“A Rose for Emily”
William Faulkner
Part I
• The funeral and burial
• Point of view?
• Why do the towns people
seem to go to the funeral?
Profiling Emily Grierson
• “Monument”
• “A tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of
hereditary obligation upon the town”
• What about the taxes?
Part II
• What is the smell?
– How does the town solve it?
• Insanity runs in the family…
– Great Aunt “Old lady Wyatt”
• What’s odd about her reaction to her
father’s death?
Pg. 520
• “When her father died, it got about that
the house was all that was left to her;
and, in a way, people were glad. At last
they could pity Miss Emily. Being left
alone, and a pauper, she had become
humanized. Now she too would know
the old thrill and the old despair of a
penny more or less.”
Part III
• Homer Barron—Yankee
construction man (southern
reconstruction)
– Relationship with Emily
• How does the town react?
• Why does she buy the rat
poison?
Character Profile
• You must choose either Emily
Grierson or the town of Jefferson. If
you’re looking at the town of
Jefferson, you’re looking at the
narrator and the people that comment
on her.
Part IV
• Bad example keeping company with
Homer Baron?
• Baron’s disappearance
• China painting—an old tradition
• The death of Emily
Part V
• Emily’s funeral
• What do they discover???!!!
• Why the title “A Rose for
Emily”?
Isolation
•
•
•
•
Her upbringing vs. the new south
Relationship with father
Only seen in glimpses
Taxes
Living in the Past
• Refusal to give up her father’s body
• Teaching china painting
• Relied on a black man to do her work
• What might her death represent?
Modernity/Change
•Mailbox Numbers
•Sidewalks
•Did Emily make any attempt to
modernize her home?