A Comparison Of A Rose For Emily And Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Inconsistency
(A critical comparison of A Rose for Emily and Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech)
Shakespeare put it beautifully in Hamlet when he put the words into Polonius’s mouth, “To thine own self be true.” It truly is a noble sentiment and a worthy goal. Each person on the planet earth is confronted daily by decisions that challenge his or her commitment to his or her own self. This is evident in many art forms. Painters, musicians, and writers take pieces of themselves and put it into what they draw, record, or type. While no two works are the same, there is commonly an overarching legislation of the works, a universal set of rules that all must fall under. This is especially apparent in writing, even more so when those rules are articulated.
William Faulkner says that a writer’s duty is to, “help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.” In another one of his works, A Rose for Emily, he does not live up to this ideal. Although he does inspire some pity and compassion in the reader, Faulkner ultimately falls short of his own goal because of his chosen point of view as well as his detached tone.
Honestly, reading about Emily does inspire stirrings of compassion and pity.
“Perhaps it's the measure of Faulkner's originality,” muses Robert McCrum, “that his work seems so incomparably more contemporary than his great contemporaries.” Indeed, Faulkner’s work is original. One of the closest works that comes to mind is actually Yellow Wallpaper. Although Emily doesn’t appear to be quite as insane as her counterpart created by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who says, for example, “But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way,” she does seem to be pretty crazy and inspires compassion in that
sense.
Conversely, the point of view that Faulkner uses isn’t best suited for speaking of matters of the heart. In his short story, he does not assume a third person point of view, omniscient or limited. He does not identify with any particular character; he is an unnamed member of the town. Michael Millgate assesses, “Faulkner had clearly emerged not just as the major American novelist of his generation but as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, unmatched for his extraordinary structural and stylistic resourcefulness, for the range and depth of his characterization and social notation…” and while this may be true for his other, longer works, his characterization in A Rose for Emily seems to be shallow at best. His chosen point of view offers no valuable insights into the life of Emily, nor her physical or emotional struggles. He puts himself in a tough spot from the start by choosing this ill-advised point of view for this story.
The disadvantaged point of view is compounded by the lack of flair used in telling the story.
Throughout the tale, the author seems rather indifferent to the goings-on. He keeps the same, flat tone throughout. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe that I saw a single exclamation mark in the entire story, just periods and the occasional question mark. His apparent apathy towards the story allows for the reader to experience the plot with the same degree of apathy. There is nothing structurally or mechanically wrong with the style, only that it presents the facts in a cold, unfeeling light. The heart, which he professes to speak about, is not cold nor unfeeling. His style and tone in this case contradict his words in Nobel Prize Acceptance
Speech.
William Faulkner does not totally break away from his aforementioned resolution; he only seems to make two stylistic decisions that hinder his ability to do so. He placed himself in a position that basically predetermined the outcome of this writing. A Rose for Emily lacks the sizzling, passionate energy contained in Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. When Faulkner declares, “I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help a man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and glory of his past,” it moves something in the reader on a level that A Rose for Emily simply can’t. These two text concur with what Graham Priest noted about an argument, “the arguments that end in contradiction, proceed by perfectly legitimate reasoning.” Faulkner’s philosophy is sound, even admirable; it is the direction in which he took the story A Rose for Emily that makes it contradictory to his own ideal as stated in his other work.