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A ROSE FOR EMILY

PRESENTED BY : KHAIRUL ANUAR BIN SAMSUDIN (2013479044)

NUR SYAKIRAH BT ISHAK (201366892)NURLISNAWATI BT MOHD HIJAZI (2013435824)

NAJWA BINTI NASRUDIN(2013677958)

AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND

WILLIAM FAULKNER• born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897

• His family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, just before he was five. Belonged to a once-wealthy family of former plantation owners.

• He was a high school dropout, but he nevertheless developed a passion for literature, originally planning to be a poet.

• Faulkner earned fame from a series of novels that explore the South’s historical legacy.

• Faulkner’s major works: The Sound and The Fury (1929) As I Lay Dying (1930) Light in August (1931)

• Faulkner’s writing was particularly interested in exploring the moral implications of history.

• Those stories he wrote serves as lens through which he could examine the practices, folkways, and attitudes that had divided and united the people of the South since the nation’s inception.

• “A Rose for Emily” was the first short story that Faulkner published in a major magazine.

• This story’s chilling portrait of aberrant psychology that draws reader into dark, dusty world of Emily Rose.

Why ROSE is being used as a title?

•Faulkner uses rose to symbolize love and secrecy.

•In the story, Homer is the “rose” or love for Emily.

•The rose also represents secrecy.

•The rose stands for Emily’s secret; that Homer is her “rose” that she loved and kept to herself even after his body was decaying

THEMES

DEATH

• The story begins in section one with the narrator’s recollections of Emily’s funeral. He reminisces that it is Emily’s father’s death that prompts Colonel Sartoris to remit her taxes ‘‘into perpetuity.’’

• This leads to the story of the aldermen attempting to collect taxes from Emily. The narrator’s description of Emily is that of a drowned woman: ‘‘She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.’’ One of the reasons the aldermen are bold enough to try to collect Emily’s taxes is that Colonel Sartoris has been dead for a decade. Of course, this doesn’t discourage Emily—she expects the men to discuss the matter with him anyway.

•When the narrator returns to the subject of the death of Emily’s father, he reveals that Emily at first denies that he is dead. She keeps his body for three days before she finally breaks down and allows her father to be buried. This scene foreshadows the grisly discovery at the end of the story. The narrator also mentions the madness and death of old lady Wyatt, Emily’s great-aunt. Finally, the discovery of a long strand of iron-gray hair lying on a pillow next to the moldy corpse entombed in Emily’s boudoir suggests that Emily is a necrophiliac (literally, ‘‘one who loves the dead’’).

Community vs. Isolation

• The odd relationship between the town of Jefferson and Emily is a recurrent theme in ‘‘A Rose for Emily.’’ At her funeral, the narrator notes that Emily has been ‘‘a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.’’ However, Emily has very little to do with the townspeople during her life. Her father prevents her from dating anyone because he doesn’t believe any of the men in Jefferson are good enough for her, and after his death, Emily continues to isolate herself from the rest of the community for the better part of her life. The only notable exceptions to her isolation are her Sunday rides with Homer Barron, her shopping trips for arsenic and men’s clothing, and the china-painting lessons she gives to the young women of the town for a few years. These exceptions only serve to show how alienated Emily is from the rest of Jefferson.

CHARACTERS

EMILY GRIERSON• Perverse woman, a tormented continuously by her father.

• After her father died, she said during three days “he is not dead”. This is the time when Miss Emily started the negation of the change in the world.

•Miss Emily was raised in heart of an aristocratic family. These story were told after the Civil War. The writer felt influence of the time and he reflect the pride, the negation to change, to the lost of established social differences in southern north America.

• Emily is the former aristocratic culture, who were conservative and closed to the economic, social and racial equality.

HOMER BARREN•A Yankee construction foreman who becomes Emily‘s first real love. His relationship with Emily is considered scandalous because he is a Northerner and because it does not appear as if they will ever be married.

•The lovers ignore the gossip of the town until Emily’s two female cousins from Alabama arrive. Homer leaves town for several days until the cousins go back to Alabama.

•Homer returns to Jefferson three days after Emily’s cousins leave, and he is seen entering her home. He is never seen (alive) again.

•However, what is presumably his corpse is discovered in a ghastly bridal suite on the top floor of the Grierson house after Emily’s funeral.

Tobe

• Tobe was the servant of Emily’s house. He was the only connection of Emily with the outside world, he goes to the market every day with the shopping cart, but he decides to keep her with the time stopped in a lie.

• Tobe is an important character. He covers Miss Emily’s murder and represent the people of the north, who were freed from slavery through the civil war.

• Tobe disappearances represent the culmination of slavery, and with Miss Emily the entire ideals of the aristocratic society died.

Old Lady Wyatt

• Old lady Wyatt is Emily Grierson’s great-aunt. The narrator makes reference to her as having gone ‘‘completely crazy at last,’’ suggesting perhaps that madness runs in the Grierson family. The narrator also mentions that Emily’s father had a falling out with their kin in Alabama over old lady Wyatt’s estate

Emily’s father• Although there is only a brief description of Emily’s father in section two of the story, he plays an important role in the development of her character. Certainly Emily learns her genteel ways from him. It is his influence that deprives her of a husband when she is young; the narrator says that the town pictured Emily and her father as a ‘‘tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the backflung front door.’’ Emily at first refuses to acknowledge his death. She doesn’t allow anyone to remove her father’s body; finally, after three days she breaks down and lets someone remove the cadaver. This foreshadows the town’s discovery of Homer Barron’s decomposed corpse on the top floor in Emily’s house after her death.

Colonel Sartoris

• Colonel Sartoris is the mayor of Jefferson when Emily’s father dies. He remits Emily’s taxes ‘‘intoperpetuity’’ because he knows that her father was unable to leave her with anything but the house. Sartoris, being a prototypical southern gentleman, invents a story involving a loan that Emily’s father had made to the town in order to spare Emily the embarrassment of accepting charity. The narrator contrasts this chivalrous act with another edict made by Sartoris stating that ‘‘no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron.’’ Colonel Sartoris appears in other works by Faulkner; he is a pivotal character in the history of Yoknapatawpha County.

Judge Stevens

• Judge Stevens is the mayor of Jefferson when the townspeople begin to complain of the awful odor coming from the Grierson house. Like Colonel Sartoris, he is from a generation that believes an honorable man does not publicly confront a woman with an embarrassing situation. He refuses to allow anyone to discuss the smell with her. Instead, four men sneak onto the Grierson property after midnight and sprinkle lime around the house to rid the town of the disgusting stench.

Druggist

• The druggist sells Emily arsenic while her two female cousins from Alabama are visiting her. Emily just stares at him when he tells her that the law requires her to tell him why she is buying it. He backs down without an answer and writes ‘‘for rats’’ on the box.

Emily’s cousins

• Emily’s cousins arrive after receiving a letter from the Baptist minister’s wife. Apparently, they visit to discourage Emily’s relationship with Homer Barron. Homer leaves while they are in town, and then returns after they have been gone for three days. The narrator, speaking for many in the town, hopes that Emily can rid herself of the cousins because they are ‘‘even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.”

Minister

•The Baptist minister, under pressure from the ladies of the town, goes to Emily (although she is Episcopal) to discuss her relationship with Homer Barron. He never tells anyone what happens, and he refuses to go back together. The following Sunday, Emily and Homer are seen riding through the town in the buggy again.

Minister’s wife

•The minister’s wife sends a letter to Emily’s relations in Alabama after her husband calls upon Emily. The letter prompts a visit from two of Emily’s female cousins.

PLOT

1) Initial Situation(Death and Taxes)

In this initial scene, the people of Emily Grierson’s town attending to her funeral and looking inside of her house. Then, it comes to this strange little story about taxes.

2) Rising action(Taxes aren't the only thing that stinks.)

There was a lot of bizarre stuff about Miss Emily: when her father died she refused to believe it for four days, the summer after her father died, she finally gets a boyfriend when she's in her thirties. She worried that her boyfriend might leave her, so she bought some poison and her boyfriend disappeared and there was a bad smell around her house. People complained about the smell and it takes everyone curiosity about her.

3) Conflict(Miss Emily herself)

She kept to herself and was not stable and did not marry. She seemed as though she was keeping a secret and people in her town wanted to dig deep to find out what that secret was.

4)Complication (The Town's Conscience)

This part is what complicates things for the town's conscience. The town was horrible to Miss Emily when she started dating Homer Barron. They wanted to hold her to the southern lady ideals her forbearers had mapped out for her. She was finally able to break free when her father died, but the town won't let her do it. When they can't stop her from dating Homer themselves, they sick the cousins on her.

4) Climax ("For Rats")

According to Faulkner, Homer probably was a bit of a rat, one which noble Miss Emily would have felt perfectly in the right to exterminate. Yet, she also wanted to hold tight to the dream that she might have a normal life, with love and a family. When she sees that everybody – the townspeople, the minister, her cousins, and even Homer himself – is bent on messing up her plans, she has an extreme reaction. The climax is encapsulated in the image of the skull and crossbones on the arsenic package and the warning, "For rats."

5) Suspense (Deadly Gossip)

• Emily buys the arsenic and at that moment the information is beamed into the brains of the townspeople. The town is in suspense over whether they are married, soon will be, or never will be. Their reactions range from murderous, to pitying, to downright interference. Homer Barron was last seen entering the residence of Miss Emily Grierson on the night in question.

6)Denouement (The Next 40 Years)

• In this part, a rough outline of Emily's life, beginning with her funeral, going back ten years to when the "newer generation" came to collect the taxes, and then back another thirty some odd years to the death of Emily's father, the subsequent affair with Homer, and the disappearance of Homer. The story winds down by filling on Miss Emily's goings on in the 40 years between Homer's disappearance and Emily's funeral. Other than the painting lessons, her life during that time is a mystery, because she stayed inside.

7) Conclusion (The Bed, the Rotting Corpse, and the Hair)

•Miss Emily passes away and the townspeople discover one room. They enter the bedroom that's been locked for 40 years, only to find the rotting corpse of Homer Barron.

Order Of Sequence

• A rose for Emily begins the story by describing the scene of Emily’s funeral; this description, however, is actually a flashback because the story ends with the narrator’s memory of the town’s discovery of the corpse in the Grierson home after Emily’s funeral. Throughout the story, the narrator flashes back and forth through various events in the life and times of Emily Grierson and the town of Jefferson. Each piece of the story told by the narrator prompts another piece of the story, regardless of chronology. For example, the narrator recalls Emily’s funeral, which leads him to remember when Colonel Sartoris relieved her of taxes. This of course leads to the story of the aldermen trying to collect Emily’s taxes after the death of the Colonel. The narrative thus works much in the same haphazard manner as human memory does.

POINT OF VIEW

It is the third person of view because the town’s people know all about Emily’s life, even though she was a very secretive person. If Miss Emily wrote the story, she would have given more detail and we would have been seeing her world around her in her own thoughts and we also would have received a much more bitter story and perhaps we would know the reasons why she did what she did, like for example, whether or not she killed Homer or if she slept by his body. Maybe she would be able to justify her actions so that we could understand them. By using third person we only get a judgmental view where we can only draw conclusions. If Tobe were to tell the story, the truth might actually come out. He might be able to tell readers what actually happened without any emotional connection. The twist is that Emily would have a very innocent and oblivious portrayal rather than the criticisms like the townspeople.

SETTING

PLACE

1) A creepy old house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 1861-1933 (approximately)

• "A Rose for Emily" is set in the county seat of Yoknapatawpha, Jefferson and as you know, focuses on Emily Grierson, the last living Grierson.

• The main situations were on miss Emily house and the writer focus in the valuable details inside the house

•The town is more than just the setting in the story, it takes on its own characterizations alongside Miss Emily Grierson.

TIME

•After American Civil War(1861-1865)•The town of Jefferson as a urban society moving into industrial period.•Before seventies, economic based on agriculture and slavery•After seventies economic based on industrial and abolition.

A Rough Timeline

•1893 – Miss Emily's father dies.

•1893 – Miss Emily falls ill.

•1894 – Miss Emily meets Homer Barron (in the summer).

•1895 – Homer is last seen entering Miss Emily's house

•1895 – The townspeople become concerned about the smell of the Grierson house and sprinkle lime around Emily's place.

•1895 – Miss Emily stays in for six months.

•1895-1898 – Miss Emily emerges and her hair gradually turns grey.

•1899 – Miss Emily stops opening her door.

•1911 – Miss Emily stops giving painting lessons. Over ten years pass before she has any contact with the town.

•1925 – They "newer generation" comes to ask about the taxes. This is the last contact she has with the town before her death.

•1935 – Miss Emily dies at 74 years old. Tobe leaves the house. Two days later the funeral is held at the Grierson house. At the funeral, the townspeople break down the door to the bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen in 40 years.

PHYSICAL

• It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighbourhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores.

They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted are still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse- a close, dank small. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather- covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray.

THE END . . .