“A Rose for Emily” is one of Faulkner’s most frequently anthologized short stories and is widely used in the American classroom. It’s true that the setting of the story is the American South. Yet, the theme of the story is universal, transcending the boundaries of time and space. Before you read the text, think about the following questions:
1) Who was Emily? How would you describe her character?
2) Why did Emily remain single all her life?
3) When do we know what happened to the man? What did happen to him?
“A Rose for Emily” recounts the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her odd relationships with her father, and her lover, the Yankee road worker Homer Barron. She is seen buying arsenic, which the townspeople believe she will use to commit suicide. After this, Homer Barron is not heard from again. Though she does not commit suicide, the townspeople of Jefferson continue to gossip about her and her eccentricities, citing her family’s history. She is heard from less and less, and rarely ever leaves her home. Unbeknownst to the townspeople until her death, hidden in her upstairs bed room is Homer’s corpse. By finding a single gray hair in the bed, the townspeople discover that Emily had been sleeping with the corpse.
Through textual analysis and learning, the students should
1) Get the theme of the text
2) Comprehend the social significance of the text
3) Acquire relevant rhetorical devices used in the text
The text can be roughly divided into five parts.
Part I (Paras. 1-14): The story begins with a recounting of when Miss Emily Grierson died, and how the whole town went to her funeral. Then the reader gets a explanation of why Miss Emily had been a “hereditary obligation upon the town.”
Part II (Paras. 15-28): The narrator now skips back in time thirty years, to two years after the death of Miss Emily's father and just a short time after the disappearance of her sweetheart.
Part III (Paras. 29-42): The narrator follows chronologically now, to the arrival of the construction company to pave the sidewalks. Homor Barron was the gregarious foreman, and the townspeople began to observe him in Miss Emily's company driving on Sundays. Then the narrator tells the story of when Miss Emily went to the druggist to request “some poison.”
Part IV (Paras. 43-53): The women of the town began to say that her riding around in the buggy with Homer Barron, with no intention of marriage, was a “disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people.” Years pass and Miss Emily “passed from generation to generation - dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.” The town did not even know she was sick before she died, since Tobe, her servant, did not talk to anyone.
Part V (Paras. 54-60): The two female cousins from Alabama arrived and held the funeral. The narrator describes how a group of townspeople waited until Miss Emily “was decently in the ground” before forcing open the door to a deserted room above the stairs. And there on the bed was the rotting body of Homer Barron in a nightshirt. On the pillow next to him, also coated in dust, was the indentation of a head, and a single strand of “iron-gray hair,” which the reader can assume belonged to Miss Emily.