Literary Elements Used in A Rose For Emily Essay

Explication Essay #1 A Rose for Emily

William Faulkners A Rose for Emily was originally published Forum magazine in April 1930. Its a story of the life of an eccentric unattached woman by the name of Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emilys life and her odd relationships with her father, her lover, the town of Jefferson, and the horrible secret she hides. The subjects of the story are timeless. The topics of love, death, community vs. individuality, and the nature of time are throughout the story. The main difference in William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" is between past time and present time. The past as represented in Emily herself, in Colonel Sartoris, in the old Negro servant, and in the Board of Aldermen who accepted the Colonel's attitude toward Emily and rescinded her taxes. The present is depicted through the unnamed narrator and is represented in the new Board of Aldermen, in Homer Barron the representative or Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and through them toward the entire South, and in what is called the next generation with its more modern ideas. The three areas that I chose to explicate were the setting of the story, the point of view of the writer/narrator, and the plot.

A Rose for Emily takes place in mythical county, Yoknapatawpha Mississippi made up by Mr. Faulkner. The town of Jefferson is a small town located in Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is based on upon the real city of Oxford and Lafayette County in Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. The time of the story was in the Old South shortly after the end of the Civil War. A time when the South was going through a reconstruction period and trying to find their place in the country.

The point of view in Rose of Emily is unique. The story is told by an unnamed narrator in the first-person collective. As you read you might begin to think that the narrator is the main character but the use we, us, and our leads you to believe that there is more than one person telling the story. The people of Jefferson are the narrators. There are little hints as the age, race, gender, and class of the narrator, but an identity is never actually revealed. The narrator seems to speak for his or her community. Regardless of identity, the narrator proves to be a cleaver, humorous, and sympathetic storyteller. Clever because of the way the story is pieced together to build a shocking climax. The humor is evident in an almost unusual tone throughout what most would consider a morbid story. Finally, the narrator is sympathetic to both Emily and the town of Jefferson. This demonstrated in the pity for Emily and the understanding that the towns reactions are driven by circumstances beyond its control. Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town. This obligation was passed down generation after generation until her death.

A Rose for Emily begins with the announcement of the death of Miss Emily Grierson, an alienated spinster living in the South in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The narrator, who speaks in the we voice and appears to represent the people of the town, recounts the story of Emily's life as a lonely and impoverished woman left penniless by her father, who drove away suitors from his overprotected daughter. Emily was left when her father died with a large, dilapidated house, into which the townspeople have never been invited, and there is an almost shocking interest among them when they are finally able to enter the house upon Emily's death. At that point they discover the truth about the extent of Emily's problems. Over the years she has kept the body of her lover, a Northerner named Homer Barron, locked in a bedroom since she killed him years before, and she has continued to sleep with him.

Flashbacks and foreshadowing are two literary devices used to help the narrator tell this story. Flashbacks are used to present action that occurs before the beginning of the story and foreshadowing creates expectation for action that has not yet happened. Faulkner does an excellent job of using both devices in A Rose for Emily. By doing so he helps build the climax for the story and creates anticipation for the reader. The story is told by the narrator through a series of non-sequential flashbacks. The narrator begins the story by describing the scene of Emilys funeral. The funeral itself is a flashback because the story ends with the narrators memory of the towns discovery of the corpse in the Grierson home after Miss Emilys funeral. Throughout the story, the narrator flashes back and forth through various events in the life of Emily Grierson and the town of Jefferson. Each piece of the story told by the narrator prompts another piece of the story, regardless of chronological order. For example, the narrator recalls Emilys funeral, which leads him to remember when Colonel Satoris relieved her of her taxes. This of course leads to the story of the alderman trying to collect Emilys taxes after the death of the Colonel. The narrative therefore works much in the same random manner as the human memory does. The narrator foreshadows the grisly discovery at the end of the story with several scenes. First, when the alderman attempts to collect Emilys taxes, her house is described as decrepit, almost a mausoleum. Emily herself is compared to a drowned corpse. Then, in section two, the stench that comes from the Grierson house is most certainly one of death. Another powerful example of foreshadowing comes when Emily refuses to let anyone take the body of her father after his death until she relents after three days.

The story moves seamlessly back and forth in time over different generations in its five sections. Each episode in the life on Emily and the history of Jefferson is obviously interconnected, yet the clues arent given in chronological order. Thus, the final scene is powerful because the narrator does not tell the story in a straightforward, beginning to end fashion. The description of the setting gives you idea of what time and place the story happens. The point of view gives you some insight of the people of the town and the narrator. The plot and the literary devices used in this writing made the story very appealing. This is why the story is even more entertaining and enlightening when you read it.