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In "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, we see how past events
effect the main character Miss Emily, especially her mental state. She
seems to live in a sort of fantasy world where death has no real
meaning. Miss Emily refuses to accept or even recognize, the death of
her father or that of Colonel Satoris. She does not want to acknowledge
the fact that the world around her was changing therefore Miss Emily
surrounds herself with death. What Faulkner tries to state in this
story is that you should not let death overpower your life. A person
should try and let go of their beloved ones after they have passed
away. He also tries to state is to always expect the unexpected, like
when Miss Emily killed Homer.
Faulkner chooses to use third person narration in this particular
story for a couple of reasons. He tries to show Emily's world to us as
seen through the eyes of a respectable resident, so we can understand
the town life as if we lived there. This way we were able to understand
how the people of Jefferson thought of her. If the story would have
been told in first person we would not have been able to relate to Miss
Emily. The reason for that would be, if she would have been the
narrator we would have understood the story in a hole different manner.
Faulkner used third person narration and from that we were able to find
out many things about Miss Emily's past. For instance the death of her
father, the love she had for Homer, and how she felt the need for
affection. Those ideas she would have kept to herself, if she were to
have told the story.
The language and dialogue that Faulkner provides Miss Emily with
enables the readers to understand how she feels about the town. She is
not very pleased with the changes that have occurred therefore she lets
everyone that she comes in contact with know how she views those
specific changes. For example when the new Mayor tells her that she
owes taxes in Jefferson, she just keeps on insisting that she does not
owe any money. She also keeps repeating that if they had any to just
ask Colonel Satoris about her taxes, while everyone knew good and well
he had passed away. This in turn supports the theme of the story,
because we see that Miss Emily does not like the idea of change at all.
Faulkner uses many symbols throughout the story, one of them being
the crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father. The picture symbolizes many
things' one of them being that it shows how she thinks of things in the
distant past. Another symbol is the poison that she uses to kill Homer
Barron. When the people in Jefferson found out that she had purchased
the poison they surely all thought that she was going to kill herself.
What she really used it for was never expected from quiet, old Miss
Emily. This lead up to the climax of the story. After Miss Emily died
they had to go to remove her body. The unsuspecting thing that happened
in her house was that she had been sleeping with Homer's old decayed
body for many years.
Faulkner did a great job in creating the setting, characters and
dialogue in this story. Everything is so well written and understood.
We can understand many things about small town life in the south in the
early 1900's. It is a wonderful story, even though irony surrounds the
ending. That is another reason why this story is so memorable. If you
read it once you can never truly forget it, because I know I never will.
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