Essay/Term paper: "a rose for emily": a review

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Faulkner

"A Rose for Emily": A Review


In "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, we see how past events effect
the main character Miss Emily, especially her mental state. She seems to live
in a sort of fantasy world where death has no real meaning. Miss Emily refuses
to accept or even recognize, the death of her father or that of Colonel Satoris.
She does not want to acknowledge the fact that the world around her was changing
therefore Miss Emily surrounds herself with death. What Faulkner tries to state
in this story is that you should not let death overpower your life. A person
should try and let go of their beloved ones after they have passed away. He
also tries to state is to always expect the unexpected, like when Miss Emily
killed Homer.
Faulkner chooses to use third person narration in this particular story
for a couple of reasons. He tries to show Emily's world to us as seen through
the eyes of a respectable resident, so we can understand the town life as if we
lived there. This way we were able to understand how the people of Jefferson
thought of her. If the story would have been told in first person we would not
have been able to relate to Miss Emily. The reason for that would be, if she
would have been the narrator we would have understood the story in a hole
different manner. Faulkner used third person narration and from that we were
able to find out many things about Miss Emily's past. For instance the death
of her father, the love she had for Homer, and how she felt the need for
affection. Those ideas she would have kept to herself, if she were to have told
the story.
The language and dialogue that Faulkner provides Miss Emily with enables
the readers to understand how she feels about the town. She is not very pleased
with the changes that have occurred therefore she lets everyone that she comes
in contact with know how she views those specific changes. For example when the
new Mayor tells her that she owes taxes in Jefferson, she just keeps on
insisting that she does not owe any money. She also keeps repeating that if
they had any to just ask Colonel Satoris about her taxes, while everyone knew
good and well he had passed away. This in turn supports the theme of the story,
because we see that Miss Emily does not like the idea of change at all.
Faulkner uses many symbols throughout the story, one of them being the
crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father. The picture symbolizes many things' one
of them being that it shows how she thinks of things in the distant past.
Another symbol is the poison that she uses to kill Homer Barron. When the
people in Jefferson found out that she had purchased the poison they surely all
thought that she was going to kill herself. What she really used it for was
never expected from quiet, old Miss Emily. This lead up to the climax of the
story. After Miss Emily died they had to go to remove her body. The
unsuspecting thing that happened in her house was that she had been sleeping
with Homer's old decayed body for many years.
Faulkner did a great job in creating the setting, characters and
dialogue in this story. Everything is so well written and understood. We can
understand many things about small town life in the south in the early 1900's.
It is a wonderful story, even though irony surrounds the ending. That is
another reason why this story is so memorable. If you read it once you can
never truly forget it, because I know I never will.