A Rose for Emily

What is the structure in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily?

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The best of Faulkner's fiction is characterized by the craftsmanship of its structure. The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying are both examples of daring experimentation with point of view and time in the novel. He wrote "A Rose for Emily" during the same period he worked on those novels. The story moves seamlessly back and forth in time through almost fifty years in its five sections. Each episode in the life of Emily and the history of Jefferson is obviously interconnected, yet the clues aren't given in chronological order. Thus, the final scene is powerful because the narrator does not tell the story in a straightforward, beginning-to-end fashion. This is why the story is even more entertaining and enlightening when read for the second time.

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