A Rose For Emily By William Faulkner: Literary Analysis

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a short story, often times described as a ghost story, or gothic tale. Akers states that “Faulkner often used parts of his own life and family history in his fiction” (Akers 248). His great grandfather ,who was a Colonel himself, served as the character Colonel Sartoris and the character Emily was not only based off of one of Faulkner’s cousins, but also himself. Faulkner was extremely eccentric while growing up and an outcast much like Emily in the story, the only difference perhaps is that Emily chose to be an outcast. Moreover an example of this would be how like the protagonist Emily, Faulkner was frowned upon in his own home town.The townspeople found Faulkner strange, and the townspeople in “A Rose
Faulkner uses imagery in the first few pages of the story to describe Emily’s home and it’s surrounding area by stating “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 eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 3). This quote shows the theme of decay through imagery used by Faulkner. The quote shows that along with the people in the town, the town itself is aging and decaying. The theme of death and decay is also depicted through imagery when Faulkner states “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue” (Faulkner 6). Skei stated that “her ‘solution’ is not a workable one; isolation and withdrawal may help her survive, but she is nevertheless among the living dead” (Skei) which depicts the theme of death. Emily is living, but if she is not associating with the outside world, she might as well be dead. Faulkner used the device of flashback when “the narrator begins the story by describing the scene of Emily’s funeral this description, however, is actually a flashback because the story ends with the narrator’s memory of the town’s discovery of the corpse in the Grierson home after Emily’s funeral” (Akers 254). Another example of
Laura Getty stated “On the contrary, the townspeople are extremely sensitive to Emily’s psychological state” (Getty) which shows Emily's town was very concerned for Emily, even though Emily had very little to do with the townspeople. A further example of how the reader knows that the townspeople care for Emily when the narrator states in the story “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care, a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 4). The townspeople felt bad for Emily in a sort of way. Her father being so protective over her and felt as though no one was good enough for his daughter. The townspeople got a strong feeling that Mr. Grierson believed that, because of the picture hanging in the foyer of their house. It was said by the narrator that “We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back flung front door” (Faulkner 9). Despite the fact that the townspeople felt that the Grierson’s thought they were too good did not hinder the fact that the town strongly cared for Emily. Laura Getty’s statement “The fact that certain people in town knew that Homer was in the upstairs room argues a similar recognition