I enjoyed reading both stories, surprisingly to me, but the one that stands out as my favorite is ‘A Rose for Emily’. This story really gave me a push in becoming interested in gothic literature. I enjoyed the plot design, and the narration. I also took the time to read the biography of Faulkner and realized that this was an exaggerated version of something that happened to him when he did not reply to the city’s mail and he had to leave town.
In the first parts of the story, I was slightly bored. Until the story had a flashback, all I could do was doze off and graze through the words. Gratefully, the story took a twist and brightened my mood toward it. After that point I was completely interested in what was going on and read it in a relatively short amount of time. Miss Emily perplexed me because I related to her. I am a wealthy person, considering where I live, and the fact that she was too kept me alert to her actions, or lack of actions I suppose. The lady acted as if all she wanted to do was wait until she died, except when she became involved with Homer Barron. Homer seemed to me to be the only thing she cared about, but the story doesn’t really let on to what may have been in her earlier life before the Civil War.
I found the story to have an excellent point of view, told by one of the town’s people. The details were all told in a sort of “outsider” viewpoint, making it hard to grasp what Emily was truly thinking. I don’t think we had to know what Emily thought though, I believed that that was the way she was portraying herself on purpose. Emily did not want attention from anyone. The narrator tries their hardest to piece together the plot and present Emily the best that they can, which is a very hard to write concept for an author; however, Faulkner did it brilliantly. The narrator made it seem as if the town’s people had no idea what miss Emily was capable of until the final paragraphs.
The theme of the story is the classic story of “old against the new” and one of change in society. Emily was a pre-Civil War girl, lived through the entirety of the war, and experience the new Mississippi. She was not accustomed, nor wanted to become accustomed, to the new way of life in Jefferson. I believe that before the war she was a happy young girl or lady, and during the war someone she loved died. Then she became bitter and numb to society and that is where the story picks up.
The setting is a greatly important detail because of the South’s views on life before and after the war and how they changed so drastically. If the story would have taken place in the early stages of the United States, or while the American Revolution was going on, Emily would have no valid reason to act the way she did because the people she was fighting against would not live in the same country with her after the war.
snapef13 