A Rose For Emily6

A detailed Summary of A Rose For Emily6

The Factors that Form the Character Emily Grierson

The characters in a work of literature are not only formed by their characteristics, but also by the story. There are many factors in a story which shape the characters. These may include the setting, mood, and theme. In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily", the conflict between past and present, chronological order and generations, her physical appearance and the grotesque mood affect the way the reader views Emily Grierson.

In the small town of Jefferson, somewhere in the south, lived a woman named Miss Emily. After her father died, the Colonel pardoned her taxes. This caused conflict as she got older since there was no written record of this information. During the two years after her father's death the only person that left the house was a Negro man that went to get her groceries and tended to the house. As time passed, Miss Emily's neighbors began to notice a foul smell coming from her house. The judge refused to do anything about it, so men of the town would deposit lime around her house late at night. The smell went away after a few weeks. The town felt sorry for Miss Emily since she was still single at the age of thirty. When the women of the town called Mi

There is a grotesque mood in the story that casts a black cloud over Miss Emily. Emily and her father supposedly had some sort of relationship that gave off an incestuous image (Magil 851). Before the death of her father, she must have had a sexual relationship with him. The way in which Emily preserved the ones she loved is extremely absurd. When her father died, she denied that her father was dead for three days (Faulkner 40). She had kept the body and refused to give it up until she was forced to by law (40). Emily was so afraid that she would lose Homer that she poisoned him and left him in her bed (46). When the people of the town found him they "...[looked] down at the profound and fleshless grin...what was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of a nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay..." (46). The fact that his body had totally disintegrated meant that he had been dead for a long time. On a pillow along side Homer's body the people of the town found a strand of Emily's hair (46). This indicates that Emily had been laying by his side. Emily's attachment to the ones she loved is extremely morbid.

She seems to have a scary appearance that is not pleasing to look at. The next time she is seen "...her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows-sort of tragic and serene" (Faulkner 40). She now has a demeanor that is more welcoming. The last time Miss Emily is described "...she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray" (Faulkner 44). Her hair was not an ordinary gray. It was "...pepper-and-salt iron-gray..." (Faulkner 44). The reader now pictures Miss Emily as being very old.

Another conflict of the story is the different views of the North and the South. Miss Emily is said to be "...postwar South" (Magil 850). She grew up in the generation that followed the war. Homer represents the north as a Yankee (West 149). On the other hand, "...Emily is a 'monument' of Southern gentility" (149). In this example, Faulkner is describing the relationship between the Southerner and his past, the Southerner of the present and the Yankee from the North (149). Each of these pairs has their own views and beliefs that cause conflict in the story. One of the main themes of the story is that the "...postbellum South learns to ignore the unsavory elements of its past..." (Magil 851). The past is ignored in the story, and unfortunately Emily is not a part of it.

ss Emily to offer condolences after her father's death, Miss Emily told them her father was not dead. She said this for three days until she gave in and buried him. During the summer after her father died, a construction company began to pave sidewalks. She became close with one of the workers names Homer Barron. Miss Emily went to the drug store for poison. The people of the town thought she was going to kill herself with it. At this time Miss Emily bought a man's toilet set in silver, a new outfit, and a nightshirt. Now the town knew they got married. When the

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Approximate Word count = 2072
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English