aroseforemily写作技巧英文版武汉大学

WRITING SKILLS of A Rose for Emily

1. Story Structure

Part I: Emily's death; She pays no taxes.

Part II: The strange smelling of Emily's house; Emily's father passed away

Part III:Love with Homer; Emily buy poison

Part IV: The Emily's old age; Emily's death

Part V: Emily's funeral; People found the corpse（尸体）

2. Figurative language

Simile（明喻）

?Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough. Personification（拟人）

?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.

techniques---重点部分

Suspense （悬念）

I think the writing skill the author use most is “suspense”, at the beginning of the novel there are several questions we cannot get through , . why the whole town went to her funeral ? W hat the “ fallen monument’ represent for ? Why the women were full of curiosity to the inside of her house ? What exactly was in Emily”s house ?

With so many questions we have to deal with , we are full of interests and curiosity to read the following text and find the answers.

And at the other parts of the text , there are suspenses as well ,. why the house of noble Emily send out bad smell ? Is the arsenic(砒霜) really for mice ？

Symbol

It seems that a teem is going to give us a detail explanation .Here we just give a brief introduction.

The text have an unique title—“A Rose for Emily”,but the true flower—rose does not appear from the beginning to the end .T his is a symbol. I think the “rose” have severe symbols, .

a)Love .Emily did not get Homer”s true love, but the author

want to give a “rose ” for her ,showing humanistic

emotion .

b)Emily herself. As the present of the old society ,she is

a rose full of thorns.(带刺的玫瑰)

Emily is the symbol of south traditional civilization and Puritan culture（清教文化）.Homer is the symbol of the capitalist class.

Chronological disorder (时序倒错法)

text order :

Death of 74-year- Emily-----She refused to pay smell from her house .-----Her exceptional perform after her father”s death .----She fell in love with Homer and then Homer

disappeared .-----She bought arsenic(砒霜).----Death of

74-year- Emily.

The exact order :

Her exceptional perform after her father”s death .-----She refused to pay taxes. ----She fell in love with Homer and then Homer disappeared . -----She bought arsenic(砒霜). ----The smell from her house . ---- Death of 74-year-old Emily.

The beginning is in harmony with the end . This disorder makes the plot complicated and confusing(扑朔迷离) , significantly highlight the love of Emil y, intensively criticize the essence of south traditional civilization based on slavery and Puritan culture.

Unique details

The most important clue of the mouder is the hair of Emily. “The hair of Emily”appear many times in the text as follows : a)After her father,s death , “her hair was cut short, making

her look like a girl, with a resemblance to those angels in colored church windows.”

b)After Homer,s leaving 6 monthes, “she had grown fat and her

hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew

grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.”

c)After her death“She died in one of the downstairs rooms,

in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight. ”

d)The last sentence about the death of Homer“we saw a long

strand of iron-gray hair(near the body)”

The changing of her hair little by little corresponding to the declination of the noble and the civilization of old society.

Unique narrative perspective(叙述视角)

Usually we use first person “I or me” as a narrator in a novel, while the author employed a smart narrative perspective--- First Person Plural(第一人称复数) “we or us ” . “I” represent a single one ,while “we” represent large amounts of people forming sharp contrast with maverick(特立

独行) Emily ,signifying the tragedy of Emily. First Person Plural(第一人称复数) which is more believable makes the ideas

more objective while first person gives more subjective opinions.