Plot Analysis of a Rose for Emily Essay Example
Phung Thi Thuy Dung
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Porfolio Entry: Plot development of a story or a movie you like
A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily is one of stories in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950). This story is about the life of Emily Grierson, a woman who presents for the last generation of traditional Southern America noble families. The tragic life and death of Miss Emily demonstrates how family’s autocracy and society’s prejudice could ruin a woman’s life who only longs for love, longs for having her own family.
As many others remarkable short-story, this Faulkner’s fiction appears with a subtle use of plot. The back and forth between past and present can confuse readers who is familiar with chronological arrangement. Nevertheless, this complicated arrangement has a significant impact on disclosing the grim surprise in the end of the story. A Rose for Emily is divided into five sections. Each section is in proportion to one noticeable event in the life of Emily. The narrator speaks in the “we” voice – the first-person plural perspective, represents the townspeople of Jefferson. The story is set in the South of American, in a period of time ranging from before to after the Civil War. Therefore, the conflict the story containing is the combination of conflicts inside Emily herself and the society’s conflict.
The story begins with the exposition: the announcement of the death of Miss Emily Grierson and how the entire town feels when 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… had seen in at least teen years…” The first sentence of the story reveals with reader the isolated life of Emily and the special position of Emily in the thought of Jefferson’s community. In the narrator’s eyes, she was a “fallen monument”, a pitiful remnant of the past.
To the next paragraph, the narrator
K49
Porfolio Entry: Plot development of a story or a movie you like
A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily is one of stories in The Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950). This story is about the life of Emily Grierson, a woman who presents for the last generation of traditional Southern America noble families. The tragic life and death of Miss Emily demonstrates how family’s autocracy and society’s prejudice could ruin a woman’s life who only longs for love, longs for having her own family.
As many others remarkable short-story, this Faulkner’s fiction appears with a subtle use of plot. The back and forth between past and present can confuse readers who is familiar with chronological arrangement. Nevertheless, this complicated arrangement has a significant impact on disclosing the grim surprise in the end of the story. A Rose for Emily is divided into five sections. Each section is in proportion to one noticeable event in the life of Emily. The narrator speaks in the “we” voice – the first-person plural perspective, represents the townspeople of Jefferson. The story is set in the South of American, in a period of time ranging from before to after the Civil War. Therefore, the conflict the story containing is the combination of conflicts inside Emily herself and the society’s conflict.
The story begins with the exposition: the announcement of the death of Miss Emily Grierson and how the entire town feels when 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… had seen in at least teen years…” The first sentence of the story reveals with reader the isolated life of Emily and the special position of Emily in the thought of Jefferson’s community. In the narrator’s eyes, she was a “fallen monument”, a pitiful remnant of the past.
To the next paragraph, the narrator