A Rose for Emily

Love is the Source of Tragedy---A Analysis of A Rose for EmilyA Rose for Emily is one of the most famous short stories written by William·Faulkner. It is a novel with a dominating idea of love, even if it is neither romantic nor passionate, you can be totally affected by some inadvertent plots which reveals a hint of moving ambiance. it is so special that it can put people into entire reading with rapture, although the ending is painful, but it stimulates people to deep thought.Throughout the story,"rose"appears only twice as adjectives at one sentence when rhe story comes to an ending,"...Faded rose color,upon the rose-shaded lights...",so in the title, what is the rose for?In Western culture, rose is a symbol of purity,beauty,love and regeneration. First, in ancient Greek and Roman myths, the first bunch of roses grow from the blood of Adonis, lover of Venus, so rose is the symbol of love beyond death. Secondly, in the system of Christian, rose represents the blood of Christ on the cross, which also represents the love of God. Thirdly, according to the folklore, the red rose represents secular love.In the title of"A Rose for Emily", rose does not refer to that the inhabiants of the town or the narrator present roses after the death of Emily. Rose in the story is in fact at least refers to somr understandings of the followings:A "rose" is the narrator on behalf of town residents, expresses the respect and adoration. Second, Emily is the embodient of US traditional southerners, so the "rose" may refer to Emily had become a rose in the minds of Jefferson residents, especially those old Confederate soldiers. Third, it may mean Emily's love is boyond death. Fourth, ia may be alluding to the issue of Emily in the pursuit of love, trying to overcome time and space, her dedication and spirit of challenge that worthy be dedicated to roses.Miss Emily Grierson is the emblem of the victim of Old South's traditional ideas. When Emily is alive,she has been ragarded as incarnation of tradition, a symbol of duty, she is also the one whom the people pay attention to. As the female protagonist, Emily is a sort of example of a bygone era. She's from an upper class where family name is venerated at almost any cost. Miss Emily was stubborn and haughty,isolated from society and refused to accept the changes. Her character had been presented dramatically in the short story. Miss Emily refused to accept the postbox, the symbol of modernization; and refused to pay taxes, which means that she refused to accept the progress of the society;and refused to accept the passage of time.As to the Negro servant, she was usually symbolized"death"as well as depression and gloom. William Faulkner's use of symbolism plays an important role in making the story mysterious and shocking.Instead of explicating the plot according to its natural development the story is developed in five parts but not time-sequence organized.If put the story into a chronological order, the whole story can be:Ⅰ. Emily was a pure, weak and slim girl under the protection of her father.Ⅱ.Emily's father died, she seldom went out and sick for long timeⅢHomer Barron came to her life in the summer of the year after her father died. The two fell in love, "poor Emily"people whispering. Two female cousins visited her.Ⅳ.Emily ordered a man's toilet set in siler, bought a coomplete outfit of men's clothing. Barron left.Ⅴ.Emily bought some poison while the two cousins were visiting her. After a week that Barronleft her, her cousins were also departed with her. 3 days later, Barron was back. Barron disappeared again, soon after, a bad smelling came from her house. Men in the town slide into her house and sprinkled lime there. Emily lived alone for about six months and people in the town couldn't see her. Emily's tax had been relieved. In the following years, Emily grew fat and her hair turned iron-gray.Ⅵ.Emily gave lessons in cina-painting, the front door remsin closed after the last students gone. Nobody visited her since then.Ⅶ. Colonel Sartoris died.Ⅷ.Delegation of tax went to her house, that's been 30 years after the bad smelling showed up.Ⅸ. Emily died and at least 10 years that nobody went into her room. For about 40 years, people had not seeing what her room like.Ⅹ.People in the town went to her funeral and at last knowing what happened to Homer Barron.All the literary techniques employed has cast mysterious atmosphere on the story and created an unexpected effect as well, which makes the reader's reading of the story like watching a movie with vivid pictures.ConclusionSomebody presumed that miss emily ia "a distorted ogre"or"a cadaver sucker", while in my mind, emily is a really pitiful lady. All her life, she never lived a life for her own, when emily met barron, fall in love with him, the only thing she can do is---to keep barron in her own world.It is mot miss emily's own fault that caused her tragedy. Since emily was born; her life was confined or framed strictly in a circle by her stubborn, conservative and selfish father. Emily could not find her own real life. Maybe a tragedy for a woman, throughout her life, is there is no man besides her. So she murdered Barron. At last miss emily grierson got nothing but a dead body of her lover--Homer Barron. She lay beside his dead body for years.The tragedyo of emily partly due to that she can not adapt to an era which is changing animatedly, she can only be isolated to hold on her position. In fact, miss emily possesses a lot, if she could open up her heart,her life would be like the rose, bright and beautiful.Compassion and Forgiveness"Compassion and Forgiveness" is another major theme that we can find in almost any Faulkner story. At first, it might not be apparent in this case. We almost have to be told that these sentiments are behind "A Rose for Emily" before we can see them. The story can seem downright cruel, the characters wholly unsympathetic, and the plot gross. When we begin to see the magnitude of the tragedy, and its impact on multiple generations, we understand the story is a call for understanding. The story seems to argue that forgiveness, compassion, and understanding can only come by facing the facts of the past and the present, which are tangled up together in an tight knot. Faulkner is both mercilessly subtle, and painfully blunt in this story, but we can feel the spirit of compassion rushing through.Story Summary"A Rose for Emily," written by William Faulkner, is a short story about the life and death of Miss Emily Grierson. The structure of this work is broken down into five individual sections, which all come together to form a masterpiece. As the story begins, the unnamed narrator gives a detailed description of Miss Emily's funeral. It is stated that the whole town was present for the funeral. The narrator describes the motivation for the town's attendance: "the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside ofher house" (Faulkner 1). The curiosity created by the town was due to Miss Emily's life of privacy. No individual had seen the inside of her house, with the exception of Miss Emily's "Negro" servant, in the last ten years leading up to her death.The first section of this short story additionally includes a description of the history behind the town's relations to Miss Emily. The narrator comments: "Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (1). This obligation began in the year 1894 when Miss Emily's father died; he left her nothing but the house. That year the town's mayor told Miss Emily she was exempt from all taxes because the town owed her father. Miss Emily accepted his exemption and the tradition began. As this section comes to an end, a new mayor tries to get Miss Emily to start paying taxes, but she refuses.The second section of "A Rose for Emily" describes Miss Emily's life shortly after her father's death. This section displays Miss Emily as a woman in deep denial. She actually tried to hide her father's dead body, but the wretched smell eventually drove the town to intervene: "Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly" (3). The narrator ends this section by saying, "We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that" (3).The third section of this short story begins with the narrator saying Miss Emily was sick for a long time. This section then goes on to introduce Homer Barron, a "Yankee" construction worker, who was brought to town as the foreman of a company for paving the sidewalks of Jefferson. Miss Emily quickly grew fond of Homer, and they began spending every Sunday together. The town could not understand Miss Emily's relationship with Homer; they started saying "Poor Emily." Over a year later Miss Emily went to the drugstore and bought arsenic. The druggist asked Miss Emily what her intentions were for this poison, but she would not answer him.The fourth section began with the town's speculations of Miss Emily's need for poison. The narrator stated, "So the next day we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing" (5). After this initial reaction, the women of the town decided Miss Emily's suicide would be a disgrace. The ladies forced the Baptist Minister to visit Miss Emily. Although he would never say what happened that day, he would not go back. The minister's wife then decided to write Miss Emily's estranged relatives in Alabama, and in return two of her female cousins came for a visit, and Homer disappeared. After some time, the cousins went back to Alabama, and Homer went back to Miss Emily. The narrator says that was the last time Homer was ever seen. This section closed with Miss Emily's death, at age seventy-four.The fifth, and final, section returns to the funeral of Miss Emily Grierson. The narrator says that her "Negro" servant opened Miss Emily's door and vanished forever. The funeral was held on the second day after Miss Emily's death. Upon her burial, the town began an inspection of the house that was closed for the last ten years. What they found was astonishing. Miss Emily had been hiding Homer's dead body. He was laid out in a bed; next to him was an imprint, and one of her long gray hairs.SynopsisA Rose for Emily is a first person narrative which is split into five different sections. The first section opens with a description of the Grierson house in Jefferson. The narrator mentions that over the years, Miss Emily Grierson's home has fallen into disrepair and become "an eyesore among eyesores." The first sentence of the story sets the tone of how the citizens of Jefferson felt about Emily: "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to the funeral: the menthrough a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years."The narrator notes that on the date an engineer is seen in Jefferson with a crew of men to build sidewalks. After Emily and Homer are seen driving through town several times, Emily visits a druggist. There, she asks to purchase arsenic. The druggist asks what the arsenic is for since it was required of him to ask by law. Emily does not respond and coldly stares him down until he looks away and gives her the arsenic. When Emily opens the package, underneath the skull and bones sign is written, "For Rats." Citizens of Jefferson believe that Miss Emily is going to commit suicide since Homer has not yet proposed in the beginning of section four. The townspeople contact and invite Emily's two cousins to comfort her. Shortly after their arrival, Homer leaves and then returns after the cousins leave Jefferson. Upon his return, Homer is last seen entering Emily's home and then never seen again. After Homer’s disappearance, Emily b egins to age, gain weight, and is rarely seen outside of her home. Eventually, Miss Emily passes away.The fifth and final section begins with Jefferson women entering the Grierson home. After they arrive, Emily's black servant leaves through the back door without saying a word. After Emily's funeral, the townspeople immediately go through her house. They come across a room on the second floor which no one had seen in 40 years, and break the door down. They discover a dusty room strangely decorated as a bridal room. The room contains a man's tie, suit and shoes, and a silver toilet set which Miss Emily had purchased for Homer before his disappearance. Homer's remains lay on the bed, dressed in a nightshirt. Next to him is an impression of a head on a pi llow where the townspeople find a single “long strand of iron-gray hair.” It is thus implied that Emily had killed Homer and had lain in the bed with his corpse up to her own death.with Love and SqualorWilliam Faulkner is one of the most greatest and famous authors of modern America. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. The reason for his awarded was “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel”. I think we can attribute some p art of his success to the use of the stream of consciousness. This kind of skill made his fiction more delicate and complex and he was famous for this skill as same as Marcel Proust of France and James Joyce of Ireland. It reminded me of my own experience of the travel of reading his fiction named Sound and the Fury. That idiot boy, he was one of the narrators in the fiction, made me confused because Faulkner used the stream of consciousness when he wrote that section. It indeed has high value in literature, but I must say that it really hard to read.Another outstanding characteristic of his fiction is almost all of the stories happened in a place named Yoknapatawpha. This place came from Faulkner’s memory of his childhood and it was a symbol or a microcosm of the whole Southern society. The story happened in Yoknapatawpha in Sound and the Fury, so it did in the short but most immaculate story named A Rose for Emily. This story was written in 1930, unlike Sound and the Fury, Faulkner did not use too much literature skill in it like the stream of consciousness. But it has a different kind of beauty and I will analysis what it is make the story beautiful through stylistic way.1. varieties of language useAlmost the whole story used the first-person perspective to narrate and sometimes used third-person perspective, for example in the latter half of the first part and the first half part of the second part. So the author regarded himself as a resident of the town, an everyman. In this way wecan understand why it comes to the developed of the story, the dialogue between the characters, the language is so normal, just like we are reading some letter from our relatives, not a literature work. Look at the following dialogue, it is very simple:"I want som e poison," she said to the druggist…"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--""I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--""Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?""Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--""I want arsenic."The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."But the author was not always a resident in that town. When it comes to the description of the circumstance or the appearance of a person and so on, Faulkner, the great author emerged again. The language of those sorts of part is very subtle and elaborate. Looking at this part: It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.We can find the different style of language in those two parts above obviously. So how can one person assert they are written by one same person if he did not learn the truth before? Is it a kind of amazing? Of course it is. It is a kind of amazing ability that every excellent author must have and it is the ability of change his language style smoothly that makes him excellent. Faulkner is one of the authors who has this ability, he can change his language style when he thought it was the proper time to do so. He made his work jovially and chastely in one hand like Mark Twain, in another hand, distinguished and fascinate like Oscar Wilde. If he had not received the top honor, who else can?2. sequence of the five partsFaulkner developed his story in an appealing way, but it was not the chronological way. If we obey the time order, we may narrate the story like this: the first important event must be Emily buy the poison, the next important event must be Homer disappeared and the last important event must be a mysterious odor. How Faulkner disposed of it? He put the last part, i.e. a mysterious odor to the first place. If someone narrate the story follow the former type of order, there is nothing wrong but it all has is plain. But if we did like Faulkner, we create an impressive story, this is a viewpoint of utilitarianism. I agree the utilitarian this time because I agree the emotional effect is a crucial factor towards a fiction. The consequence need to be considered somehow.Although the skill which Faulkner used seems a little bit outdated at present, it must dropped a bomb at his time. I remember Anton Chekhov once said if there was a gun hanging on the wall in scene one, then it should fire in scene three. I think his concept is familiar to Faulkner’s story.The odor came up at the very beginning; it played as a critical role until the truth was revealed ultimately. As soon as we get startled, the story is a successful one, isn’t it?3. foreshadowingActually, the author has already given us enough evidences to lay the foundation for the climax. We readers did not know what’s really going on in that gothic atmosphere house, but we can feel something horrible happened there through the clues given by the author more or less. There are some details need to be pay more attention: (1) The change of the color of Emily’s hair;(2) Her conviction that Colonel Sartoris is alive; (3) Her refusal to allow her father to be buried; (4) Her purchase of rat poison; (5) The disappearance of Homer Barron; (6) Pervasive smell of decay. We can realize the personality of Emily and her rare and mystic behaviors from those details, but we just can not integrate them together. It is exactly the method that the author used to arouse our desire to continue to read.When we finished reading and looked back to those details, we may found they are thrown to us on purpose. Only if you read the whole story, you can see how exquisite they are. My advise is, when you start your second reading, you pay special attention to them or maybe you can find more other details. If you read a whole new story, try your best to seek out profitable details, you can feel more enjoyable and you can get a better understand for the story.4. metaphorThe title of the story is A Rose for Emily, but you will find a rose in nowhere. The only thing can be connected to a rose may only this sentence:“A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this ro om decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished t hat the monogram was obscured.”Emily came from a Southern aristocratic family which had been declined from his father’s generation. Her gloomy and ruined big house represented the condition that those Southern aristocrats suffered. It is a symbol which showed the right and glory the aristocrats once owned had gone away and a new time has come. The author gave us a specific example to demonstrate the process of downfall.“From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in China-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good.”I think Emily can not taught children the China-painting anymore signified the lost of the glory in the day of yore. The newer generation was the new class at that time which would replace the position of those aristocrats. And in the very next few sentences, the author showed us a possible reason which caused this kind of social change:“When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten themetal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.”It is the conservative mind and did not accept new things that let them go downhill. Since America was found in 1776, there was difference between the north and the south. The main income resource was plantation economy in south, while modern industry dominated the economy in north. American Civil War was caused by the divarication between them. At Faulkner’s time, the decline of south aristocrats was an inevitable situation. Emily had no choice born in such a family, this made her story a real tragedy one.The faded rose color is a symbol of her miserable life and bleak love. As for the rose in the title, I think it is another metaphor, it is a metaphor from the author himself. In the title Faulkner showed his mercy for Emily, he would give a rose to Emily as long as he had a chance definitely. But he was not a defender for southern aristocrats, he just moved by the dismal and beautiful love, and showed respect to the parting time.My essay’s title inspired by J. D. Salinger’s short story named For Esme: ------with Love and Squalor. It is a sad love tragedy, too. Although we human beings bear so much hardship, I still believe there is love, there is hope. A rose for Emily, a rose for eternal love.。