William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

Today, William Faulkner is considered one of the literary giants of the 20th century. A glance at Faulkner’s work would explain why critics and readers initially resisted his fiction. He wrote narratives on edge of the new modernism and refused to work with the typical reader’s desire for a coherent, chronological story. His works consists of weaving various flashbacks into his storylines allowing him to expand his sentence structure and switch points of view. In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner sticks to his writing pattern by switching points of views, and successfully using flashbacks to strengthen his writing. He also includes alienation between Emily and society in this short story. Therefore, Falkner has written “A Rose for Emily” to be a …show more content…
However, instead of writing about the positive changes that occur within the town, Faulkner focuses on writing about the mental decay of Emily and the shift from town popularity to alienation. Although Emily has deep roots in the community, she is anything but a normal citizen. Having a father of not only wealth but also power, left Emily being overshowed. Her father was very dominating and barely allowed her to be involved with the town. Once her father died, Emily was alone but, she denied the death of her father for 3 days. It took her to have a mental breakdown for the town to even bury her father. At this time, Emily alienates herself from the town by having limited contact with the outside world for the remainder of her life. The townspeople begin to watch Emily as if she is for their entertainment, and sadly enjoy that she is alone because they believe she deserves …show more content…
Construction workers come to begin the side work, and Emily meets Homer Barron. As a result of her inability to cope with change, Homer begins to be the only thing Emily has to cling onto the past, even after his death. Honestly, the death of Homer could be considered an action of the townspeople by the manipulation on Emily’s mind. By the townspeople alienating her from society and by being critical and scrutinizing her existence, Emily is mentally unstable. It is possible that Emily might not have killed Homer if the town accepted her, or even if Homer didn’t break her heart by embarrassing her in the public eye. Emily began to feel as if she will never love for the rest of her life. As Homer is killed, Emily keeps him to love until she herself dies. Even with her death Emily is alone, even though upstairs was her “lover”. Faulkner writes this deep tragic story to show how death changes someone. He makes his writing stronger by using flashbacks to keep the reader on their toes. The beginning of “A Rose for Emily” is the funeral for Emily and the narrator explaining the respect the men had for her while the woman wanted to see her estate. Then Faulkner uses a flashback to describe the stench of Emily’s house. Then we go back to the funeral and Faulkner explains how the people felt really sorry for her loss of her father and him being the beginning reason why Emily will forever be alone. Faulkner uses this

Show More