Inability To Accept Change In William Faulkner’s A Rose For Emily

First-person narrative is used in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily to highlight Emily Grierson, a recluse who has piqued the community’s interest and rules the discourse and activity of the city. The author employs a variety of literary devices to assist convey the tale.

The reader is immediately made aware of Miss Emily Grierson’s passing in the first phrase of the narrative. Many of the subsequent events, which are influenced by the reader’s awareness of her passing, depict her early years. By doing this, Faulkner avoids using a straightforward technique to tell the narrative and instead manipulates time to spread it over many decades, turning it into a tale of growth.

The ostensibly biased narrator lives in the same town as Emily, making them one of the local gossips. This is what Faulkner is able to convey by using terms like “we” and “our” repeatedly. By doing this, Faulkner is able to create a character that is similar to Emily Grierson without using any words. The narrator may convey their ideas and viewpoints as well as those of the residents of the town by employing these terms. This abruptly changes at the conclusion of the fifth section when the narrator refers to “the violent breaking down of the door” by referring to the villagers as “them.” This effort at disconnection suggests that the narrator may not support the actions of the residents of the town. This little distinction is quickly changed back to “we,” but it is used as a model to demonstrate that the narrator showed Emily Grierson some kind of concern.

Character development is essential to the story’s development. Since Emily Grierson is viewed via the narrator’s eyes, all descriptions and information concerning Miss Grierson are skewed. Although there are several instances of symbolism in this tale, the rose is the one that stands out the most. In this, Emily Grierson is compared to a rose that has many thorns and is kept inside all day to wither away. The narrative demonstrates how Emily gradually begins to question her sanity. including killing her spouse and sleeping close to his corpse. Faulkner’s statement that “we realized that in the second pillow was the indentation of ahead” is proof of this.

Faulkner employs foreshadowing to suggest that Emily Grierson had been cohabitating with a deceased man in order to advance the plot and create a relationship with the reader. The first instance of foreshadowing is shown in section two of the narrative, when the home starts to smell terrible “shortly after her love, the one we assumed would marry her – had departed her.” When Emily purchases arsenic for an illogical purpose in section three, this prophecy of Homer’s demise is once more evident. This serves to create the hideous tone of the novel and provides the reader with important information into how the plot develops. The reader learns the real reason for Homer Barron’s departure in the last chapter of the novel, which is when the story’s true tone is revealed. Darkness dominates the scene up to this point, but the reader finds out that “the guy himself lay in bed” following “the breaking down [of] the door.” After this conclusion, the tone starts to get more sad. One of the story’s central themes is Miss Grierson’s resistance to change. Miss Grierson is trapped in the era when Colonel Sartoris is in authority, as seen by her reluctance to pay taxes. This is also shown by the fact that she declines to have a mailbox when postal service is initially introduced. Through doing so, Faulkner effectively conveys Miss Grierson’s decline. With the combination of all these components, William Faulkner is able to move the plot along in a way that isn’t strictly chronological but yet makes sense logically. Without these tactics, Faulkner would not have been able to effectively portray the total impact of this narrative. The effect that this creates on the reader is rather strong.