1.What is the meaning of the title “A Rose for Emily?”

Faulkner described the title “A Rose For Emily” as an allegorical title; this woman had undergone a great tragedy, and for this Faulkner pitied her. And as a salute, he handed her a rose. The word rose in the title has multiple meanings to it. The rose may be seen as Homer, interpreting the rose as a dried rose. Homer’s body could be the dried rose, such as one that is pressed between the pages of a book, kept in perfect condition as Emily did with Homer’s body. The “Rose” also represents secrecy. Roses have been portrayed in Greek legends as a gift of secrecy and of confidentiality, known as sub rose, introducing that the “Rose” is a symbol of silence between the narrator and Miss Emily, the narrator keeps Emily’s secrets until her death. But different readers may come up with different answers.

2.What kind of a woman is Miss Emily?

Born into an aristocratic family of the South, Miss Emily was proud, self-important and obstinate like the other Griersons. As a lady from such a family she enjoyed a high but obsolete social status. On the one hand she was placed on a pedestal for people to admire as if she were perfect. She was closely watched by the community and was always expected to bring honor to the town and set a good example for the young. She was viewed as a representative of the Southern tradition, “an idol in the niche”. Dominated by her father, she was robbed of all opportunities for a happy marriage and thus for a normal woman’s life. So when her father died, she was still single at the age of 30. After she began to court with Homer Barron, a Northern laborer, she was accused of being a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The patriarchal and social pressure warped her character. She tried hard to cling to the past, which meant privilege and glory to her. She cut herself off from the changing world and lived in complete self-isolation. Over the years, she was transformed from a subordinate young lady controlled by her domineering father to a middle-aged woman courting a laborer against the accusations of the community and then to a murderer who not only killed her lover but also kept the corpse in her house and even townspeople had mixed feelings—she was “dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse”. For better or worse, she is the embodiment of the social conditions at that time. Through telling this story and exploring the character of Miss Emily, Faulkner reveals his ambivalent relationship to the South, of which he felt proud and ashamed at the same time.

3.What is the story about?

The author intends to invite us readers to join him in finding the meaning of the story. Thematically, “A Rose for Emily” is a very rich and complicated text. We can see the plot of the story evolves around many conflicts—the conflict between Mr. Grierson and his daughter, the conflict between Miss Emily and Homer Barron, the conflict between Miss Emily and the community of the town, and the conflict between the past and the present. The readers’ different focus on these conflicts may lead to different conclusions about the meaning of the story. In other words, there may be different interpretations. On one level, for instance, the story may be read as a murder story in which the disappointed bride-to-be killed the bridegroom. But we know this would not be the great writer’s sole purpose of writing this story. On a symbolic level, the conflict between Emily and Homer Barron may be viewed as a clash between the South and the North, represented by Miss Emily and Homer Barron respectively. However, with such an interpretation one runs the risk of oversimplifying the thematic richness of the work. On a psychological level, the story explores the inner world of a human being, the main character’s conflict with the established codes of conduct and her conflict with her own heart. Still on another level, the story shows how the past and present clash and what a great impact the past has made on the present. It tells what it is like to live in the American South between the 1860s to the 1930s when the South had to digest the loss of the war and cope with its legacy in a changing society.

4.What techniques does the author use to tell the story?

The narrator, who is the voice of the town in general, uses anecdotes to tell the story of Miss Emily’s life as observed by the people around her. This technique is used to transcend time, from the time right before Miss Emily’s death to her youth to the time around her father’s death, etc. Because the narrator is the voice of the town, the story unfolds to the reader through the town’s eyes, and thus their assumptions are the readers’ own. Like the townspeople, the reader does not discover that the source of the smell is the sweetheart’s dead body until the very end of the story when the body is discovered.

Foreshadowing is also used to allude to the ending, in which the townspeople discover that Miss Emily has been living with the body of her dead sweetheart for many years. In Part II, the story about how the house began to smell takes place “a short time after her sweetheart - the one we believed would marry her - had deserted her.” In Part III, when she buys arsenic from the druggist, she will not confirm that the arsenic is for killing rats. There is no explanation provided right away, but later the reader can assume that it was used to poison Homer Barron, Miss Emily’s sweetheart.

5.Why does the author choose this collective narrator?

“We” are the ordinary people of the town, representing the gossip of the town. They are, most of the time, not participants but observers of the events. They are rather detached from Miss Emily and therefore different from the “ladies” or “older people” mentioned in paragraph 31 who are more socially involved with Miss Emily and thus tending to be more judgmental. The townspeople are mainly interested in keeping track of the events and sharing the information with people coming from outside the town. Yet, as people living in a small town in the South, they have their own values and attitudes. On the whole “we” should be regarded as a reliable narrator. However, “we” are unable to tell the story in a straightforward and systematic manner. As non-participants of the major events, this collective narrator does not know everything, and thus the narrative point of view is limited. For instance none of “us” have been inside Miss Emily’s house until her death. So inevitably there are gaps in the narration that are bound to cause confusion on the part of the reader or the listener of the story. That leaves a lot of room for reader participation. As readers, we have to fill in the gaps and piece the scattered bits of information together by ourselves. This is the burden the author places on us readers, and at the same time, it is part of the fun of reading such a story.

6.How is the narration shifted in time in Part II of the story?

In this part time is shifted back to thirty years before the visit of the deputation. Three things took place during this period of time. There was a bad smell coming from Miss Emily’s house. Two years before that her father died, and Emily behaved rather strangely by refusing to let the townspeople bury him. A short time after that she had a sweetheart, whom the townspeople believed deserted her.

7.How does the narrator’s role as the townspeople in general help set the reader up for the twist at the end?

Since the narrator is the voice of the town in general, it only knows what the townspeople know at the time of any given anecdote. This allows for foreshadowing through observations of the townspeople. It is used to allude to the ending, in which the townspeople discover that Miss Emily has been living with the body of Homer Barron for many years. In Part II, the story about how the house began to smell takes place “a short time after her sweetheart - the one we believed would marry her - had deserted her.” In Part III, when she buys arsenic from the druggist, she will not confirm that the arsenic is for killing rats. There is no explanation provided right away, but later the reader can assume that it was used to poison Homer Barron, Miss Emily’s sweetheart. The reader doesn’t find this out until the narrator, who is the townspeople in general, does.

8.The novel contains figures of speech. Identify one and explain the meanings behind.

Simile is used to imply a macabre tone. For example, in the first description the reader has of Miss Emily, when the aldermen visit her house to ask for her taxes, she is described as “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.” This comparison of Miss Emily to a drowned body suggests that she has been dead inside for a time now. The “motionless water” is the house around her, which remains frozen in a time past as the world outside changes. When the door is forced open to the deserted room in Part V, the narrator reports that “a thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room...” The diction choice of “tomb” hints to the reader what he or she is soon to discover: this room is, in fact, a tomb for Homer Barron.

9.Why do we need to know about Miss Emily’s hair changing colour?

Miss. Emily’s hair changed color in the six months she disappeared from life in town and cloistered herself inside of the house. This time frame also directly corresponds with the disappearance of Homer Barron, causing the reader, and the townspeople, to surmise she’d gone through a traumatic experience.

10.What does the sentence “But garages and cotton gins... an eyesore among eyesores” in paragraph 2 imply?

The street used to house only the best families. Then great changes took place: garages and cotton gins were established on the street and their existence wiped out the aristocratic traces in that neighborhood. While the whole street was becoming modern and commercial, only Miss Emily’s house remained the same. Although her house was decaying, it still assumed and air of a stubborn and frivolous girl. The cotton wagons and gasoline pumps were ugly enough, but this house, which was old, in decay, pretentious, and completely out of place, was more unpleasant to look at. Here the author personifies the buildings on the street, especially Miss Emily’s house by using words like “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay”. this detail shows that the house and its owner share the same character.

11.What messages are conveyed from the sentence “We had long thought of them as a tableau ... the two of them framed by the back-flung front door” in paragraph 25?

This sentence depicts a central image that tells several things about the relationship between father and daughter in the Grierson family. First, the positions of the father and daughter are meaningful. The father was standing in the foreground while Miss Emily was stand in the background. This shows the father’s dominant position and the daughter’s subordinate role. The father’s spraddling adds to his image as a stern patriarchal figure. Second, the father turned his back to her. This shows he refused to listen to her, denying her wished. Then Mr. Grierson was clutching a horsewhip, which is clearly a symbol of power, authority, and strict control. Miss Emily’s slender figure suggests vulnerability, and her white dress symbolizes purity, the most valued quality of the Southern white women. The fact that the two of them were framed by the back-flung front door may be interpreted in different ways. One interpretation is that the father was blocking the door, suggesting Miss Emily was unable to walk out of the house and choose her suitor freely. Another interpretation is that the door was open for suitors but the suitors were driven away by the father holding a horsewhip. Apparently the author intends to imply many meanings with this image. Also we should compare the image of Miss Emily in this picture with other images of her at different times, such as how she looked after her father died.

12.Is there any symbolic meaning of Miss Emily’s short hair in paragraph 29?

It is obvious that there is something else beneath the change of appearance. In her essay “Changing Portraits in A Rose for Emily” Janice A. Powell points out, “The images in this passage reveal a woman stripped of her sexuality. In this portrait, Emily assumes the semblance of a girl instead of a sexually mature woman of thirty. Her cut hair is especially important. Since ancient times, a woman’s hair has symbolized her sexuality. Emily’s hair, along with her sexuality, has been cut short through her father’s pride. The cut hair also introduces religious imagery, for an initiate into a nunnery shears her hair as a symbol of her chastity. In addition, the adjectives ‘tragic and serene’ envisage a Madonna, a holy virgin, as an addendum to the primary image of angels who, although often depicted as women, are asexual.” However, the symbolic meaning of Miss Emily’s short hair is rather ambiguous. It can also indicate that with her hair cut short, Emily was now a liberated woman. She was determined to change her role as an upper-class genteel lady. A short hair usually makes a woman look stronger and more independent in character. This quality of hers can be seen in her courting with Homer Barron, a Yankee foreman, despite traditional social prejudice.

13.If Miss Emily is a fallen monument, to what is she monument? Where else do related images occur?

Miss Emily is a monument to the way things used to be, to a world that no longer exist, and a world in which she has become an oddity. Miss. Emily’s home was a monument recalling times past. Homer’s dead body was a monument to love or perhaps to retribution.

14.In what ways is Emily affected by the shadows of the past?

Miss Emily isn’t just shaped by the culture of the past.... She is a living example of the past. Emily never moves forward. First, she conceded to her father’s plan to keep her home, chasing away the suitors, sabotaging plans for marriage. She dutifully remained at home, and after her father died she got a bit wild, which made her the talk of the town. Then came Homer. He courted her, used her, and prepared to dump her, but Emily wasn’t going to get dumped. So she killed him and kept it a secret, all while silently continuing to be a part of the town in the only way she knew how. Emily never prepared for the future. She learned the ways of a gentle woman, which didn’t even include keeping her own house. Her father was a big man in town, but even after his peers were no longer around, Emily couldn’t see the changes. For her, all would remain the same. The world changed, the town changed, and Miss Emily, she got older but stayed the same.

15.From what levels can you explain the theme of generation gap?

The theme of the gap between generations is clear in this story. Miss Emily is stuck in the time of Colonel Sartoris and his contemporaries. Her inability to adapt to change is demonstrated not only in her refusal to pay taxes after Colonel Sartoris remitted them, but by her refusal to have a mailbox when free postal delivery becomes available to the town. “Thus she passed from generation to generation - dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.”

16.From what angles can you see the theme of tradition and change?

Emily Grierson had been oppressed by her father for most of her life and hadn’t questioned it because that was her way of living. Likewise, the antiquated traditions of the south (often harmful, such as in the treatment of black people) had remained acceptable, as that was their way of living. Once her father had passed, Emily, in denial, refused to give his corpse up for burial—this shows her inability to functionally adapt to change. Miss Emily’s stubborn insistence that she “pays no taxes in Jefferson” and her mistaking the new mayor for Colonel Sartoris brings into question whether her acts of resistance are a conscious act of defiance or a result of a decayed mental stability. The reader is only shown Emily from an external perspective, we can not ascertain whether she acts in a rational manner or not. The death of Homer, if interpreted as having been a murder, can be seen in the context of the North-South clash. Homer, notably a northerner, is not one for the tradition of marriage. In the framework that his death was not an accident, but a murder on the part of Emily, Homer’s rejection of the marriage can be seen as the North’s rejection of Southern tradition. The South ends its relations with the North in retaliation. Emily continuing to sleep next to Homer’s body can be seen as the south holding on to an ideal that is no longer feasible.

17.In what ways is the theme of death shown?

Death hangs over A Rose for Emily, from the narrator’s mention of Emily’s death at the beginning of the story through the description of Emily’s death-haunted life to the foundering of tradition in the face of modern changes. In every case, death prevails over every attempt to master it. Emily, a fixture in the community, gives in to death slowly. The narrator compares her to a drowned woman, a bloated and pale figure left too long in the water. In the same description, he refers to her small, spare skeleton—she is practically dead on her feet. Emily stands as an emblem of the Old South, a grand lady whose respectability and charm rapidly decline through the years, much like the outdated sensibilities the Griersons represent. The death of the old social order will prevail, despite many townspeople’s attempts to stay true to the old ways.

Emily attempts to exert power over death by denying the fact of death itself. Her bizarre relationship to the dead bodies of the men she has loved—her necrophilia—is revealed first when her father dies. Unable to admit that he has died, Emily clings to the controlling paternal figure whose denial and control became the only—yet extreme—form of love she knew. She gives up his body only reluctantly. When Homer dies, Emily refuses to acknowledge it once again—although this time, she herself was responsible for bringing about the death. In killing Homer, she was able to keep him near her. However, Homer’s lifelessness rendered him permanently distant. Emily and Homer’s grotesque marriage reveals Emily’s disturbing attempt to fuse life and death. However, death ultimately triumphs.