Analysis of William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
Technique
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is narrated through the
flashback technique as the narrator highlights the close relationship between
the house and the character of its owner, namely Mrs. Emily Grierson.
Theme
The story deals with the effect of time on a person and whether a
person can defeat the effect of time or will be overcome by time change. In
other words, the story highlights the philosophical idea of who can achieve
victory over the other: man or time. Mrs. Emily becomes a symbol of the
decay of the times and of the American old South in general. Many critics
have focused on Emily's attempts to stop time by confusing past and present
and refusing to accept change. The writer describes the decay that the South
witnessed in the person of this woman who declines both physically and
spiritually. Mrs. Emily is symbolic of the American South's inability to move
forward along with the industrialized North after the Civil War.
Conflict
The story witnesses a conflict between the Old generation represented
by Emily's father and Colonel Sartoris, the mayor, and the New Generation
symbolized by the members of the council. The old generation dealt with
Emily in a tolerant manner and even ignored her mistakes. Colonel Sartoris
did not force her to pay taxes and claimed that Miss Emily's father had lent
money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred to
repay by not taking taxes from this aristocratic woman. When the bad smell
came out of the lady's house and many people were convinced that the smell
came because Mrs. Emily killed her lover with the arsenic she bought from
the pharmacy, Judge Stevens defended the woman and refused to do anything
about the bad smell. He even commented satirically: "will you accuse a lady
to her face of smelling bad?" The other members of the council wanted to
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visit the house and ask for an explanation for the smell or ask Mrs. Emily to
clean the house. Yet, when they go and are seen by the woman, they go out
quickly because they also feel afraid of her.
In addition to the effect of time on a person, Faulkner wants to
dramatize the conflict between the North and the South through the
relationship between Emily and Homer Barron. Emily’s father ruled her life
with an iron fist, turning away every suitor the young girl had; no one was
good enough for his daughter. Not surprisingly, the first thing Emily did after
her father’s death was to find a boyfriend, and a very unlikely one, a
Northern day laborer named Homer Barron. She went out driving with
Homer, and bought him extremely personal articles. Emily takes Homer as
her lover after her father dies although he is only a poor day laborer and she
is an aristocrat; she fights the customs of the society to marry him. However,
when she discovers that he is a homosexual, she buys arsenic from the
pharmacy and kills him. Homer’s role was simply that of a husband, filling a
vacancy at Emily’s side. However, when Emily learned Homer was gay, she
realized his presence would cause her to be pitied and laughed at; so, he had
to go. The strange thing is that all the townspeople seem to know the whole
story but nobody dares to break it open although the smell is clearly that of a
dead body.
Title
The title of the story is significant because all the suitors who proposed
to Emily before her father died carried roses with them but they were not
accepted. Now they go to her funeral carrying roses as well considering her a
fallen monument. The room where the dead body lay was also full of roses as
if Emily had prepared it for her wedding night, but it turned into a tomb for
the dead Homer.
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