A Rose for Emily” - Elida High School
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Transcript A Rose for Emily” - Elida High School
“A Rose for Emily”
William Faulkner
The Setting -- Jefferson
The county seat of the
imaginary
Yoknapatawpha County
(Faulkner often used
this setting in his works)
Jefferson resembles
William Faulkner's reallife home of Oxford,
Mississippi
Late 1800’s – early
1900’s
Fractured
Timeline/Nonlinear Structure
The story is told in five sections
Sections 1 and 5 are the present
Sections 2-4 are flashbacks to various points in
time
Is similar to gossiping . . . A chunk of info from
here, a chunk from there
The townspeople only discovered details of her
life in bits by watching her
We find out the details of her life in bits in
pieces like the characters do
Ghost Story
Faulkner calls “A Rose for Emily” a ghost
story
Faulkner’s stories often included these
characters:
The reclusive spinster
The black loyal worker
The southern gentleman
The intruder from the North
Why Emily Feels above the
Law
Colonel Sartoris remits her taxes
She didn’t have to give a reason for buying
the poison
No one approaches her about the smell in her
house
Foreshadowing
Not admitting her
father was
dead/keeping his body
for three days
Buying arsenic
The smell
The Rose
In general, roses often symbolize love and honor but
are also used in funerals
The rose in the title of the story could symbolize both
love and morbid tragedy
The “rose for Emily” could be Homer & the vision of
marriage she has with him (love)
The “rose for Emily” could be the tragedy of killing
him to keep him with her forever (“funeral”)
The Rose
In medieval times, the
white rose was a sign of
secrecy
The rose could be Miss
Emily’s secret
The rose that she
loved, kept, and
cherished
The Rose
In 1955, Faulkner said the rose was a tribute for
Emily
“[The title] was an allegorical title; the meaning was,
here was a woman who had had a tragedy, an
irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about
it, and I pitied her and this was a salute . . . to a
woman you would hand a rose” (Faulkner at Nagano
70-71).
http://ww2.faulkner.edu/admin/websites/cwarma
ck/William%20Faulkner%20speaks%20on.pdf
Miss Emily
Emily represented the “Old South” – how it was
slowly dying & making way for the newer,
industrialized South
Emily’s life, defined by death, is like the Old South –
she fades from real life although continuing to
physically exist
Faulkner refers to her as a “fallen monument” –
connected to the ways of the Old South
Modern townspeople don’t know what do with her, so
they just leave her alone
Miss Emily
Reluctant to change
Refuses to pay taxes
when the new aldermen
try to collect – “Talk to
Colonel Satoris”
Won’t let the town put
numbers on her house
for modern mail
Her bridal chamber is an
attempt to stop time
from going on and a
refusal to accept change
(Homer leaving)
Her House
Her run-down house in the
middle of a town that was
changing/growing is the last
sign of the Old South
Before the Civil War was
beautiful and fancy
Part of a rich, privileged
neighborhood
Now decaying and out of
place amidst the gas pumps
and cotton wagons
Also represents mental illness
and isolation
Her bridal suite, lack of
visitors and outside
connections