William Faulkner A Rose for Emily

Biography
William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner September 25, 1897 July 6, 1962) American writer from Oxford, Mississippi Nobel Prize Winner in 1949 "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel"

Widely considered the most important American novelist of his generation and arguably of the entire 20th century, according to Jay Watson in Mississippi History Now

Early Life, Education and Family

William Faulkner was born in Albany, Mississippi. He was the oldest of four brothers. Just before his fifth birthday, he and his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi.

His family, particularly his mother Maud, his maternal grandmother Lelia Butler, and Caroline Barr (the black woman who raised him from infancy) crucially influenced the development of Faulkners artistic imagination. Faulkner's lifelong education by Callie Barr is
central to his novels' preoccupations with the politics of sexuality and race He used to read a good deal, especially French and modern English poetry. He went to a public school where he at first excelled, but later on became indifferent to schoolwork and never graduated from high school. Faulkner also spent much of his boyhood listening to

stories told to him by his elders. These included war stories shared by the old men of Oxford and stories told by Mammy Callie of the Civil War, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Falkner family. Faulkner's grandfather would also tell him of the exploits of William's greatgrandfather. In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He attended the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford, and was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilonsocial fraternity. He enrolled at Ole Miss in 1919, and attended three semesters before dropping out in November 1920. William was able to attend classes at the university due to his father having a job there as a business manager. He skipped classes often and received a "D" grade in English. However, some of his poems were published in campus journals. At seventeen, Faulkner met Philip Stone, who would become an important early influence on his writing. Stone was then four years his senior and came from one of Oxford's older families. He was passionate about literature and had already earned bachelor's degrees from Yale and the University of Mississippi. Stone became a literary mentor to the young
Faulkner, introduced him to James Joyce. Unable to join the United States Army due to his height (he was 5' 5"), Faulkner enlisted in a reservist unit of the British Armed Forces (Royal Air Force in Canada) he was made a lieutenant. He worked at a variety of jobs including a stint as postmaster in Oxford, Mississippi In 1918, Faulkner himself made the change to his surname from the original "Falkner". However,

according to one story, a careless typesetter simply made an error. When the misprint appeared on the title page of his first book, Faulkner was asked whether he wanted a change. He supposedly replied, "Either way suits me. He was influenced by Sherwood Anderson to
attempt fiction writing and assisted in publishing some works. He also spent 6 months in Europe. 2

Due to some rejections by publishers, Faulkner was indifferent to his publishers and wrote The Sound and the Fury in a much more experimental style. In 1929 Faulkner married Estelle Oldham who had two children from a previous marriage. In 1930, his stories were published in some of the national magazines which brought him enough money to buy a house in Oxford for his family to live in, which he named "Rowan Oak. Because he had to sell stories to survive financially, his view of them was often derogatory and called short story writing boiling the pot a mildly derisive term he used to distinguish it from the

more painstaking (and artistically satisfying) work of writing novels. What Faulkner seemed to object to most about short story writing was the kind of short stories he had to write commercial, mass-consumption stories that would sell for high prices in such magazines as Saturday Evening Post (his favorite destination for his stories),Scribners, and Harpers.
He objected to the kind of short stories he had to writecommercial and mass-consumption stories. By 1932, Faulkner experienced financial problems. He had asked his agent, Ben Wasson to sell

the serialization rights for his newly completed novel, Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but no magazine accepted the offer. Then, MGM Studios offered Faulkner work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. While Faulkner was not a fan of film, he needed the money, and so he accepted the job offer and arrived in Culver City California in May 1932. Faulkner would
continue to find work as a screenwriter for years to come throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Faulkner is known to have had several extramarital affairs (among which were a secretary, a script girl, a writer, etc.). The quality and quantity of Faulkner's literary output were achieved despite a lifelong drinking problem. He suffered serious injuries in a horse-riding accident in 1959, and died from a myocardial infarction, in aged 64, on July 6, 1962 at Wright's Sanitorium. He is buried along with his family in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford.

Awards
In 1949 Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature (donated part of his Nobel money for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and to a local Oxford bank, establishing a scholarship fund to help educate African-American teachers) Faulkner won two Pulitzer Prizes in 1955 and 1963 (A Fable, The Reivers) U.S. National Book Award twice, for Collected Stories in 1951 and A Fable in 1955. Interesting fact: The United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honor on August 3, 1987 WORKS Novels The Sound and the Fury (1929) As I Lay Dying (1930) Sanctuary (1931) The Hamlet (1931) Light in August (1932) Absalom, Absalom! (1936) The Town (1940) Go Down Moses (1942) Intruder In the Dust (1948) Requiem For A Nun (1951) Short Stories Collections New Orleans Sketches (1925) These 13 (1931) Doctor Martino and Other Stories (1934) The Portable Faulkner (1946) Knights Gambit (1949) Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950) Big Woods: The Hunting Stories (1955) Three Famous Short Novels (1958) Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner (1961) The Wishing Tree (1964) A Faulkner Miscellany (1974) Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (1979)

Faulkner worked in a variety of media, he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. Faulkner wrote two volumes of poetry which were published in small printings, The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933) and Marionettes (one-act play1921) 3

Yoknapawapha County. Faulkner is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his life. William Faulkner once said in an interview: I discovered that my little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it It opened up a gold mine of people, as I created a cosmos of my own. The fictional cosmos Faulkner created is Yoknapatawpha County. It is in northern Mississippi where the county seat is Jefferson. Slowly, with the appearance of each novel and story, he filled in the history of the county. This is also the history of a society, the decisions it faces, the directions in which it is drawn and its effort to maintain its traditions and code of honor.

Literary Importance
Faulkner's style in his short stories is not the typical Faulknerian stream-of-conscious narration found in his major novels. Narrative techniques Faulkner uses are extended descriptions and details, actions in one scene that then recall a past or future scene and complex sentence structures. He was known for his experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence. Wrote often highly emotional, subtle, cerebral, complex, and sometimes Gothic or grotesque stories of a wide variety of characters including former slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, and Southern aristocrats. The themes important to Faulkner were time, loyalty, human condition and the ownership of both land and people. He was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. He would emphasize different plot parts (of Freytag structure) in different stories and he rejected the wellwrought story structure by this kind of experimentizing. Other themes The multi layered collapse of aristocratic whites (A Rose for Emily) The vanishing wilderness and the loss of its moral instruction (The Old People, Delta Autumn) Faulkners finest effort in short fiction, The Bear, a complex story that combines many of his central themes: the mythological ritual of hunting for a young white boy guided by an elderly man of color, the haunting moral legacy of slavery, the interactions of people across the social strata. Faulkner was unique, he had a developed native insight: the Southern memory, the Southern myth, the Southern reality. He saw the world in a new way. Yes sir. You can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story thats next to the poem, almost every word has got to be almost exactly right. In the novel you can be careless but in the short story you cant. I mean by that the good short stories like Chekhov wrote. Thats why I rate that second its because it demands a nearer absolute exactitude. You have less room to be slovenly and careless. Theres less room in it for trash. Faulkner always has a purpose in choosing which different stylistic technique to use at which point in his stories: The narrative devices mirror the psychological complexity of the short stories' characters and settings. William Faulkner proved adept at modernizing the Southwestern tradition. The local color movement of the 1870 90 period is largely composed of stories conforming to this tradition. The Southern Aristocracy

The aristocracy of Yoknapatawpha County is represented by Colonel John Sartoris and his family, the General Jason Compson family, Major de Spain, and the Griersons (several of them appearing as major or minor characters in many short stories). His intense concern is not simply peculiar to the South but involving all humanity. The violent and insane consequences of race and money in Faulkners South become in his fiction a history of the entire United States = a history of the fallen human race. The Fall in Faulkner is defined as the bartering away of humanitys identity as a natural species observing humility and courage, honor, pride, pity and love of justice and liberty in the harsh and prehistoric conditions of the hunt for town identities based artificially on race, money and respectability. Faulkners greatness is also evident in a tremendous variety of stories and situations, ranging from earthy comedy to deep tragedy. Faulkner's Short Stories (style and contributions) Irving Howe comments: Faulkner has shown himself master of a certain kind of narrative which lies somewhere between the short story and the novel in length and approach. Michael Millgate writes: in his most successful stories we find an intensity of effect, allied with a directness of style and firmness of thematic treatment, which puts them indisputably among his greatest achievements. Among his most famous works is the collection of short stories The Collected Storie. s The Collected Stories are divided into six sections: I. The Country (country round about Jefferson) II. The Village (village Jefferson) III. The Wilderness (Indians and their African American slaves) IV. The Wasteland (England and France during WW I; interested in aviation) V. The Middle Ground (stories set in the States) VI. Beyond (the supernatural or the mysterious) The individual works in Collected Stories address the same social and natural world that Faulkner portrayed in his novels, explore the same themes, and employ the same literary strategies and devices. Short stories provide more information about and explorations into the location and time period of such novels as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930). Faulkners short fiction fills in missing spaces in his imagined narrative of Yoknapatawpha County. It is not surprising that many of Faulkner s novels began as stories (The Sound and the Fury began as a story he called Twilight ) This is why no one knows how many short stories Faulkner wrotenot because there are undiscovered stories awaiting discovery but rather because it is difficult to determine exactly what constitutes a discrete, unique short story by William Faulkner. The Country Most famous story Barn Burning an example of a frequent theme in Faulkners stories, the rebellion against authority (also in Mountain Victory, An Odor of Verbena). Central recurring images: blood, fire, mansion (focus on social conflict & change; wealth, power) Long sentences full of present-tense subordinate clauses in the climax of the story. Written in the intense rhetorical style, characteristic of Faulkner's work. Patterns of conflict which echo throughout the volume: white vs. Negro, poor vs. rich, family vs. outsiders. Recurring themes: class struggle, change, coming of age, the need to escape, order vs. disorder Child Narrators Faulkner uses child narrators to describe and older adult characters who struggle against the forces of order and conformity (e.g. Uncle Willy, That Evening Sun, That Will Be Fine) Faulkner often depends on his adult readers to provide the correcting perspective to his narratives Isolation basic condition of modern existence 5

Faulkner s stories focus on the isolation of characters (e.g. That Evening Sun, Barn Burning, Red Leaves, A Justice, Wash, Mountain Victory, A Rose for Emily ) Powerlessness A cause of isolation (e.g. Mr Compson, the barber Hawkshaw) The Village Subject: pride personal, familial, social and racial that great sin and virtue of the American South and of mankind (e.g. A Rose for Emily); the experience of African Americans (e.g. Dry September, That Evening Sun - a new mode of realism that in its focus on small detailed scenes and use of dialogue may owe something to Hemingway) The tension between the tradition of the tall tale and the realistic (e.g. Death Drag, Mule in the Yard, Spotted Horses). Tall tales (with local-color humor) influenced Mark Twain and William Faulkner. In their insistence on honestly confronting the harsh realities of life and their affirmation of a narrative language that affirms the plain, honest, sometimes earthy speech of simple people, these works also opened paths that would be crucial to the development of realism. The issue of money is central to the Southern idea of justice. The Wilderness Four stories about the Native American settlements in the first half of 19th century Faulkner does not make the precise chronology clear, time in Faulkners world is fluid: names and situations repeat themselves from generation to generation. Stories concerned with ritual or legal decision: turning points in the life of the community Faulkners attitude to the social question of race is a matter of controversy (integration should be taken slowly and left to the Southern community). The Middle Ground Stories concerned with extremes of behaviour driven by the sense of personal or family honour The title refers to the middle ground between North and South, between classes, and between masculinity and femininity Beyond The title points to the beyond of the abnormal and the supernatural (e.g. Mistral, The Leg - the lost leg becomes the focus of a bizarre sexual obsession, one of the strangest and most powerful supernatural stories ever written, a kind of Freudian dream-narrative). An atmosphere quite different from anything in Faulkners American stories He wrote other stories that explore concerns decidedly less regional and more contemporary (Honor , Artist at Home are about adultery; Golden Land satirizes Hollywood) Some stories are concerned with war and life in Europe following the war. They are decidedly pessimistic, and despite the fact that Faulkners Nobel Prize Speech expressed confidence that man will not only endure, he will prevail, these stories express a more guarded attitude. Compson Appendix (The Sound and the Fury) extends the Compson story nearly fifteen years past the novels conclusion. Its famous and somewhat ambiguous conclusion, They endure, looks forward to the final statement of the Nobel Prize. Mississippi and the Appendix may be regarded as innovative, experimental examples of the short story form. These final stories in Faulkners Collected Stories testify to the extraordinary range and power of his imagination.

To conclude: Faulkners stories can be considered in three different ways. First, they are works to be read and studied on their own merits. Second, they are a crucial element of Faulkners work as a novelist. Faulkner tended to write his novels in discrete chunks of narrative. 6

Third, following the examples of James Joyce s Dubliners, Sherwood Anderson s Winesburg, Ohio , and Ernest Hemingway s In Our Time , Faulkner organized several of his collections of short fiction so as to create thematically coherent units These 13 and Doctor Martino and Other Stories

A Rose for Emily

Themes and Symbols
Rose
A classic symbol of love contributes to the irony of the title. Faulkner described the title as an allegorical title: the meaning was, here was a woman who has 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."

Themes
A Vision of America In the aftermath of slavery, the American South was in bad shape. The story deals with the stubborn refusal of a southerner to see the changes and to adapt. Because the dates are all jumbled together, we have to work to untangle the stories present vision of America from the vision of the past Isolation A story about the extremes of isolation physical and emotional (When she got to be 30... pg. 628 her front door remained closed ... pg. 631). Human beings become isolated by their families, by their community, by tradition, by law, by the past, and by their own actions and choices. Memory and the Past This short story spins backwards and forwards in time like memory, and shows a southern town torn between the present and the past. Resistance to Change Despite the family's fallen fortunes, Emily's father resists allowing any suitors to propose to Emily Emily's inability to realize her father's death and refusal to adapt to a changing world intensify her seclusion. Tradition vs. Change The struggle comes from trying to maintain tradition in the face of widespread, radical change (Emily vs. Homer). Jefferson is at a crossroads, embracing a modern, more commercial future while still perched on the edge of the past. Old South vs. New South the contrast is in details of the setting, the exterior of the house Death The death of the old social order will prevail, despite many townspeoples attempts to stay true to the old ways. Emily attempts to exert power over death by denying the fact of death itself. Her bizarre relationship to the dead bodies of the men she has lovedher necrophiliais revealed first when her father dies and when Homer dies, Emily refuses to acknowledge it once again Emily and Homers grotesque marriage reveals Emilys disturbing attempt to fuse life and death Minor Theme Money Not that Miss Emily would ... way of repaying (pg. 626)

Symbols
SYMBOLISM of the entire story represented in one sentence: pg. 628 Watching Emily is the subject of the intense, controlling gaze of the narrator and residents of Jefferson. 7

They attend her funeral under the guise of respect and honor, but they really want to satisfy their curiosity. No one knows the Emily that exists beyond what they can see, and her true self is visible to them only after she dies. Dust The dust throughout Emilys house is a fitting accompaniment to the faded lives within. It also suggest the cloud of obscurity that hides Emilys true nature and the secrets her house contains. Emilys House Emilys house, like Emily herself, is a monument, the only remaining emblem of a dying world of Southern aristocracy. Emilys house also represents alienation, mental illness, and death. It is a shrine to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room. The Strand of Hair The strand of hair is a reminder of love lost and the often perverse things people do in their pursuit of happiness. The narrator foreshadows the discovery of the long strand of hair on the pillow when he describes the physical transformation.

Characters
Emily Grierson - the stereotypical southern eccentric, she enforces her own sense of law and conduct- Emily is a mysterious figure who changes from a vibrant and hopeful young girl to a cloistered and secretive old woman. Physical description pg. 627. Devastated and alone after her fathers death, she is an object of pity for the townspeople. After a life of having potential suitors rejected by her father, she spends time after his death with a newcomer, Homer Barron. She poisons Homer and seals his corpse into an upstairs room. She was described as A fallen monument. Homer Barron - A foreman from the North. Homer is a large man with a dark complexion, a booming voice, and light-colored eyes. A gruff and demanding boss, he wins many admirers in Jefferson. He develops an interest in Emily and takes her for Sunday drives in a yellow-wheeled buggy. Townspeople view him as a poor, if not scandalous, choice for a mate. Judge Stevens - A mayor of Jefferson, 80 years old. Mr. Grierson - Emilys father. He is a controlling, looming presence even in death. Tobe - Emilys servant, referred to as the Negro. Colonel Sartoris - A former mayor of Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris absolves Emily of any tax burden after the death of her father. Old lady Wyatt is Emily's great-aunt , completely crazy, insanity runs in the family. The Cousins are from Alabama, relatives of old lady Wyatt and had been estranged from Emily's father since the time of old lady Wyatt's death; they are referred to as more Grierson than Emily Unique Stylistic Features of the Author.

Unique Stylistic Features of the Author

The suspenseful, jumbled chronology of events (flashbacks) The story begins in medias res. Faulkner uses a narrative technique that seamlessly ties one scene to another. He does this by having an object or action in one scene trigger another scene(pg. 627, II, taxes smell, verb: vanquished); He fractures, shifts and manipulates time. Only a few specific dates are mentioned (1894 taxes; she dies at the age of 74). A proposed chronology in a linear fashion would look like this:
Section IV: Miss Emily is born. Section II: She and her father ride around the town in an old, elegant carriage. Section II: Her father dies, and for 3 days she refuses to acknowledge his death. Section III: Homer Barron arrives in town and begins to court Miss Emily. Section IV: She buys a man's silver toilet set a mirror, brush, and comb and men's clothing. Section III: The town relegates her to disgrace and sends for her cousins. Section IV: The cousins arrive, and Homer leaves town. Section IV: Three days after the cousins leave, Homer returns. Section III: Miss Emily buys poison at the local drug store.

Section IV: Homer disappears. Section II: A horrible stench envelops Miss Emily's house. Section II: Four town aldermen secretly sprinkle lime on her lawn Section IV & V: Emily fell ill, died, a funeral. The shocking discovery.

Unique Point of View

By using the "we" narrator, Faulkner creates a sense of closeness between readers and his story. The narrator is sympathetic to Miss Emily, never condemning her actions and admires her aristocratic aloofness (he does not condemn Miss Emily for her obsession with Homer). After her father's death, the narrator's ambiguous feelings are evident: "At last [we] could pity Miss Emily. she became "humanized. He sometimes pities her or is proud of her, glad for her, makes judgments for and against her etc.By the story's end, the narrator, having grown old with her, presents her with a "rose" by sympathetically and compassionately telling her bizarre story. Who is this narrator, who seemingly speaks for the town but simultaneously draws back from it? The narrator is not young and is never identified as being either male or female. One theory is that the narrator is Emilys former servant, Tobe (the servant knows her secrets and refers to her as Miss Emily).The unnamed narrator serves as the towns collective voice, turning private ideas into commonly held beliefs. Examples of we pg. 628, 630,631,632 The narrator uses the pronoun they instead of we to refer to the townspeople. (pg. 631) this is a significant shift, until now the narrator was willingly grouped with the town, but now distances himself. The shift is quick and subtle, and he returns to we in the passages that follow.

Literary Techniques
Figures of Speech Faulkner uses long lists of descriptions (imagery). A description of an object is often followed by a description of a character (e.g. the house pg.626 and Miss Emily pg.627). Both are now dead she literally, the hous figuratively but even in their deaths they are described as physically similar ancient relics of a time long past (pg. 631, end of section IV). The story contains unimaginably dark images: a decaying mansion, a corpse, a murder, a mysterious servant who disappears, and, most horrible of all, necrophilia an erotic or sexual attraction to corpses. Descriptions Emily pg. 629, 630; furniture pg. 626, Homer pg. 628; Personification house...lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagonsand the gasoline pumps pg. 626; a quality ... too furious to die pg. 630 Hyperbole an eyesore among eyesores Metaphor she had gone to join... died pg. 626; she had been a tradition, duty respected pg. 626; a huge meadow ... past pg. 631; the long sleep that ... death, pg. 632 Similie bloated like a body ... pg.627; eyes looked like two small pieces... pg. 627; look like a girl pg. 628; like the carven torso pg. 631

Other Techniques
Elements of traditional Southern Aristocracy (e.g. calligraphy, pg. 626, vanquishing the aldermen pg. 627, the high and mighty Griersons pg.627, held themselves too high & of course a Grierson... pg.628, her dignity as the last pg. 629, requesting poison pg. 630; ) 9

Repetition- e.g. I have no taxes in Jefferson pg. 627; the word dust repeated (as a symbol) pg. 626, 631, 632 Tone is one of gloom, terror, and understated violence Irony (using her aristocratic position to cover up the murder and the necrophilia, she sentences herself to total isolation from the community, embracing the dead for comfort) & ironically, the title bears the symbol of a rose and in the end of the story Miss Emily (is) beneath a mass of bought flowers pg. 631 Dialect Southern accent, the word nigger, maam Foreshadowing Emilys refusing to admit that her father had died foreshadows Homers death and her continuation in living/sleeping with him pg.628. The image of the whip (Homer (...) reins and whip in a yellow glove pg. 630 her father (...) clutching a horsewhip pg. 628) links Homer to Emilys father, both men, in a way, kept her isolated, in the house and the fact that he died, anticipates Homers death too On the page 631, in the same sentence, a torso is mentioned and the fact that Miss Emily shut up the top floor of the house the room where the dead body would later be found. The word "cling" prepares us for her clinging to Homer's dead body (pg. 628 We remembered...) The rotting interior and exterior of the house - the rotten corpse

How the Story represents the Literary Period

Faulkner was the major figure of the Southern Renascence and treated many of the themes family, time, race, class, and maturation. The Southern Gothic style is one that employs the use of macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American South. Common themes in Southern Gothic literature include deeply flawed, disturbing or disorienting characters, decayed or derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to or coming from poverty, alienation, racism, crime, and violence Southern Gothic writers highlight an individuals struggle against an oppressive society that is undergoing rapid change. Although the story culminates in a revelation of horror, it does not exist simply for the sake of that horror. Regionalism Another outgrowth of Realism, Regionalism in literature is the tendency among certain authors to write about specific geographical areas. Regional writers like William Faulkner, present the distinct culture of an area, including its speech, customs, beliefs, and history. Local-color writing may be considered a type of Regionalism, but Regionalists, like the southern writers of the 1920s, usually go beyond mere presentation of cultural idiosyncrasies and attempt, instead, a sophisticated sociological or anthropological treatment of the culture of a region. Modern Age (1915-1946) An age of disillusionment and confusionthis period brought us perhaps our best writers. The authors during this period raised all the great questions of life (E.H.S.F) The story is an emblem of the corruption of Southern pride the pride of a lady and the pride of the men who helplessly uphold a corrupted code of male chivalry The story is a brilliant portrait of his regional culture and Faulkner is interested in using the South of his time as a model for all of Western history and values of the modern Western world Interesting Facts The Zombies "A Rose for Emily" is a short retelling of the story in song form. [2] The My Chemical Romance song To the End is based on the theme of A Rose for Emily. The progressive rock band The August Name based their name from a line in the story.

10