Comments on A Rose For Emily

A Rose For Emily, written by William Faulkner, is a short but thrilling story that describes the tragic life of a southern lady named Emily, who was daughter of a large plantation owner. Short as the story is, it is quite exciting and attractive thanks to the deft narrative strategy and the vivid character Emily. The narrative strategy will be analyzed first as follows.

First of all, the author tells the story from a very special point of view, the first person plural “we”. “we” in the story doesn’t stand for a specific group of people, but represents people of the town as a whole. Therefore, “we” knows everything that happened in the town, regardless of time and place. In the meantime, with “we” showing up all the time, the audience will feel that they are really engaged as if they were living in that town, and that they are among “we”, who witnessed all the events themselves. In conclusion, because of the smart use of “we”, the story is told wide-rangingly without boring the audience.

Second, the author controlled timeline of the story brilliantly. Chapter I is actually the end of the story, but it shows up at the very beginning. At the end of Chapter I, the author switches back to the earlier time when Miss Emily was still alive, giving the audience a picture of what Miss Emily looks like. Chapter II, not naturally following the last chapter, describes events that happened thirty years earlier and introduces an interesting new topic – the disgusting smell in Miss Emily’s yard. Chapter III follows Chapter II chronologically, depicting Miss Emily’s feelings and other people reactions when she found “the one”. Chapter IV continues the plot of Chapter III, describes how Miss Emily’s sweetheart disappeared and how she became a loner. In the last chapter the audience are brought back to the current time being, when the town folk found out the truth. By switching the timeline back and forth, the author keeps the audience in suspense and makes them eager to find out the answer, which works efficiently.

Third, the author makes smart specifying and generalizing. For a story that lasts more than thirty years, it’s impossible to write every detail down. Instead, the author chooses several events carefully, which are written in great detail so that the audience are able to learn what the characters look like. In the meantime, the author describes other incidents as generally as possible, yet manages to ensure that nothing important is left out. By specifying and generalizing, the author makes the story detailed as well as concrete.

This is all about narrative strategies. Next I will draw some analysis on why Miss Emily lived such a tragic life.

First of all and most importantly, Miss Emily tragedy is stemmed from her upbringing and environment. It can be learned from the story that Miss Emily’s father, who considers himself superior and aristocratic, drove away many pursuers of his daughter. He was the reason why she became so cold and unfriendly. In the meantime, people in Miss Emily’s town also played an important role in the tragedy. When Miss Emily finally found her true love, her countrymen didn’t encourage, regarding it as a degradation, and even summoned her kin to stop her. All these outside factors are critically decisive for Miss Emily’s tragic life.

However, to some degree, Miss Emily herself is also to blame, although not very much. Miss Emily was so drowned in her solicitude that she refused to get in touch and communicate with other people, which only reinforced her loneliness. Lessons for the children and death of her father, along with many other opportunities where she could meet and chat with people, were dumped by her like a piece of garbage. Considering her upbringing and education, her behavior might be reasonable. However autism did contributed to her tragedy.

With tide of time going on and on nonstop, old traditions and old people are doomed to be washed away. How can we avoid, or at least slow down the journey to our unchangeable destiny? I think the most important two weapons are “adaptation” and “communication”. Adaption means getting used to new environment, new information and new technologies in life. Communication means exchanging thoughts and ideas with other people, especially friends, in order not to be omitted when they march towards new dawn of life. Armed with these two weapons, we can be young and fresh into the end of time.

                                                                                                                                                       Apr. 21st, 2016