Critical Analysis "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

Critical Analysis "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

  • Submitted By: TangoTango
  • Date Submitted: 04/12/2014 12:09 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1350
  • Page: 6

The short story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner is a tale about an old woman named Emily Grierson residing in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. The portraiture is written in the definitive Faulkner technique of a flowing awareness. Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” embodies the theme of decay of the house, the surroundings and with Emily Grierson herself. Established in the early nineteen hundreds, the story commences with the town’s discovery of Emily's death. We are also told of the deaths of a suitor, her father, and the town’s mayor. The depiction is illustrated by an unidentified narrator who exists in the same town. We learn about the life and times of Emily, including relationships with her father, her lover, as well as the town. At the conclusion of the story we find a sadly menacing reality Emily Grierson was veiling.
Faulkner gives a vivid image of Emily and the town growing old together. A town she had lived in her entire life as a privileged child of the antebellum southern aristocracy. Although she had at one time dwelled in one of the finest areas in Jefferson, Mississippi, the street is at this point reflected to be one of the foulest in town. It may be surmised that the area had fallen victim to hard times in the south after the Civil War. It would appear the street had grown older and corroded with Emily. Analyzing the worth by the unnamed narrator, Faulkner points out that
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 eye sore among eyesores. (Faulkner 91)
In her formative years, Emily and her relatives were revered and held in high esteem as Jefferson's venerable citizens. As Emily had developed into her older years, the town perceives her in a different light. Faulkner’s vivid imagination gives the image of Emily as an older woman...

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