In the story “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner uses the southern gothic style to explain the story. Southern Gothic Literature was used to describe death, decay, change, and sinister acts in a southern version. His form of literature was used mainly during and after the American Civil War. In the story “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner uses southern gothic literature to describe death, decay, and sinister acts. Firstly, the death of the “Old South” is occurring. The American Civil War has happened and many things have changed in the south. Buildings, people, and the way people think has changed. The buildings that once stood, now are in ruins. The people that lived their usual life’s can’t no more due to change around them. Their ways have also changed. The story takes place during the reconstruction era. The reconstruction of the south was used to rebuild what was destroyed during the American Civil War. As the south was …show more content…
Furthermore, the “Old South” is in a state of decay. Many fundamentals of the south are now being phased out and replaced with new ways of life. Slavery was widely used before the Civil War. It was what the south depended on and after the Civil War, the south found difficulty functioning without it. The outlook on Women being inferior to men changed. The class system that had separated everyone into Aristocrats and the poor had changed as well. In addition, new buildings were being constructed. Similarly, there is the decay of Emily’s house. The house Emily lived in was in a state of decay just like the south was. It had lost those who took care of it. Since then it was on an irreversible road of decay. Moreover, Emily herself was decaying. She was aging physically and emotionally. Her teachings were obsolete due to change within the south. Physically, her hair was turning grey and growing old. She wasn’t marriage material due to her age and was overlooked. This contributed to Emily not leaving her
Emily’s Mental Deterioration After getting over the initial shock of finding out that the mysterious woman that everyone was talking about was going to sleep each night with a decaying body next to her, it makes sense for the reader to question her mental state. If the reader took a closer look at the town’s description of her, they will realize that as time went on, Emily’s will power began to deteriorate. When she was young, she was the topic of everybody’s conversation, however, she did not let that bother her and walked down the streets with her head held high. Emily took over the old house after her father’s death and kept a few servants around to keep the house tidy, nonetheless, the outside of the house was not kept in the best of conditions.
Railroads in particular were the major industry that revolutionized the South economically during this time. Furthermore, modern advertising and merchandising began to appear in Southern society, and many Southerners became quickly addicted to shopping by mail, as Ayers notes in his book. Things looked promising for the ‘New South,’ given the almost non-existent state of the economy in the South immediately following the Civil War. However, there were those who were still bitter about the loss of their old way of life as a result of the Civil War. The Reconstruction Period also added salt to the wound, causing white Southerners to grow bitter and desire to seek power through government.
In the paragraphs of chapter 4 it’s all about right after the civil war and the effects placed on the south. The economic status of the south was poor. This was due to the fact during the war everything was burned and destroyed from Sherman’s march. This also was a great cause to death within the south and people lost everything they had during the civil war. The south had to be rebuilt from the bottom up and they had to learn a whole new way of living/thinking.
Imagine Being forced to work hard labor day and night for someone who treated you badly. How you you feel if you were forced into slavery and then laws changed to worse conditions? Four million African American Slaves may have gained their freedom, but the process of rebuilding brought the South significant challenges. Conflict continued between the North and the South as the whites resentment towards the South lead to violence. After the destruction of the Civil War, the United States an immense challenge of rebuilding.
After the Civil War ended and the Union claimed its victory, life was different in the South. The best way to describe it in one word would be ¨angry¨. All the South wanted to do was create a nation of their own, but it ended in disaster. Houses and barns were burned, farm animals were nowhere in sight, and no people to be seen in the city. But ultimately, everybody knew that in order for the country to be whole again and on good terms, there needed to be a reconstruction. A reconstruction was necessary not only to repair a broken country, but to create jobs for the 4 million freed slaves who now had no jobs.
In the short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “The Story of an Hour,” the authors use literary devices to create vibrant female characters. These literary devices include diction, imagery, language, and sentence structure. “The Story of an Hour,” written by Kate Chopin, opens with a woman, Louise Mallard, who has a heart disease, and her friends must gently break the news to her that her husband has passed away in a railroad accident. She mourns briefly, but then realizes that she can now live for herself, instead of just as someone’s wife. Shockingly, she walks downstairs after fleeing from her friends’ horrible news, and her husband walks in the door.
In Williams Faulkner 's ‘A Rose for Emily’, a local narrator provides a very personally nuanced and chronologically disjoined narrative. Through this lens Faulkner uses the imagery and symbols of the Grierson home, Emily as a monument, Homer’s body, in “A Rose for Emily” to convey the theme of change vs. decay, especially as it relates to the American South and its traditions. Although he describes particular individuals within Jefferson (Miss Emily, the older men and ladies, the town leaders), he seems to be using them as symbols for the larger issues that the South was facing at the turn of the twentieth century. This paper discusses how Faulkner uses imagery and metaphor to highlight on the necessity of adaptation in changing times. This
“A Rose for Emily” is a dark, suspenseful Gothic tale in which a young girl is put on a pedestal by a town who sees her as haughty and scornful. Miss Emily Grierson’s father controls her and her love life, pushing away all people until he dies and Emily is left alone. As her life goes on the townspeople watch her and judge Emily, almost turning her life into a spectacle to be talked about. At her death, a gruesome sight is unfolded when her lover of over forty years ago is found decomposed in her upstairs room. William Faulkner effectively builds epic suspense in “A Rose for Emily” by the unchronological order of the story, the treatment of Emily’s father towards her, and her family’s history of mental illness.
Because her family was prominent in the town of Jefferson, Emily Grierson was watched her entire life and wondered about by everyone. The townspeople had a lot to do with Emily’s changing mental condition because they constantly gossiped about everything that happened in her life. It generally
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner we see how he foreshadows that Emily is the murderer of Homer. Within the introduction we are told that William Faulkner was a Southern writer who loved to write comedy and tragedy. I would definitely consider “A Rose for Emily” one of his best tragedy that he has written as it contains suspense and foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is defined as a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story.
In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” the historical context is important to understand. In order to fully comprehend the short story there must be some sort of understanding about the time period in which the story took place. This short story took place in the 18th/19th century during and after the Civil War in the South. In “A Rose for Emily” the historical context shows the social, economic, and the cultural environment of the background. Miss Emily was born during the Civil War.
While Emily is alive the story tells the readers about how the world around Emily is changing and evolving but she refuses to keep up with the new ways. For example, in the story it talks about the town and receiving mail. The story says, “Emily refused to let them fasten metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox.” (#) The town can see what lengths Emily went through to remain isolated from the changing world. If Faulkner had put the story in Emily’s point of view it wouldn’t have the same
Miss Emily’s mission was to slow down or completely stop the death of the old south. Emily Grierson being the last hair of the Grierson Family chose to live in denial and delusion because she did not want to lose her subjectivity, meaning the idea she or the people had about her. Her house became her reflection ; she repressed her emotions, her hatred towards change had deepened her into a utopic world of delusion.
“A Rose for Emily” is a unique short story that keeps the reader guessing even though its first sentence already reveals the majority of the content. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is the epitome of a work that follows an unconventional plot structure and a non-linear timeline, but this method of organization is intentional, as it creates suspense throughout the story. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” follows an unusual plot structure, which creates an eccentric application of suspense to a short story. Throughout the story, there are no clear indications of standard plot structure in each section, such as intro, climax, and denouement. Instead, there are sections, which are not in chronological order, that describe a particular conflict or event, which in turn creates suspense, as each conflict builds upon each other to make the reader question the overall context and organization of the story.
The whole story is devoted to the description of the life of a woman who spends the bigger part of her time in the house. Generations changes however, Emily does not leave her house. However, the culmination of the story is Emily's death and horrible discovery which people make while entering her room. They see a corpse of Emily`s fiancé with the curl of grey hair near him. At the first glance the story seems rather strange and deprived of any sense.