美国文学论文

美国文学课程论文2013年7月2 日Surveillance and Tragedy in A Rose for

Emily

吴冰姿外国语学院英语3班1015010305

Thesis Statement: In William Faulkner’s short novel A Rose for Emily, the main character Emily ends up with tragedy. Emily’s fate is irrecoverable because there are surveillance in everywhere of her life——the society, the family and herself.

CONTENT

1. Introduction

2. The Surveillance of the Society

2.1 The Persecution of Puritanism

2.2 The Noble Tradition of Old South

3. The Surveillance of Family

3.1 The Supervision of Emily’s Father

3.2 The Supervision of Emily’s Relatives

4. The Surveillance of Self

5. Conclusion

Works Cited

Abstract: This paper will discuss the tragedy and surveillance in A Rose for Emily. Emily’s tragedy is closely related to the surveillance around Emily. In this paper, three aspects will be discussed to find

the reason for Emily’s tragedy. This paper will prove that Emily’s tragedy is irrecoverable.

Key Words: Emily, tragedy, surveillance

1. Introduction

1.1 Background Information

A Rose for Emily is a short story written by William Faulkner. He was an American writer and won Nobel Prize from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of written media, including novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essaysand screenplays. He is firstly known and praised for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County which also was the set of the story A Rose for Emily. A Rose for Emily was first published in the April 30, 1930 issue of Forum. It was Faulkner's first short story published in a national magazine. The themes of this story are resistance to change, isolation, versions of reality, compassion and forgiveness.

1.2 Literature Review

Many researches have been written to work on the short story A Rose for Emily. Looking into these analyses, we can conclude a lot of aspects of research: the symbolism, the writing technique, the cause of Emily’s tragedy, the comparison with others and so on. In these analyses, the cause of Emily’s tragedy is the most popular topic. Many scholars has written papers about it in different perspectives.

Firstly, some researches believed that Emily’s tragedy was caused by three reasons ——the oppression of paternity, inhuman doctrine of woman, and dislocation of times. On the Tragedy of A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner written by HONG Liu, School of Arts&Law, An Hui, Ma’an shan showed that the causes of Emily’s tragedy lie in the paternalism and feminie morality of Puritanism governing the south of America. It is said in this paper that Emily’s character was distorted by the oppression of inhuman doctrine of woman and father’s autocracy.

The Cause for Emily's Tragedy——On A Rose for Emily written by LIU-Peng, English Department, Yunyang Teachers' College, gave a further discussion of the cause of Emily’s tragedy. Besides her father’s autocracy and inhuman doctrine of woman, the author also studied the cause for Emily’s tragedy from dislocation of times. The decline of the old south and the raise of industrial civilization directly lead