Here one can notice that it isn't just the narrator's point of view on Miss Emily voiced, rather the whole town's perspective on her. Another peculiar characteristic about the speaker is that the voice seems to be genderless, that is, readers are unable to gain a clear depiction on whether the narrator is a male or female: "None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such...The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom," (428). Shown in this section, the narrator can neither be seen as a man nor as a woman due to the mention of "the young men" and "the ladies". The voice is given no clear gender, rather a representation of both groups and again of the entire town as a whole. "A Rose for Emily" begins during the present time and guides readers through a series of flashbacks to the past sharing Miss Emily's history.
Emily also suffered from a mental illness that would confuse her about date and time. As if she was living in the past and wasn’t aware of the year she was living in. For instance, the board of Aldermen paid a little visit to her house to confront her of not paying her taxes. Emily quoted, “see Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.” Colonel
From the beginning, the community depicts Miss Emily more as an unwanted object they wish to explore than a recently deceased person. Part of the first line reads, “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 mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house” (Faulkner, 391). When a person dies, the initial reaction of most people would
Faithfully yours.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.” Mersault reports his mother’s death in a very straightforward way; he doesn’t seem to have any sort of remorse or grief for his mother. He is emotionally indifferent to the event, and later on we see that indifference is one of his strongest character traits throughout the book. Mersault goes to the funeral home in which his mother lived in to attend the funeral. His indifference is persistent and he is cold to any human interaction and detached.
The town played a definite part in Miss Emily’s mental delusion. There were numerous complaints of a foul stench coming from her property and yet no one addressed it to her directly. A younger member of the Board of Aldermen suggested that Miss Emily be told to clean up her property. But due to the old southern ideals of honor, duty and loyalty the older, the more traditional members could not possibly confront her about this matter as ‘Dammit sir”, Judge Stevens said,” will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?”(93) So in the midnight hour they chose to slunk about the house and apply lime to the infected areas. Lime is a white powder that is good at covering the smell and aiding in the process of decomposition.
Examine a story in which you feel the setting is critically important. Explain what the choice of setting contributes to the story. In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, the author emphasizes on the details about setting and atmosphere. This gives the reader a general background as to the values and beliefs of the characters, helping the reader to understand the motivations, actions and reactions of Miss Emily as well as the rest of the town. Due to this reason, this changes the mood or tone in the story.
Her father was the one that kept her sheltered most of her life. She never really came out the house for anything, besides her servant, Tobe. Towards the middle of the story Miss Emily’s funeral was referred to a symbol as the “fallen monument” (209), which could have meant that it was once a beautiful and wealthy home, but as time passed it grew very old and deprived. Also, Miss Emily’s hair is one of the symbols, after her father’s death she decided to cut her long hair. Her hair could symbolize her being free of her father controlling her life.
The story begins at the time of Emily Grierson’s death. The narrator represents the community as a whole, doing it’s duty to an honored citizen, when he states that “…our whole town went to her funeral...” (1). His next words reveal a division in the community’s feelings about Emily along the lines of gender by qualifying the reasons for the large turnout. It seems that the men attended the funeral “…through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument…” and the women went “…mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years.” (1). This gender divided treatment of Miss Emily is repeated throughout the story.
One example is of how she denied her father’s death and would not let go of his corpse for three days after he died: “The day after his death, all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door… with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days…. ” (311).
“Rose for Emily” Theme Essay In the Short story, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main character Emily Grierson is viewed by the unnamed narrator as an “unchanging monument to the past.” The narrator of the story seems to pity Emily, and never truly indentifies them self as an individual, but remains hidden behind the collective voices and gossip of the townspeople. As the story goes on, the narrator, also without realizing it, fails to change their thought of Emily’s character even when the hidden, repulsive truth is discovered in Emily’s House at the end of the story. Resistance to change is shared both by Emily and the narrator becomes the story’s central theme: the idea of resisting change and the un-acceptance of the evolution of time into the present and future, by living in the past. In actions and thoughts shown through flashbacks after the beginning of the story where Faulkner describes her death, he describes the attitude changes in Jefferson as time passes and a newer generation comes about. It is evident that as time passes, the people of Jefferson as well as her dying father become forceful (needs to be a different word) towards her.