The Narrators Role in A Rose for Emily
"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, is told in third person limited omniscient point of view. The definition of this point of view is as follows, "The author tells the story using the third person, but is limited to a complete knowledge of one character in the story and tells us only what one character thinks, feels, sees, or hears (Charter). The narrator the author uses to tell the story represents the town's people. The story is told based on the town's feelings, thoughts, and whatever they see and hear. The narrator also functions as a source of foreshadowing and keeps the reader in suspense through the un-chronological sequence of events by which the story is told.
The narrator uses "we" throughout the story to portray a collective groups ideas and opinions. The story begins with Miss Emily Grierson's death and the reasons the men and women of the town attend the funeral. The reasons were concerned responsibility and curiosity rather than mourning. The narrator then begins to recall, "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation among the town (Faulkner). This is a perfect summation of the towns feelings toward Miss Emily.
The narrator clearly only sees one side of the story. Miss Emily is seen by the town as an obligation, and they strive to find ways to pity her. They pity her for the loss of her father and sweet heart's, Homer Baron's, supposed desertion. The narrator is unable to see the respect Miss Emily demands and receives because the townspeople were unwilling to force her to change her life or ways. The townsmen would not force her to pay taxes nor would they mention the smell of her home to her face.
The night the townsmen sneak around Miss Emily's home sprinkling lime is representative of how the town sneaks around Miss Emily careful not to upset her life directly. Through the narrator, the reader is able to see that the townspeople constantly talk about her, pity her, and make assumptions about her life. The people were relieved to see Miss Emily no longer holding her high place of regard after her father's death, "She had become humanized (Faulkner)." In order for people to relate to Emily, they needed to find fault within her. The narrator mentions more than once "we pitied her (Faulkner)."
The narrator also functions in foreshadowing. The foreshadowing is interesting because the reader may not realize it until the very end. The inability of Miss Emily to let her father go after his passing, rat poisoning, the un-returning Baptist Minister, the bad smell, and the disappearance of Homer Baron all foreshadow the ending. Two years after her fathers death and only a short while after Homer's desertion, the townsmen sprinkled lime around Miss Emily's home to stop the horrid smell. The townspeople thought she was grieving so much she didn't have time to take care of her home properly and were afraid that mentioning the problem to her would upset her greatly.
The narrator speaks of these events in a sequence, which keeps the reader guessing what everything will happen next. The narrator speaks of her death first, then her refusal to pay taxes, the bad smell, her father's death, her sweet heart, Homer Baron, rat poison, her possible suicide, her alluded marriage, her purchase of initialed toiletries, Homer's desertion, her growing fat and old, and finally she died bringing the story full circle. The narrator seems to have a new memory triggered with each clip of Miss Emily's life. The narrator and possibly the reader are surprised at finding the corpse of Homer in the end. The indention of the pillow and strand of iron-gray hair is the most surprising twist.
The narrator plays many roles in A Rose for Emily. The towns perspective is an inventive way through which to tell the story. It is obvious that the towns people were not important to Miss Emily although she influenced their lives. She continued to live her live however she deemed proper despite any outside influence. Strangely, the town was afraid to upset her life in anyway. The narrators unknowing manner of foreshadowing is also very different. The story is told through recollections of the past, one thought triggering another. The events are not in chronological order and the pieces do not create a whole picture until the end.
Works Cited
Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. University of Connecticut. Boston. Copyright 1999. Bedford.
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