A Rose for Emily William Faulkner's short story

William Faulkner's short story, "A Rose for Emily," was his first nationally published short story. The tale appeared in 1930, based on fears and rumors regarding an aristocratic woman who lived in his hometown, Oxford, Mississippi. The aristocratic Miss Mary Neilson married Captain Jack Hume, a Yankee foreman of a street-paving crew, over her family's protests. The couple had a happy marriage and lived to a ripe old age. According to John B. Cullen, one of Faulkner's neighbors, "A Rose for Emily" was created from the townspeoples' dire predictions of what could happen if Miss Neilson married the charming Yankee (Kirszner & Mandell 76-77). The purpose of this paper is to explore the details of setting, character, point of view, symbol, and theme in "A Rose for Emily."

The story is set in a small town in the American South in the post-Civil War years. Only in this milieu would the story be believable--the chivalrous protection of Miss Emily, the payment of her taxes by Colonel Sartoris, and the odd behavior tolerated in a small town to the point of the suspected murder of a lover. Colonel Sartoris invented a complicated tale to explain his payment of the taxes to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, and this was how the officials preferred to repay. "Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it" (77).

Only in a small southern town of this era could a wo

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h and rusty, as if from disuse (82). These details help us understand the relationship between these two characters, a post Civil War relationship of mistress and "slave." The character of Homer Barron is necessary for the story to unfold. He was a Yankee, a big, dark, ready man. Tie was the street-paver foreman who soon knew everyone in town and drank with the younger men at the Elks' Club. He told his drinking companions that he was not a marrying man. This trait provides the "last straw" for Miss Emily. He is her last hope. She is getting older, and her father had run off all previous suitors years ago. Homer Barron's disinterest in marrying Emily is sufficient motivation for her to poison him with arsenic. Point of View The point of view in "A Rose for Emily" is a first person narrative, in this case, the plural we. The story reads as if several of the townspeople tell it together, randomly rambling about the various happenings surrounding Emily, her history, and her death. This first person plural point of view allows the story to develop in a folksy, graphic way, as neighbors might gossip and tell stories to each other about what "so and so" did, as small town southern people do. This point of view allows l

Category: Literature - A