Academic Year 2021-2022 ELA Department Quarter Four Study Guide Grade 12 Dedicated to Excellence Literature: “A Rose For Emily” By William Faulkner (1897-1962) Life of William Faulkner 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. William Faulkner is considered to be a distinguished pioneer author of the 20th century. William Faulkner receives the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Faulkner quits high school in the tenth grade, but still read widely and wrote poetry. Faulkner’s creativity was unleashed when he focused on on his home state of Mississippi and his family history. Some critics raved about him, others with the New York Times saw the South in his books was too often vicious, depraved, decadent, and corrupt. 6. Some readers and critics resisted Faulkner’s work because he wrote narratives on the edge of the new modernism and his novels weave numerous flashbacks into multiple story lines. 7. Two encouraging factors had helped the revival of Faulkner’s work: A.Malcolm Cowley published “The Portable Faulkner,” a collection of Faulkner’s stories and novels. B. After the Great Depression and World War II, more readers were ready to accept Faulkner’s work. Genre: Southern Gothic: A.The themes of love lost, death, and murder are present B. Elements that hint at the Gothic nature of the story: 1. Emily’s description 2. Emily’s house 3. The poison she bought 4. The ending Setting: Jefferson: A small town from the Southern USA. The house is big and beautiful, with old furniture. It’s like a palace. The house is on the main street. Now it’s run down. Characters: Miss Emily Grierson: A fat woman. She seems to have been a wealthy and smart woman, but now she and her house are “run down”. Colonel Sartoris: A mayor in 1894. He edicted that no Negro person should appear on the street without an apron. He remitted Emily’s taxes because Emily’s father had loaned money Page 1 of 6 Quarter Four Study Guide Grade 12 Academic Year 2021-2022 ELA Department to the town. Dedicated to Excellence Homer Barron: A foreman of the company which paved the sidewalks. He was a northern person. He used to date with Emily. Tobe (The Negro): “TO BE” is used by the author to predict a better future for black people. The mayor and aldermen. Title: “Roses” means something romantic. The story is titled “A Rose for Emily” because she wasn’t lucky in love. Brief Summary: Emily's father kept her from seeing suitors and controlled her social life, keeping her in isolation until his death. He died when Emily is 30 years old. Her struggle with loss and attachment is the impetus for the plot, driving her to kill Homer Barron, the man that is assumed to have married her. Plot Part I: The next generation in the town don’t agree with Colonel Sartoris’ idea and mailed Emily a tax notice. Then they wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff’s office. A week later, the mayor himself wrote her, offering to call or to send a car for her, and received in replay a note on a paper of an archaic shape, in a thin calligraphy, she no longer went out at all. They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. They were admitted by the old Negro. When she appeared, she didn’t asked them to sit. After listening to the spokesman, she said “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained to me” -“But there is nothing on the books to show that” –“See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson” (She didn’t recognize the authorities, which could be a strategy or the truth). Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years! The Negro appeared.-“Show these gentlemen out.” Part II: After her father’s death, she went out very little. After her sweet heart went away, people hardly saw her at all. There was a smell. Some neighbors complain with the Judge about it. People thought that she was crazy. (When her father died, she said: “He is not dead.”). Page 2 of 6 Quarter Four Study Guide Grade 12 Academic Year 2021-2022 ELA Department Dedicated to Excellence Part III: Homer Barron arrives in the South as a Yankee laborer to fix the sidewalks. Miss Emily and Homer are seen together throughout the town. They date each other for about one year. She was thirty years old. Emily bought some arsenic without stating the reason for its purpose. Part IV: A man’s toilet set is purchased with the initials HB engraved on it. The townspeople thought that Emily and Homer were married. At age forty she gave lessons in China-painting. Miss Emily died at age seventy-four. Part V: In an upstairs room, which hadn’t been opened for forty years, lied a man on a bed. On the bed there was a strand of gray hair (Emily’s hair). As soon as the first visitor arrive at house when Emily died, the Negro disappeared. We don’t know why, could be shy, he could know Emily’s secrets. When people tried to talk with him, his voice seemed to not be used to talking. Conflict -Miss Emily vs. her father -Miss Emily vs. herself -Miss Emily vs. Homer -Miss Emily vs. townspeople / cousins Point of View First point of view Plural (We, our) (Why?) Tone • • • • Conversational, gossipy. Mysterious Bizarre, strange Grotesque (You should find supporting evidence from the text itself) Figurative language Faulkner uses various forms of figurative language, ranging from metaphors and similes to symbolism and imagery, to help paint a picture for the reader. Figurative language plays a role in many other forms of literature, from helping to make a story or paper more entertaining or interesting, to even providing hidden messages to the reader. Page 3 of 6 Quarter Four Study Guide Grade 12 Academic Year 2021-2022 ELA Department Dedicated to Excellence Metaphor 1. To describe Miss Emily Grierson as a “fallen monument,” Faulkner portrays Emily to be someone important to the people in the town, someone with great value and a notable person. 2. To describe her place and role in the lives of those who surrounded her, Faulkner refers to the way the town viewed Miss Emily as someone important, “…a tradition.” The town also views her as a person they are are responsible for, “…a duty, and a care…,” due to how long Miss Emily lived in the town and her family’s help throughout the time. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care…” Personification ...only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting it’s stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps - an eyesore among eyesores. The Grierson home is "stubborn and coquettish"; the dust in the living room rises "sluggishly." (=lazy) • Imagery can be found when the narrator describes the Grierson’s house. “It was big, squarish frame that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome styles of the seventies, set on what had been our most select street.” To provide the reader with a description of what Emily’s house looked like, allowing the reader to make the interpretation that the house has not been taken care of for a while after her father’s passing, but was once one of the best houses in the town. • Imagery is used to help reveal the gray hair found on Emily’s pillow, helping the reader understand that Emily had been sleeping next to the corpse of Homer ever since he had gone missing. • Both imagery and symbolism can also be found towards the end of the story when the townspeople notice a strand of hair next to Homer’s corpse on the bed, “One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair,” this can symbolize Emily’s obsession with Homer and her version of “forever” and “commitment”. Page 4 of 6 Quarter Four Study Guide Grade 12 Academic Year 2021-2022 ELA Department Dedicated to Excellence • Faulkner used visual metaphors to give the reader an idea throughout the story of what the mental state of the protagonist was during some events that occurred in her life. The mental illness that Miss Emily has in "A Rose for Emily" could be schizophrenia. One of the visual metaphors used to give a better understanding of Emily’s life, is her weight. In stressful moments of Emily’s life, the author represents her as being very obese and growing old, this is shown to the reader when loneliness strikes Emily’s life. • Simile to describe her, “Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another …” She is described as a living death. • Faulkner successfully used Irony in his work to make it more interesting. 1. Situational irony is considered when Homer was found dead at the end of the story. This was shocking to the the reader, no one was expecting that to happen. No one believed that Emily killed her husband to keep him with her forever. And when Miss Emily buys rat poison, townspeople believe it is for her, but they didn’t realize it is for her husband. 2. Verbal irony takes place when Colonel Sartoris promises the Grierson family if they loan the town money, they won't have to pay taxes. The irony is obvious when Emily tells the new mayor to see Colonel Sartoris, who has been dead for ten years, about her taxes. Neither party means or believes what they are saying. • Foreshadow: Arsenic One instance of foreshadowing occurs when Emily Grierson buys arsenic from the pharmacist. According to the narrator, Emily is a haughty aristocrat who thinks she is better than most of the other townspeople. Emily uses her demeanor to bully the druggist into selling her poison. ''I want some poison,'' she demands, though she refuses to tell the druggist the purpose of her purchase. The law requires that the druggist know what the poison will be used for, so he eventually gives in and writes ''for rats'' on the box. Emily actually intends to use the arsenic to kill her suitor, Homer Barron. The box itself was emblazoned with an image of 'the skull and bones,' a common warning for containers of poison. This image foreshadows the story's final, horrible revelation: Homer has been reduced to bones and dust. Page 5 of 6 Quarter Four Study Guide Grade 12 Academic Year 2021-2022 ELA Department Dedicated to Excellence • Foreshadow: Letting Go Emily has trouble letting go of those she loves, even in death. The first instance of this propensity occurs when Emily's father dies: ''The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.'' This event foreshadows the story's final revelation where Emily again clings to the dead. Homer apparently decided to leave town without marrying Emily, so she poisons him and hides his corpse in a secret room in her house. Emily is so desperately lonely and isolated that she will go to any length to keep Homer from leaving her. She keeps Homer's body, just as she has attempted to keep her father's body after he dies. • Symbolism 1. Emily’s house represents the customs, belief and social situation. 2. Iron gray hair symbolizes the time that Miss Emily lived lonely and she suffered from mental problems as well as time took her beauty and youth to become an old fatty woman. 3. Rose symbolizes Emily’s life. A rose is born bright and beautiful but it dies brown and wilted. This is like Emily. She is happy with her father and her love but they leave her behind to wilt and die in despair. When Homer didn't love Emily as she hoped. She would not accept the fact that she would be living alone, and she had been so close to finding love, so thus, she decided to kill him and keep him forever. The place where she kept his dead body was in a bridal room showered with roses to represent what she desired yet never received. 4. Mailbox, Metal House Number, sidewalks: These symbolize the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. 5. Emily herself is a symbol of the Old South. The world is changing all around her, but she clings to her traditions and makes a living monument out of her home. Page 6 of 6
