”A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner
“Alive, Emily was a traditional, caring and a duty; a heritable obligation in town”. This is the first quote in the narration. The narrator uses the quote to describe the history and legacy of Emily in town. Emily had been quite a significant figure there. She was quite fascinating. Several people were obliged to protect Emily. This story draws on the traditional American literature, especially the southern Gothic. The story applies first person narration and gross imagery to survey a culture that cannot cope with its decay and death. The main character is Grierson Emily who shuts herself and is helped by people to avoid following the societal rules. After Emily perishes, the readers discovered that she had murdered her love several years ago and slept with the corpse. She revealed her true nature as evil and violent as a key quality. This scenery functions as an initiator of social and moral commentary. It makes Faulkner clarify the dreadful failure of the south. Faulkner uses Emily and this story to as a symbol of failure for the south in accepting change.
The story commences with the announcement of Emily’s death. Emily is an alienated single woman who lives in the south in the late nineteenth century. Faulkner talks in the “we” tone and seems to symbolize the townspeople. He relates the story of Emily as a poor and lonely woman left without a coin by her father. Her father chased away suitors from Emily. After her father had perished, Emily was left in a decrepit house that the townspeople had never been invited. At this moment, they uncover the truth regarding the extent of challenges that Emily had been facing. Emily had killed her lover and locked her in her bedroom while she slept with him continuously.
After the Civil War, several southerners refused to accept that their lives had been altered. The southerners were not ready to accept new traditions and had stuck in the past. In this story, everything regarding Emily is a final hold of the traditional means of the south. When the story had begun, Emily’s house was abandoned, and this lifts it is coquettish and stubborn decay past the cotton wagon. This proves to the audience that the old south is savored without any changes or technology. In this story, Emily starts to weaken after her father died. She behaves as if nothing has occurred in her life when people appear to pay their respect. She shuts the door, and this symbolizes “time stoppage”. When Emily refuses to pay her taxes and refers to a man who had perished a decade earlier, the townspeople assume this. She is not arrested for this act. The townspeople assume this because Emily symbolizes their romanticized past. Towards the end of the story, the townspeople came to understand that times change.
There are several themes portrayed by “A rose for Emily”. Hair on the pillow gives a memory of love that is lost and often obstinate things that people perform when they want to be happy. It also discloses the inner life of a woman who was dedicated to living her own life and not letting her behaviors control her by all means. A number of critics have concentrated on Emily’s efforts to halt time by confusing the present and the past and denying change. In the same way, the jumbled chronology of events in the tale has been a topic of vast debate. Both of the issues have been considered to be symbolic of the South’s incapability of moving forward with the modernized North after the Civil War. Another examination reveals Emily as a disastrous figure because of her dedicated individualism and the judgmental and probing speculations of the townspeople. Other critics still draw the significance of the story to horrific and gothic literature that dates back to Edgar Allan Poe.
