Summary:
In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's skillful use of words and time allows insight into the life of Miss Emily without even hinting at the morbid finale. Faulkner's choice of narrator, his references to the Old South, and his unconventional plot leads his readers to places he wants them to be.
In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner purposes to surprise and shock his readers. His skillful use of words and time allows insight into the life of Miss Emily without even hinting at the morbid finale. Faulkner's choice of narrator, his references to the Old South, and his unconventional plot leads his readers to places he wants them to be; he gives them just enough to keep them in suspense. He uses subtle clues to foreshadow a ghastly outcome. References to smell, decay, and Miss Emily's corpse like appearance all guide his readers to the climatic end's ultimate irony
In choosing a simple town folk as his narrator Faulkner keeps intimacy at bay. These people in Emily's community saw her as the recluse on the hill, and would not be aware of everything occurring in her life. This would allow Faulkner his ending. Anyone closer to Emily, say Tobe, would know too much, and would thus cause the readers to know too much. Faulkner's anachronistic plot sets the reader up for the changes that occur and does not allow for a normal chain of events.
Depending on culture and background of a reader one may point out different purposes that William Faulkner might have had for writing his story. Some may say that this is a story of rebellion. Was Emily rebelling against her father's iron will by having a "sordid" love affair with a Yankee? Was Emily rebelling against a town that held her confined to social graces and obligations? Others could say that this is a story that hints at conflicts between North and South. Homer would represent the North, the Yankee of lower stature, while Emily would be the aristocracy of the South. Yet others may decide that the story speaks to those desperately trying to cling to the old South. Closer analysis of the work may give substantial evidence indicating that "A Rose for Emily" is a story about time and "fallen monuments."
Miss Emily was a great figure of her town, an aristocrat. All the townspeople looked at her as a role model for the community, as an "idol." Why then did Faulkner not title his work "A Rose for Miss Emily"" As time passed Emily's status wore away with "When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen..." she became Emily instead of Miss Emily, indicating a fall from grace, social grace.
Time seems to be the essence of the story, that little thing that many sections have in common. Emily sees herself as exempt; she was exempt from taxes, so she was exempt from time. Faulkner's changing descriptions of Emily, the next more degrading that the one before, show Emily's physical submission to time. Emily changes from a slender girl to a "tragic and serene" girl after her father's death into a "bloated" figure after Homer's "disappearance."
These descriptions show Faulkner's contrast between past and present. She may be against change, but even she can not combat the effects of aging, growing steadily older: "the next few years" her hair "grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning." At Emily's father's death we again see a clue from the present that foreshadows the grim future. The "town narrator" comments "We did not say she was crazy then," hinting perhaps that "we" do say she is crazy now or will say she is crazy.
Finally, we can say that "A Rose for Emily" is a story about time by simply looking at the historical depiction of men frozen in time "in their brushed Confederate uniforms." "Time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years," just as these men, Emily was not exempt from the effects of time. She attempted to stop time, to retreat into the past, taking Homer with her "in the only way that she could."
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