When Miss Emily Grierson example essay topic

I. Implied author of the story"A Rose for Emily", a story of horror first published in 1930, is considered by many scholars one of the most authentic and the best narratives ever written by William Faulkner. It is a story of a woman, Emily Grierson, and her relationships with her father, the man she was in love with and the community of Jefferson, the town she lived in. While discussing any narrative text it is crucial to mention the implied author of a text. As Wayne C. Booth, the most famous follower of the Chicago School believed, it is possible and acceptable to "interpret and criticize the narrative worlds of literary works without stepping beyond the limits of the text and falling victim to a 'fallacy' ", without confusing the narrator with the implied author.

Even though the plot or characters may be clearly described in literary works, only by interpretation can their "intended nature" be determined and the concept of an implied author is the one to bring together both: description and interpretation. There are many variations of the concept of an implied author, however most of them usually come down to two suggestions: first, that the implied author is a nexus of values and norms in the textual world and second, that he selects and orders the elements of narrative texts. Thus, it may be said that through the mentioned selection (of, for example, the narrator, the title, the symbols or the language of events) and ordering the implied author passes on the information which the implied reader needs for the interpretation of the text. In this way, every literary text, as in this case "A Rose for Emily", becomes a form of communication between the writer and the reader. The aforementioned information may be passed in various ways, two of them being the structure of the narrative text and its title. The title of "A Rose for Emily" is ambiguous.

As there are no roses in the story, it may be safely assumed that the title is purely symbolic, however the meaning of this particular symbol remains unclear for readers. The word "rose" brings to mind a flower of a deep red colour, beautiful, but always surrounded by thorns. Red colour may symbolize love and passion, but it is also the colour of hate and revenge. Therefore, the rose may be the symbol of Emily's feelings, her passion towards Homer, her desperation, as well as the darker, though not less passionate, side of her personality which eventually lets the protagonist find a way to keep the love of her life forever by her side. It may be also the symbol of a true, reciprocated love which Emily never experienced, even though she probably dreamt about it for her entire life. The rose in the title is not the only symbol in the story, though.

There are others, which play equally important roles in the narrative, as their task is to let readers get to know the protagonist from the only possible point of view: the external one. This issue will be discussed in more details in the remaining chapters of this work; however it needs to be mentioned that throughout the entire story, readers never come to know Miss Emily Grierson's thoughts and feelings. They rather come to certain conclusions about her, thanks to the subtle clues which the implied author leaves for them to discover. Such a clue may be, for example, the crayon portrait of Emily's father, standing near the fireplace on the day of her funeral, as it stood thirty days earlier, symbolizing Miss Grierson's unwillingness to let go of the past, to leave the authority of her father behind, to forget about the only man who had such a great influence on her life and to be truly alive for once.

Another symbol providing readers with valid information about the protagonist is the Grierson's family home. In a very interesting way the reader is presented with an image of a house which immediately brings to mind its occupant, Miss Emily:" It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated [... ], 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 neighborhood; 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". (pp. 56-57) The house, which had once been magnificent and glorious, is now nothing more than a proud ruin, neglected, grim, depressing, standing in a place abandoned by all neighbours. Similarly, the lady of the house found herself in a position, in which no other citizen of Jefferson would like to be: alone, old, miserable and, as some of the townspeople thought, perhaps even insane. It may be safely concluded, that there is no item symbolizing Miss Grierson's fall from grace more efficiently that her family home. The aforementioned house and portrait of Emily's father belong to the elements which introduce the protagonist to the readers in a very proficient way.

On the one hand, the readers learn numerous personal details about Miss Emily's life. They are privileged to know Miss Emily in the same way as her neighbours knew her. On the other hand, they realize how limited this knowledge can be. The narrator of this story is not omniscient and does not allow the readers to know any of Miss Grierson's thoughts.

All the information they get come from the observer, solely from an external point of view. This peculiar narrative technique prevents the readers from getting all the facts about the protagonist and making judgement's about her. As Jonathan Culler, one of the most famous semioticians claimed, discussing different points of view and narrative techniques actually means discussing the relationship between the discourse of a text and the story it tells. In this way, the concept of 'fibula' (plot, action) makes the study of point of view possible and the concept of 'story' (a sequence of actions retold in various ways) gives sense to the study of 'fibula'.

Readers need to realize that action of a story exists independently of the way it is presented, as for there being a narrative, there must be action in the first place. The way of presenting the events in "A Rose for Emily" is not chronological. The story is divided into five chapters of similar length. In an interesting way chapters number one and five, dealing with the death of the protagonist, form a kind of a bracketing frame for the three middle, retrospective chapters. The function of such a frame is usually to introduce a story, make readers focus on the main character and encourage them to read the story with interest. However, it also should be taken into account that the role of such a frame can often be misleading, as it creates the impression that the story is actually real.

In relation to the bracketing chapters, the three remaining ones are told with respect to the narrative into which they are inserted (here: the retelling of Miss Emily's funeral). They become the called ' and form "a narrative that is temporally second, subordinate to the first". What is even more peculiar, the events within the chapters are not chronological either. In chapter one Emily's death, her youth and the incident with taxes are retold.

Similarly, for example in chapter two there is the incident with the smell, then the death of Emily's father and her unwillingness to admit that Mr Grierson is dead. In a narrative this kind of organization is supposed to serve some important purposes. On the one hand, the fact that the implied author reveals the protagonist's death at the very beginning of the story is to create special, mysterious atmosphere, which would encourage people to read the story. It may be anticipated that having read an introduction about someone's death, the readers will want to see for themselves what caused the death and why. The author thus expects that human curiosity will not allow people walk away from the story without finding out what actually happened. On the other hand the situation where the readers are not allowed to know all the details of particular proceedings at once, where they have to wait to read more about a certain issue, even if it is for example murder, they are not in the position to judge the protagonist's actions prematurely.

They cannot actually draw any conclusions for themselves about something until they know full details of the mentioned issue. It may be even concluded, that the readers are not allowed to come to their opinions until the implied author indicates that they can. This is an archetypal example of the implied author's influencing the implied reader's opinions, or what is more, even planting his or her own thoughts in the reader's mind. The question why the implied author of "A Rose for Emily" would like to influence the implied reader's opinion may be actually answered in several ways, depending on the interpretation of the text. On the one hand, by using the aforementioned technique of not allowing the readers to know all details about the protagonist at once, the implied author creates the impression that he does not wish for the readers to condemn Emily too hastily and inconsiderately. Perhaps he wants to pay the reader's attention to Miss Grierson's motives, to her upbringing and her father's influence on her future life.

On the other hand, if the readers of the story take into account the fact that the implied author is supposed to be the "nexus of values and norms in the textual world", they automatically need to assume that he, in fact, does disapprove of Miss Grierson's deeds and places an unreliable narrator in the story in order to direct the attention of the readers towards the irony of a particular situation. The irony is in this case relatively clear: a woman refuses to pay taxes to the town, does not want to bury her deceased father, eventually kills her suitor in order to be with him forever, yet the town still considers her as an eccentric, poor, hurt old lady. Finally, it should be added that it is probably every author's wish that his or her story is fully understood by its readers, not only in terms of language, but also in terms of the already mentioned symbols, allusions and clues. That is why, every narrative text has its own model reader, the one who meets all of the author's requirements. And although not much can be said about the model reader of "A Rose for Emily", as about any other model reader for the matter, they all share certain characteristic features. First of all, a model reader speaks the author's language and does not have any problems with discovering even the hidden meanings of particular words or expressions.

What is equally important, is that the model reader possesses the knowledge of the external reality, in which the story is rooted, and is aware of the values cherished in the described society. As far as Faulkner's "Emily" is concerned, the model reader knows that the story is set in post civil-war reality and realizes what changes occurred in the United States at that time. This knowledge, together with the awareness of the narrative techniques applied by the author, is usually sufficient for the accurate interpretation of the text. II. Narrator of the story One of the most famous German, Franz K. Stanzel, defined the fundamental nature of a narrative text in terms of the generic notion of "mediacy".

He claimed that every narrator is a mediator whose voice can be heard whenever a piece of information is conveyed or a piece of news is reported. Stanzel considered mediacy to be "the generic characteristic which distinguishes narration from other literary art". Furthermore, the scholar differentiated three main narrative situations: the first person narrative situation, in which the mediator is one of the characters within the story; the authorial narrative situation, where the narrator does not belong to the world of the other characters; and the figural narrative situation, in which we encounter a "reflector", that is a character who "thinks, feels and perceives, but does not speak to the reader like a narrator". The narrator in "A Rose for Emily" is clearly a dramatized, first person narrator, even though he does not refer to himself as "I" in the foreground of the story, but rather places himself among the citizens of Jefferson, thus becoming a witness, an observer and a story teller: "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral" (p. 56). This makes him a so-called first-person-plural narrator, who assumes a plural point of viewing the events.

According to Encyclopedia Wikipedia the first-person-plural point of view is a considerably rare occurrence, however can be used very effectively in narratives, as it may serve as a means to increase the reader's concentration on a particular character, in this case Emily Grierson. The narrator of "A Rose for Emily" remains a nameless, external character throughout the story and is unable to provide the readers with any knowledge of the characters thoughts. As it was mentioned while discussing the points of view in the story, the narrator always sees Emily from the outside of the house. Furthermore, he ponders on Miss Grierson's next moves along with other citizens and his views reflect the views of the members of the society. He reports only what all citizens know at a particular time, and additionally reveals those elements of Miss Emily's history, which he witnessed in the past. The narrator's retelling past events takes place in the second, third and fourth chapter of the story.

This is when he retells, respectively: the incident with the smell and the death of Emily's father thirty years ago, Emily's acquaintance with Homer Barron a short time before the smell, and Barron's disappearance followed by Emily's isolation between the acquaintance and the smell. As all five chapters are told in a past tense, it is evident that the whole text is characterized by the most common, subsequent, type of narration. That means that throughout the story the narrator retells the events which took place solely in the past, even though we do not know for sure what the exact temporal interval separating the moment of narration from the moment of the story is. The visible between the orderings of the story and the narrative has already been discussed in the chapter "Implied author of the story".

What should be added about the narrator of "A Rose for Emily" is the fact that by using such phrases as "we saw", "we said", "we believed", he indubitably gains credibility and lets himself be known as the spokesman for the community: "The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offered condolence and aid, as is our custom" (p. 59). The narrator's expression "as is our custom" visibly indicates that he does not hesitate to assume responsibility for expressing collective opinions in a very unrestrained way. However, as convincing as the narrator may seem, it should not be forgotten that he is still a first-person narrator, the credibility of whose point of view is for various reasons often highly compromised. The narrator who cannot be fully trusted is in narratology referred to as an unreliable narrator. Wayne C. Booth defines him as the one, who does not speak for, or acts "in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to say, the implied author's norms) ", although he is presented as a speaker, who is in favour of the norms of a book. Therefore, readers should always remember not to confuse a narrator with an implied author of a story, as their opinions may vary considerably, even though the differences between them may not be very obvious.

Faulkner's narrator also belongs to those showing traces of unreliability. For one, while reading the story the reader gets an impression that the narrator is as captivated by Miss Emily, her personality and heritage, as the rest of the society, which is indicated by his expressing such opinions, like: "She carried her head high enough - even when we believed she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson". (p. 60). In other parts of the story the narrator pities Emily and seems to believe that whatever she does wrong, must have been brought on by her upbringing and her father's conservative views. It cannot be denied that a narrator with such biased opinions, even when these opinions are shared by other citizens, cannot be considered very objective and reliable.

As it was mentioned while discussing the implied reader, the narrator does not even seem to condemn Emily for the murder she commits. He appears to believe that Miss Emily, as a representative of a higher social class, is entitled to her eccentricities, even if said eccentricities end up costing a man his life. The narrator justifies Emily throughout the entire story by expressing opinions like: "We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that". (p. 59). He is convinced that Miss Emily was a poor victim of her father's pride and sternness and therefore, does not blame her for doing whatever she could to keep Homer by her side. As the narrator does not actually find Emily guilty of her crime while the implied author should be the "nexus of values and norms in the textual world", the reader notices a remarkable conflict between these two identities.

The said conflict is an irrefutable proof of unreliable narrator's existence. Finally, while discussing any narrator of a story it is important to mention that every text has at least one person whom the narrator addresses, a narrate e. Both: a narrator and a narrate e are fictional creations within a story and cannot be confused neither with the author, nor with the reader of a text. A narrate e always knows the language of the author, has excellent memory and usually has no knowledge about the presented characters. The narrate e of "A Rose for Emily" is difficult to define. He or she is not given any name, nor described as one of the characters within the story, although some traces of their existence are clearly noticeable.

Even though the narrator of the story never uses such expressions as 'dear reader' or 'my friend', does not use questions or partial negations, he often tends to explain certain issues to his listener, describe others in great details, and even offer a few justifications. The purpose of vivid descriptions is to give the listener all the background he needs to fully understand the story and its characters. The examples of this device may be the aforementioned description of the Grierson's family home or the description of Miss Emily herself: "They rose when she entered - a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare [... ]. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.

Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand". (p. 57) In this case, the narrate e does not even need to try to imagine the character of Miss Emily Grierson, as the image itself appears very clearly in his mind. In a similar way, the narrator happens to explain certain occurrences to the narrate e, like he doesn't expect his listener to know all the details of, for example, the Griersons' family history and needs to supply him with some background information. The said explanations may be noticed in sentences like: "People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last" (p. 58), where the narrator finds it necessary to explain the family connection between Miss Emily and the old lady; or "That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart - the one we believed would marry her - had deserted her" (p. 58), where the narrator explains exactly which "sweetheart" he means. What may be safely assumed about the narrate e of "A Rose for Emily" is the fact that he or she is a person contemporary to the narrator. Nothing else may be stated for sure about their relationship.

Given that the narrator is rather thorough in his retelling the events from Miss Emily's life and presents them in a form of a local legend, it might be considered that the narrate e is a new inhabitant of Jefferson, eager to hear the rumours from the past told by a witness, by that time, most probably, an old man.. Fictional reality The story of Miss Emily is set in Jefferson, a small town in the south of the United States, after the Civil War. Faulkner's choice of this particular setting serves a special purpose in the story: it gives the readers clear idea about the background of the characters and the values they cherished. The readers learn that not so long time ago "no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron" (p. 57), however today times changed considerably and Jefferson became a more advanced, industrious town, with garages, cotton gins, wagons and gasoline pumps. The main character of the story is Miss Emily Grierson, whose various events from life are reported by the narrator. Miss Emily represents higher social class than most other citizens of Jefferson and her family was probably once highly regarded in the local society.

This may be easily noticed when the narrator calls Emily "a fallen monument" (p. 56) in the very first sentence of the story. Besides, the words "Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" also clearly indicate the almost aristocratic status of the Grierson family. They were the symbol of the town, a kind of a legend. It may be said that Miss Emily was actually denied normal, everyday participation in the life of Jefferson's community because of her symbolic status.

Even when Miss Grierson purchased the arsenic, the townspeople were convinced that she was going to kill herself after being deserted by Homer Barron, as for a person of her status it would be more typical to choose death before dishonour. People used to look up to the Griersons and follow the family history; however, their personal feelings towards them were nothing short of complicated. Some of the people who knew the Griersons, for example Emily's great-aunt Wyatt, thought that they "held themselves a little too high for what they really were" (p. 58). That is why when her father died leaving his daughter nothing aside from the house, people could not help being partly glad, because in a way she gained some ordinary, human qualities and could be pitied from now on. Even after the incident with her father's burial nobody thought to question her mental stability, Emily remained simply unhappy and "poor" in the eyes of the townspeople. In the course of the story the reader comes to know Emily not only through the means of the narrator's direct descriptions, but also the language she uses in her short conversations with the townsmen, and her actions or lack thereof.

The most characteristic feature of Miss Emily's language is that her short, confident sentences almost always deny the truth of a situation: " 'See Colonel Startoris. ' (Colonel Startoris had been dead almost ten years.) 'I have no taxes in Jefferson. ' " (p. 58). In this part of the story Emily first keeps insisting that she does not owe any money to the city, then she tries to diminish the authority of the one "who considers himself sheriff" (p. 58) and finally she thinks she is talking to a man who was dead for almost a decade. In this situation the reader comes to realize that she not only confuses the past with the present, but absolutely refuses to believe in the changes that occurred around her, and given the opportunity, she lets everyone who happens to contact her know about her feelings. Similarly, when Emily's father dies, she refuses to accept, or even believe the situation: "She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.

Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down and they buried her father quickly". (p. 59) Having faced loneliness, first because of her father's death, and later because Homer Barron "deserted her", Emily chooses to quietly withdraw from the society, even though she never was wholly separated from the environment in her youth. After the death of her father for a long time she is thought to be sick. When people stop seeing Barron in town, Miss Emily quits leaving her residence as well:" From that time on her door remained closed, save during a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. [... ] Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, una claimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows [...

]. Thus she passed from generation to generation [... ]". (p. 61) When the readers wonder about the motivations behind Emily's actions, their attention should be directed towards Miss Grierson's upbringing. The Griersons were proud and cherished their conservative values, they thought very highly of themselves and they never lowered themselves to the level of ordinary townspeople. Emily's father was a strict, dominating man, considered to claim that "none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily" (p. 59), so he apparently discouraged them in rather effective ways from courting her.

When he died Emily was over thirty years old and had very little, aside from the Grierson's family home, in her possession. Therefore, the townspeople were not really surprised by her fierce defiance of her father's death: "We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will". (p. 59) In a very similar way Emily clung to Homer Barron, the man she wanted as her husband. Upon learning that he did not intend to marry her, she decided to make sure that he would not leave her alone again and poisoned him. Even though there is a possibility that she did not do it out of vengeance, but rather the delusional conviction that by murdering her suitor, never again will he leave her side, the fact remains unchanged and unforgivable. Emily Grierson was raised to be very dependant on her father, as he was the one who, in times of her youth, was the only male figure in her life and possibly made all major decisions about her.

That, most probably, set an example she subconsciously wanted to follow in her future life. Trying desperately to keep Homer by her side, she turned to the only effective method she could think of, murder. Unable to let go of the past, Emily could not accept any changes in her life and disregarded them with pride and confidence. For some people her defiance was the reason why they admired her, for others the reason to pity "the fallen monument". Eventually, Miss Emily's unshakeable insistence to live her life solely on her own terms, led to tragic consequences. Tragic, not only for Homer Barron, but for Miss Grierson's psyche as well.

To sum up, it need to be concluded that "A Rose for Emily" belongs to those fascinating narrative works, which offer the readers detailed studies of characters without providing them with all the necessary information in a too easy way. It is the readers task to discover subtle relations within the story, to link together certain circumstances and to create one, vivid picture of a woman and the society she lives in. In this way, "A Rose for Emily" indisputably becomes an exquisite feast for the mind, without any doubt deserving to be considered the best of the short stories ever written by William Faulkner..