Writing Essays – The Monster from Faulkner’s Story, A Rose for Emily

To help you write essays on literature, here is a short review I have worked on on William Faulkner’s acclaimed short story, “A Rose for Emily.” (NOTE: You may want to read and study the short story online while following my reasoning, here, so create another tab in your browser, then go to Google Search and type “A rose for Emily” and be sure to type the quotes – you can use ALT-TAB to move between the story and this article):

As I’ve pointed out in other articles, every story, whether it’s a short story or a novel, should have some major change at the end. This change is the most important factor to consider when analyzing and then writing essays on any story, long or short.

What change is that? Why a new reverse view, of course, always!

I’ll show you how to use the following three-step new view parsing process in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” which you can then use in any short story:

# 1 – At the beginning of a short story, the main character gives a strong value statement, an ancient point of view, stating an evaluation, or describing some characteristic, goal, or desire.

When we begin this masterful short story, the above view appears directly to us: it is the first sentence:

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: men through a kind of respectful affection for a fallen monument, women primarily out of curiosity to see inside their home, which no one but an old servant, gardener, and cook combined had seen in at least ten years.

Please note that I have made bold respectful affection. That sounds like a pretty strong statement of value, doesn’t it?the whole city went to his funeral. “The question is, how will that strong positive value about Emily change at the end of the story?

# 2 – In the middle of a short story, the old view is supported or reduced with descriptions, conflicts, and conflict resolutions that make up the new view at the end.

Now, I’m not going to comment on everything in the story. But did you notice that each section of the story has something to do with the townspeople’s respect for Emily? Sometimes there was even affection along with respect.

DESCRIPTION: Several descriptions occur in this tale, but one stands out from the rest. In the first section, after the short introduction, the board of city councilors (city councilors) has come to your mansion to meet with Miss Emily to convince her to pay her taxes and … They rose when she entered: a small, fat woman dressed in black, with a thin gold chain that reached to her waist and faded at her belt, leaning on an ebony staff with a tarnished gold head. His skeleton was small and sober, swollen …

Note that Miss Emily is dressed in black, with a contrast fine gold chain that descends to her waist and fades on her belt. At the end of that chain, no doubt, there is a watch, which forms an eight of the chain with the hidden watch at the end, on his abdomen. His body is covered in black clothes and she is swollen, both on the face and abdomen, while his arms and legs are small and sober or thin, like the cane he carries.

We cannot grasp the meaning of this description until the new look at the final scene of the story, which I will comment on later, of course. Just keep this description in mind, okay? We will mention it again at the end of this discussion.

CONFLICT: In the second section, neighbors complain that bad smells from Emily’s house are polluting the neighborhood. But the town councilors Respectfully refuse to talk to Emily about it, refuse to accuse a lady to his face of smelling bad.

RESOLUTION: To avoid a conflict with Emily over the smell, the rulers Respectfully they took care of going out at night and sprinkled lime through the gardens and in the basement of Emily’s house to get rid of the smell. The smell disappears in two weeks.

CONFLICT: Also in the second section, Emily refused for three days to admit that her father had died and did not allow anyone to take his body away to prepare it for burial.

RESOLUTION: The townspeople show respectful pity for Emily not to break in and take the body to prepare it for funeral and burial. After three days, his respectful pity finally influences Emily, who literally broke emotionally and let them in.

CONFLICT: The third section ends in a conflict Emily has with the town apothecary. He asks the apothecary for some poison. But because the law requires him to record what the poison will be used for, the pharmacist keeps trying to get Emily to tell what she will do with the poison. Target Miss Emily just stared at him. No matter what the apothecary said, she would not answer the question.

RESOLUTION: The apothecary gave Emily the poison anyway, despite the law. He simply filled in the information himself, For rats, without any input from her. Surrendered to Emily out of respect by his social position, without a doubt, as we have seen so many times.

THE RESOLUTION OF CONFLICTS: Towards the end of the fourth section, there was a minor conflict and a resolution that passed quickly, with Emily winning another conflict due to the situation in the city. respectful affection for her: When the city got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to have the metal numbers put on top of the door and glued on a mailbox. She wouldn’t listen to them.

In every case of conflict in history, respectful affection for Emily and I respect because her social position is what resolves the conflict that the townspeople have with Emily’s behavior.

# 3. At the end of a short story, a new reverse view of the previous view is usually revealed.

In section five of the story, at Emily’s funeral, the townspeople wait Respectfully until Emily is buried before they enter (which can also be seen as a kind of conflict / resolution) in the upper room of her mansion, which has been closed for years, probably decades. The room is covered in very fine dust, and they find a decomposing skeleton on the bed, which obviously belongs to Homer, Emily’s boyfriend decades ago.

On the pillow right next to the skeleton is the surprise: they find a deep indentation where someone must have put their head repeatedly and somewhat recently, because they find there a long strand of iron gray hair on the notch: Emily’s hair, without a doubt, as Faulkner has described Emily’s hair as iron gray.

Here’s the new view: the respectful affection of the townspeople at the beginning of the story should turn around, must counter to a strong disgust after learning that Emily killed her lover and slept with her decomposing body for many years, even decades. It takes a kind of repulsive monster do something like that!

With that thought in mind, remember Emily’s description in the first section: a small fat woman dressed in black. While not a perfect match, that description is pretty close to that of a black widow spider. Remember figure eight – the fine gold chain – Does it end out of sight in a swollen abdomen? And the replacement or thin extremities, with the staff adding a fifth type of limb, which is more than half of the eight limbs of a spider? Remember the fat swollen body? So this view of Emily killing her lover is a lot like a black widow spider killing her male partner.

Why did the townspeople break into that locked room in the first place? They weren’t sure what was there, but they expected to find something important there, obviously. And that something provided a new upside-down view of respectful affection for Miss Emily, at least for the reader, if not for the townspeople as well.

Now these sample thesis statements can help you give you some ideas for writing a solid essay on William Faulkner’s superbly crafted short story, “A Rose for Emily”:

• Faulkner uses his tale,A rose for Emily to illustrate the theme that, “Human nature can be corrupted when an individual receives too many undeserved privileges and too much undeserved respectful affection.”
• In a surprise ending, William Faulkner’s tale, A rose for Emily it reveals how a society steeped in a tradition of respect for social position can be so tragically and ironically wrong.
• In A rose for Emily, Faulkner repeatedly uses conflict and resolution to hammer the respectful affection the townspeople have for Emily, until the end.
• Descriptive images about the mansion in A rose for Emily adds to the reveal about Miss Emily’s true character at the end, which has been hidden around the house for decades.
• In A rose for Emily, The Bachelor long lock of iron gray hair in the end it becomes a symbol suggesting that Emily killed her boyfriend, which clears up the incidents of the smell, the rat poison, and Homer’s disappearance, not to mention the reversal of the omnipresence of the townspeople. respectful affection for Emily.