Essay Writing – The Monster in Faulkner’s Story, A Rose for Emily

To help you write essays on literature, here’s a little analysis I’ve put together of William Faulkner’s highly acclaimed short story, “A Rose for Emily” (NOTE: you may want to read and study the short story online while following my reasoning, here, so create another tab in your browser, then go to Google Search and type “A rose for Emily” and be sure to type the quotes – you can use ALT-TAB to move between the story and this article):

As I’ve pointed out in other articles, every story, whether it’s a short story or a novel, has to have some major change at the end. This shift is the single most important factor to consider when analyzing and then writing essays on any story, long or short.

What is that change? Why, a new reverse view, of course, always!

I’ll show you how to use the following three-step review analysis process in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” which you can then use in any short story:

#1 – At the beginning of a short story, the main character gives a strong value statement, an old vision, that affirms an evaluation or describes some characteristic, goal, or desire.

As we begin this masterful short story, the previous view jumps out at you: It’s the first sentence:

When Miss Emily Grierson died, the whole town went to her funeral: the men through some sort of respectful affection by a fallen monument, the women mainly out of curiosity to see the interior of their house, which no one except an elderly servant, a combination of gardener and cook, had seen for at least ten years.

Please note that I have bolded respectful affection. That sounds like a pretty strong value statement, doesn’t it, especially since the “the whole city went to her funeral.” The question is, how will that strong positive value about Emily change at the end of the story?

#2 – In the middle of a short story, the old view is supported or undermined by descriptions, conflicts, and conflict resolutions that shape the new view at the end.

Now, I’m not going to comment on everything in the story. But did you realize that every section of the story has something to do with the townspeople’s respect for Emily? Sometimes there was even affection along with respect.

DESCRIPTION: Several descriptions occur in this tale, but one stands out from the rest. In the first section, after the brief introduction, the town councilors (city councilors) have come to her mansion to meet with Miss Emily to convince her to pay her taxes, and- They rose as she entered: a short, fat woman dressed in black, with a thin gold chain trailing to her waist and disappearing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold hilt. The skeleton of her was small and thin, swollen….

Note that Miss Emily is dressed in black, with a contrast fine gold chain that descends to her waist and disappears into her belt. At the end of that chain is undoubtedly a watch, which forms a figure eight on the chain with the watch hidden at the end, on her abdomen. His body is covered in black clothes and she is swollenboth her face and abdomen, while her arms and legs are small and spare or thin, like the cane he carries.

We cannot grasp the meaning of this description until revisited in the final scene of the story, which I will comment on then, of course. Just keep this description in mind, okay? We will mention it again at the end of this discussion.

CONFLICT: In the second section, the neighbors complain that the bad smells from Emily’s house are contaminating the neighborhood. But the town councilors Respectfully refusing to talk to Emily about it, refusing to accuse a lady to her face of stinking.

RESOLUTION: To avoid a conflict with Emily about the smell, the councilors Respectfully they took care of going out at night and sprinkled lime on the grounds and in the basement of Emily’s house to get rid of the smell. The smell disappears in two weeks.

CONFLICT: Also in the second section, Emily refused for three days to admit that her father was dead and that she would not let anyone in to take his body and prepare it for burial.

RESOLUTION: The show of the townspeople respectful pity Emily for not breaking in and taking the body to prepare it for funeral and burial. After three days, his respectful pity finally influences Emily, who literally broke emotionally and let them in.

CONFLICT: The third section ends in a conflict Emily has with the town pharmacist. She asks the pharmacist for some poison. But because the law requires her to record what the poison will be used for, the pharmacist keeps trying to get Emily to say what she will do with the poison. Aim Miss Emily stared at him.. No matter what the pharmacist said, she wouldn’t answer the question.

RESOLUTION: The pharmacist gave Emily the poison anyway, despite the law. He just filled in the information himself, for ratswithout any input from her. He surrendered to Emily out of respect due to his social position, without a doubt, as we have seen so many times.

THE RESOLUTION OF CONFLICTS: Towards the end of the fourth section, a minor conflict occurred and was quickly resolved and passed, with Emily winning another conflict due to the city. respectful affection for her: When the city got free postal delivery, only Miss Emily refused to let them put the metal numbers over her door and put a mailbox on it. She wouldn’t listen to them.

In every case of conflict in history, respectful affection for emily and I respect because her social position is what resolves the conflict that the townspeople have with Emily’s behavior.

#3. At the end of a short story, a new reverse vision of the old one is usually revealed.

In section five of the story, at Emily’s funeral, the townspeople await Respectfully until they bury Emily before they enter (which can also be seen as some kind of conflict/resolution) in the upper room of her mansion, which has been locked for years, probably decades. The room is covered in very fine dust, and there they find a decomposing skeleton on the bed, obviously belonging to Homer, Emily’s boyfriend of decades ago.

On the pillow right next to the skeleton is the surprise: they find a deep indentation where someone must have laid their head repeatedly and somewhat recently, because they find there a long lock of iron gray hair in the slit: Emily’s hair, no doubt, as Faulkner has described Emily’s hair as iron gray.

This is the new view: the respectful affection of the townspeople at the beginning of the story has to turn around, should counter to a fort disgust after learning that Emily killed her lover and slept with his decaying body for many years, even decades. It takes some kind of repellent monster to do something like that!

With that thought in mind, remember Emily’s description in the first section: a small fat woman in black. While not a perfect match, that description is pretty close to that of a black widow spider. Remember the figure eight – the fine gold chain – ending out of sight in the swollen abdomen? And the replacement fine gold extremities, with the shank adding a fifth species of limb, which is one more than half of a spider’s eight limbs? Remember the fat swollen body? So this vision of Emily killing her lover is a lot like a black widow spider killing her male partner.

Why did the townspeople break into that locked room in the first place? They weren’t sure what was there, but they hoped to find something important there, obviously. And that something provided a new reverse view of respectful affection for Miss Emily, at least for the reader, if not for the townspeople, too.

Now these sample thesis statements can help give you some ideas for writing a strong essay on William Faulkner’s excellently crafted short story, “A Rose for Emily:”

• Faulkner uses his tale,A rose for Emily, to illustrate the theme that ‘human nature can be corrupted when an individual is accorded too much unearned privilege and too much unearned respectful affection’.
• In a surprising ending, William Faulkner’s tale, A rose for Emily, reveals how a society steeped in a tradition of respect for status can be so tragically, so ironically wrong.
• In A rose for EmilyFaulkner repeatedly uses conflict and resolution to emphasize the respectful affection the townspeople have for Emily, to the end.
• Descriptive images about the mansion in A rose for Emily adds to the revelation about Miss Emily’s true character at the end, which the house has hidden for decades.
• In A rose for EmilyThe Bachelor long lock of iron gray hair in the end it becomes a symbol suggesting that Emily killed her boyfriend, which clears up the incidents of the smell, the rat poison, and Homer’s disappearance, not to mention the reversal of the ever-present townspeople. respectful affection for emily