Response Essay: William Faulkners A Rose for Emily

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Stephanie Gallagher

Dr. McClanaghan

English 261-091

25 September 2011

Response Essay: A Rose for Emily

Miss Emily Grierson, a woman whose family was upper class, passed away. While alive, her interactions with the community were the source of much community conversation. These conversations, described in detail in William Faulkner’s, A Rose for Emily, provide the reader with an understanding of the past and present social interactions of the townspeople. The stories presented occur in a variety of locations and involve a variety of people. The vast variety of these settings and characters makes it impossible for A Rose for Emily to be told by a single individual.

The combination of the townspeople’s memories of their interactions with Miss Emily forms the story.

The degree of detail provided when events are described in this short story is astounding. Every event surrounding Miss Emily is painted so clearly that the reader feels like they were there. For example, the “four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars”, in an attempt to find the source of “the smell” that had developed since her father’s death gives the reader a visual description the men moving silently and cautiously around Miss Emily’s estate. It also gives a hint as to the important requirement for stealth in this situation: the town’s Board of Aldermen had no desire to offend Miss Emily, so rather than telling her that her property was the source of an unpleasant odor, they took it upon themselves to remove the smell. Only an individual present throughout this expedition would have been able to provide the degree of detail this event was presented with. Another example of the detailed nature of this story is the almost omniscient level of knowledge surrounding Miss Emily’s status with regards to paying taxes. The narrator knows this area of Miss Emily’s interaction with the town starting in 1894 when “Colonel Sartor is… remitted [Miss Emily’s] taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity,” and finishing with her death some fifty to seventy years later. The reasoning behind Colon Sartor’s actions, the different types of letters and requests sent by the town government, the unsuccessful attempt by the city officials to communicate the need for Miss Emily to pay taxes in person, and the repetitive, almost predictable, system of sending Miss Emily an annual tax form and receiving it a week later with no response shows an in depth, continued knowledge of the events surrounding this particular area of Miss Emily’s interactions. Only a government official or have someone who could access the government documents would have been able to provide the detail that was given.

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The events in “A Rose for Emily” are spread out over a large time period. There are some events that have as many as thirty years between them. The narrator describes the first event with as much detail and involvement as the last event. The townspeople notice different events around them depending on their personal experiences and where or what they are doing when the events occur: a neighbor of Miss Emily would have been more likely to notice that “the Negro man went in and our with the market basket, but the front door remained closed,” than an individual ...

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