Rose for Emily

1
Unit 11

• Rose for Emily

2
Introduction

• A Rose for Emily" was adapted for film by
  Chubbuck Cinema Company. Producer and director
  Lyndon Chubbuck screenwriter, H. Kaye Dyal.
  Santa Monica, CA Pyramid Film Video, 1983.
• Character List
• Grierson, Miss Emily
• Sartoris, Colonel
• Stevens, Judge
• Negro man
• Homer Baron

3

• One of the most frequently anthologized stories
  by Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" is the remarkable
  story of Emily Grierson, an aging spinster in
  Jefferson, whose death and funeral drew the
  attention of the entire town, "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."

4

• The unnamed narrator, which some critics have
  identified as "the town" or at least a
  representative voice from it, in a seemingly
  haphazard manner relates key moments in Emily's
  life, including the death of her father and a
  brief fling with a Yankee road paver, Homer
  Barron. Beyond the literal level of Emily's
  narrative, the story is sometimes regarded as
  symbolic of the changes in the South during the
  representative period.

5
About the Author 1

• William Faulkner (1897-1962), who came from an
  old southern family, grew up in Oxford,
  Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later
  the British, Royal Air Force during the First
  World War, studied for a while at the University
  of Mississippi, and temporarily worked for a New
  York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper.
  Except for some trips to Europe and Asia, and a
  few brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter,
  he worked on his novels and short stories on a
  farm in Oxford.

6

• In an attempt to create a saga of his own,
  Faulkner has invented a host of characters
  typical of the historical growth and subsequent
  decadence of the South. The human drama in
  Faulkner's novels is then built on the model of
  the actual, historical drama extending over
  almost a century and a half Each story and each
  novel contributes to the construction of a whole,
  which is the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County and
  its inhabitants. Their theme is the decay of the
  old South, as represented by the Sartoris and
  Compson families, and the emergence of ruthless
  and brash newcomers, the Snopeses. Theme and
  technique - the distortion of time through the
  use of the inner monologue are fused particularly
  successfully in The Sound and the Fury (1929),
  the downfall of the Compson family seen through
  the minds of several characters.  

7

• The novel Sanctuary (1931) is about the
  degeneration of Temple Drake, a young girl from a
  distinguished southern family. Its sequel,
  Requiem For A Nun (1951), written partly as a
  drama, centered on the courtroom trial of a Negro
  woman who had once been a party to Temple Drake's
  debauchery. In Light in August (1932), prejudice
  is shown to be most destructive when it is
  internalized, as in Joe Christmas, who believes,
  though there is no proof of it, that one of his
  parents was a Negro. The theme of racial
  prejudice is brought up again in Absalom,
  Absalom! (1936), in which a young man is rejected
  by his father and brother because of his mixed
  blood. Faulkner's most outspoken moral evaluation
  of the relationship and the problems between
  Negroes and whites is to be found in Intruder In
  the Dust (1948).

8
Question

• - the title
• Par 1
• Characters of the story
• Purpose of their visit
• - A fallen monument

9
Question

• Par 2
• What do the following phrases imply?
• - copulas, spires, balconies - august names
• - eyesore among eyesores
• - had gone to join the representatives

10
Question

• Par 3
• How was Emily considered to be in the town?
• Par 4
• - archaic shape, flowing calligraphy in faded
  ink, without comment

11
Question

• Par 5
• What did the town people do one day?
• What did they see in Emilys home?

12
Question

• Par 6 - 8
• How was Emily like?
• - appearance, voice, language, behavior,
• attitude, etc

13
Question

• Par 9
• - horse and foot
• Par 10
• - as if a man could keep a kitchen properly,
• How did the town people know her existence?

14
Question

• Par 11 12
• - alderman
• - to her face
• - cellar openings
• - an upright torso of an idol

15
Question

• Par 13 -14
• How did people feel for her? Why ?
• Was there any change in her after her fathers
  death?
• - know the old thrill and the old despair of a
  penny

16
Question

• Par 15 16
• How was she after her fathers death?
• Why did she break down?
• - angels in colored
• church windows

17
Question

• Par 18 -19
• - yankee
• - the buggy and a
• matched team of
• bays
• What was the relationship between the man and
  Emily?
• - noblesse oblige

18
Question

• Par 20 -21
• - behind their hands
• - rustling of craned silk and satin behind
  jalousies
• - that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her
  imperviousness

19
Question

• Par 22
• - a lighthouse keeper
• Par 23
• - a stained flag
• Par 24
• - skull and bones

20
Question

• Par 25 -26
• What did people say about them?
• Par 27
• - blood-kin under her roof
• - we were really glad
• - Homer Baron

HB
21
Question

• Par 28 30
• - to help circumvent the cousins
• - too virulent and too furious to die
• - it was still that vigorous iron-gray of an
  active man

22
Question

• Par 30 32
• Why was her front door always closed?
• - china-painting
• Par 33
• - from generation to generation- dear,
  inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
• - a niche

23
Question

• Par 34 -35
• - given up trying to get any information from the
  Negro.
• - a heavy walnut bed with a curtain
• Her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and
  moldy

24
Question

• Par 36 37
• - the crayon face of her father musing profoundly
• The past is not a diminishing road but, a huge
  meadow

25
Question

• Par 38
• - there was one room in that region above the
  stairs
• Par 39
• The main idea of the paragraph

26
Question

• Par 40 -41
• What could people see?
• What could we see through the authors
  description?