Andrew Wiles 6/18/12 ENG 102 Mrs. Thames A Sense of Uncertainty in “A Rose for Emily” In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” we sympathize with Emily from the beginning of the story. As the story goes on, Faulkner starts adding clues as to where the story might go. By the end of the story, we no longer sympathize with Emily because we know she was a killer. William Faulkner provides a sense of uncertainty about who Emily actually is until the end of the story in order to catch the reader by surprise. The story starts out by talking about Miss Emily Grierson’s funeral.
In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner uses foreshadowing, imagery and symbolism to depict how the small southern town’s mentality and a dominating father drive Emily to insanity and murder. Using foreshadowing Faulkner creates a mysterious story and gives us a strong description about death and the struggle of the main character for a better life. We see foreshadowing at the beginning of the story when Emily refuses to give her father’s buddy to be buried (289) .The best idea of foreshadowing is the poison. Emily goes to the drug store to purchase poison; the druggist asks her what she is going to use it for (291). In response “Miss.
It is very hard on Miss Emily to accept her father’s death, so hard that she keep his body in the same place of his death for three days. The townspeople say, “poor Emily. Her kinfolk should come to her.” These are all instances of insanity. Another instance of insanity is when Miss Emily goes to buy arsenic. “‘I want some poison’ said Miss Emily, and doesn’t tell the druggist why”(704).
Nana’s last words to Mariam foreshadow the event of Nana’s suicide: “I’ll die if you go, I’ll just die” (36). Under the pressure of his family, Mariam’s father forces Mariam to marry Rasheed, a widowed shoemaker, which alters her life and what she knew of it: “At the kolba, she could lie in her cot and tell the time of day by the angle of sunlight pouring through the window. She knew how far her door would open before its hinges creaked. Now all those familiar things were gone” (53). Mariam’s life involved the same routine for fifteen years.
The second section describes Emily’s life after her father’s death. She actually tried to deny her father’s death by keeping her father's dead body unburied. However the terrible smell make the town people crazy: “Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.” The third section begins with Emily’s sicking. The narrator notes that a foreman named Homer who comes from North with a crew of men to build sidewalks in Jefferson. After Emily and Homer are seen driving out on Sunday afternoons, Emily visits a druggist.
John proctor was put on trial for "lying" but he did not he told the truth but his wife did not. When Parris walked into the jail before John was to be hanged he announced that Abigail left town with his money. "' There is news sir... My niece has vanished...' ' Why? How long is she gone?' ' This be the third night.... She were to stay with Mercy Lewis...
The image of a creepy, old house complete with an equally creepy caretaker is a standard setting in horror stories and late night television. Faulkner opens “A Rose for Emily” by introducing us first to Miss Emily's old house with its “stubborn and coquettish decay” (237) and to her caretaker, “an old Negro manservant.” (237) By letting the reader know that only the manservant has been inside the house in the last ten years, Faulkner foreshadows not only the mysteries to be found in the dark and dusty shadows of Miss Emily's old mansion; but also provides the reader a sad comparison, just as Miss Emily's home has fallen into disrepair, so also has her mind. While her home is cluttered with treasures from the “heavily lightsome style of the seventies,” her mind is cluttered with memories of a generation past. (237) When the town's officials visited, of the furniture they noted that “the leather was cracked,” and that “a faint dust rose” (238) when shown their seats. At this time Miss Emily was around age 42, and yet there before the fireplace was “a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father” displayed on a “tarnished gilt easel.” (238) These are all small
“Miss Emily’ William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” (1930), illustrates that Emily was a reclusive, stubborn, “daddy’s girl” with abandonment issues. Emily is portrayed as a recluse due to her extreme lack of interaction with the town’s people, so much so, that the town’s people more or less seen her as a mysterious town monument. After her death, the entire town attended her funeral, either out of respect for “..a fallen monument..” (Faulkner 1) or simply “..out of curiosity to see the inside of her house..” (Faulkner 1). She was someone they traded stories about, but rarely saw, like an old myth. To illustrate Faulkner’s portrayal of Emily’s stubbornness, he describes her unwillingness to pay taxes.
It’s the mental anguish that was exacted upon her that lives within her from the moment of her father’s death until Homer Barron attempts to leave that makes her a woman of piquant intellect and mind-set. It is the affect that her father leaves on her that lingers throughout the remainder of her life; an unyielding influence that incessantly shapes her into the woman she ultimately becomes at the conclusion of the story, which is a woman at “seventy four…vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man (48).” Work Cited Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer.
Final Outline Thesis: In the short stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, “Wakefield” by Nathaniel Hawthore, and “A Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, women are portrayed as having very diverse reactions towards the abandonment of a loved one. Topic 1: Within the story, “A Rose for Emily,” Emily’s loss of her father ultimately causes her emotional insanity. “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background [...].” “When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning grey. During the next few years it grew greyer and greyer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray when it ceased