The short story A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is about the death of Miss Emily Grierson was “A Mystery". This woman was so mysterious that everyone in the community had to come to her viewing. The community was divided in reasons for attending her funeral. The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant - a combined gardener and cook - had seen in at least ten years (Faulkner 115). Emily’s house was described as being a big squarish house that was slowly decaying. It reminded the town of the seventies and was said to be "an eyesore among eyesores”.
The voice of the town identifies Emily as a "tradition a duty, and a care". The men and women of the town acted differently to Miss Emily, a sort of hereditary obligation that triggers a memory. In 1894 Colonel Sartoris had remitted her taxes, but generations change within the story, the values also change. The values changed so much that the next generation, feeling no hereditary obligation attempts to collect these reportedly remitted taxes.
The encounter between the next generation with its more modern ideas, and the aged Miss Emily gives the first visual details of the inside of the house and a glimpse of her. Inside was a dusty, dank desolate realm dominated by the presence of the crayon portrait of her father. Miss Emily was described as a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare: perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough (116). In the confrontation between the generations when... [continues]
The voice of the town identifies Emily as a "tradition a duty, and a care". The men and women of the town acted differently to Miss Emily, a sort of hereditary obligation that triggers a memory. In 1894 Colonel Sartoris had remitted her taxes, but generations change within the story, the values also change. The values changed so much that the next generation, feeling no hereditary obligation attempts to collect these reportedly remitted taxes.
The encounter between the next generation with its more modern ideas, and the aged Miss Emily gives the first visual details of the inside of the house and a glimpse of her. Inside was a dusty, dank desolate realm dominated by the presence of the crayon portrait of her father. Miss Emily was described as a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare: perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough (116). In the confrontation between the generations when... [continues]
Cite This Essay
- APA
-
(2012, 05). A Rose for Emily Short Story Essay. StudyMode.com. Retrieved 05, 2012, from http://www.studymode.com/essays/A-Rose-For-Emily-Short-Story-991921.html
- MLA
-
"A Rose for Emily Short Story Essay" StudyMode.com. 05 2012. 05 2012 <http://www.studymode.com/essays/A-Rose-For-Emily-Short-Story-991921.html>.
- CHICAGO
-
"A Rose for Emily Short Story Essay." StudyMode.com. 05, 2012. Accessed 05, 2012. http://www.studymode.com/essays/A-Rose-For-Emily-Short-Story-991921.html.
