A Rose for Emily 5

A detailed Summary of A Rose for Emily 5

Time and Setting in "A Rose for Emily"

In "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner uses the element of time to enhance details of the setting and vice versa. By avoiding the chronological order of events of Miss Emily's life, Faulkner first gives the reader a finished puzzle, and then allows the reader to examine this puzzle piece by piece, step by step. By doing so, he enhances the plot and presents two different perspectives of time held by the characters. The first perspective (the world of the present) views time as a "mechanical progression" in which

the past is a "diminishing road." The second perspective (the world of tradition and the past) views the past as "a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years." The first perspective is that of Homer and the modern generation. The second is that of the older members of the Board of Aldermen and of the confederate soldiers. Emily holds the second view as well, except that for her there is no bottleneck dividing her from the meadow of the past.

Faulkner begins the story with Miss Emily's funeral, where the men see her as a "fallen monument" and the women are anxious to see the inside of her house. He giv

Miss Emily's world was always in the past. When she is threatened with desertion and disgrace, she not only takes refuge in that world but also takes Homer with her in the only manner possible--death. As a final conclusion of Miss Emily's life and the story, her position in regard to the specific problem of time is suggested in the scene where the old soldiers appear at her funeral. "The very old me-some in their brushed Confederate uniforms-on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as is she had been a contemporary of their, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression." These men have lost their sense of time as well as Miss Emily. The hallucinate; they imagine things which never occurred; there is no sense of time in their minds. Faulkner presents a very horrifying picture in this story, and he does this by playing with the chronology, using symbols and foreshadowing and presenting a detailed setting.

Miss Emily is "a small, fat woman in black, with a gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt." "Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain." In this case, the watch is a symbol of time; yet in this house, time is invisible. Miss Emily has lost her understanding of time. When these men try to convince her that a lot of time has passed since her father's death and that she must pay her taxes, she repeats, "I have no taxes in Jefferson," and vanquishes them.

"And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows." Miss Emily dies in this decaying, old, creepy, house which is located in a bright and rising town. The final stage of decay in her house is revealed to the reader. Not only is she dead, but so is Homer Barron, of whom only a decaying corpse remains. "A thin acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal." The details of the setting throughout the story foreshadow this dramatic conclusion. The decay of the house, the dust and the cracks, Miss Emily's refusal for change all lead up to her death and that of Homer Barron. As soon as an outside force, Homer Bar

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Approximate Word count = 1473
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English