to discuss how Miss Emily had made purchases to include a male’s toilet, and she had been to the jeweler’s. When Homer Baron was no longer seen on the streets, they assumed that the two had been married. The people were majorly disappointed because they assumed that a lady like Miss Emily would have had a big elaborate wedding that they could have attended, but instead it seemed as though she quietly got married and there was no fuss made at all.

The townsfolk supposed that when they no longer saw Homer around the streets, he was simply at home tending to his new wife. But then the story jumps ahead yet again to Miss Emily being a grey-haired, old, fat woman, and the audience is left without any timeframe of what happened between the time they supposedly got married and the point when “she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray” (Faulkner 4). She reached the age of seventy-four and died. It is not until we move on to the fifth part of the story that we realize what happened to Homer and Miss Emily’s relationship.

In the fifth part of the story, we are at the present day, where the townspeople have gathered at Miss Emily’s funeral. It is the same timeframe that the reader is introduced to in the first part of the story. Everyone is curious about the contents of her house, especially one room which is locked. However, they waited patiently until Miss Emily was “decently in the ground” (Faulkner 5) before they began nosing around her house. What they find is shocking to the reader because it discloses the mystery of what happened to Homer and Miss Emily’s relationship. They find a bed with an imprint of a corpse in it, or what was actually left of the corpse. The body was that of Homer. The reader now realizes that Miss Emily had poisoned Homer and kept his remains inside her house for all of those years. Thus, the time twist becomes clear in the very end: the author incorporated frequent changes between the past and the present to get the readers more interested in the story’s resolution.

Works cited

Hsu, Chenghsun, and Ya-huei Wang. “The Fall of Emily Grierson: A Jungian Analysis of A Rose for Emily.” Kata, vol. 16, no. 2, 2014, pp. 87-92.

Annotated Bibliography

The primary source for the essay was “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner.

The secondary source was the article “The fall of Emily Grierson: A Jungian analysis of A rose for Emily” by Hsu and Ya-huei. The article is valuable for my analysis as it examines the causes of Emily’s conduct and shows how her world got destroyed under the influence of these causes. The authors consider Emily’s father as the most negative issue impacting Emily. They study her character with the help of a psychological approach.

The article is an academically credible source as it appears in a peer-reviewed journal and its authors have scholarly degrees.

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