《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》及《一桶白葡萄酒》文学评论

Review of a Rose for Emily

A Rose for Emily is a very popular short story because of its style, climax, and plot. The author, William Faulkner, was a Southern writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner bases this story on the tale of Oxford's aristocracy Miss Mary Neilson. She married Captain Jack Hume, the charming Y ankee foreman of a street-paving crew, over her family's shocked protests. The style of this story is false romance. Miss Emily's father, before his death, would run off every man that tried to court her. Because of this, she felt any man she loved would leave her. After falling in love with Homer Baron, she feared he would run off like the others. To keep this from happening, she poisoned him and kept his body upstairs in the bedroom. The climax focuses on the room where the corpse was found. After Miss Emily's death, the town people were cleaning up the house and found a room that was locked. They had to break down the door. To their surprise, they found Homer Baron's corpse lying in the bed dressed in a night shirt. As the story progresses there is no indication that he had died. When they found the toilet things sitting on the dresser with initials H.B., it was well known that the corpse was Homer Baron. I first thought it was her father in the bed, but I realized that her father was

already buried. I then knew it had to be her lover. I cringed on the thought of what she did while she was lying next to the corpse. Finally, the end of this story surrounds a woman's life from her mid twenties until her death at the age of seventy-four. It describes a prominent lady of a town who led a private life. I learned, while reading this story that this woman is crazy and had the mind of a child. She seemed to lose everything she loved.

But I still have a question. The question is “Where is the rose in the A Rose for Emily?”Emily was never given a rose, even when she died there was no mention of a rose. In the story the only time a scented thing was mentioned was lime to cover a smell. Emily like the insinuated rose is never present in the story. Even when Emily has a line of dialog it is spoken thought the filter of the narrator’s perspective. The narrator or the town is concerned with what role Emily is playing, although since Emily is not present in the story, but through hearsay, the reader has to decipher between the roll assigned to her by the narrator and actuality of the role Emily fulfills.

Everyone went to Emily’s funeral. No one went to the funeral out of respect for the dead. Emily became a person known only though hearsay between town folk. No one knew Emily. “Women went out of curiosity to see the inside of her house.” The women went to the funeral to fill a gap.