Unwanted Change in William Faulkner's
William Falkner was born on September 25, 1897 in the town of New Albany, Mississippi. William was a high school dropout, but he had an infatuation with literature and one day dreamed of being a poet. He ended up turning into an accomplished fiction writer. Faulkner had a desire to make it into the military. Since the American military wouldn't take him because of his short stature, Faulkner added the "u" to his name when he joined the British Army. "He thought it sounded more British that way. Faulkner used pieces of his own life and family history in his fiction" (Akers 248). William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" depicts Emily's futile attempts to remain unchanged in a constantly mutable world. William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" shows Emily's struggle to conjoin the past and the present. The story is told by a narrator who is portrayed as an average citizen in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. The opening event is the death of character Miss Emily Grierson. Then the story flashes back through Emily's life starting with her father's death. The next event is the introduction of character Homer Barron, a Yankee. It goes on to show the evolution of the relationship with Homer and Emily. All of the towns
In it, they found Homer's corpse and one of Emily's strands of gray hair. The fact that the house stands alone on the street surrounded by industrialized buildings symbolizes Emily's refusal to change with the changing world. This short story also shows that life does go on even when society changes. By doing this, it proves that Emily can not face change like any normal person can. But, the story also shows that Emily can get through these tough times. In the end even Emily cannot withstand the pressures of time. Another example is the condition of her parlor. She started to give china-painting lessons to the young females of the town for six or seven years. "In a sense, Emily conquered time, but only briefly and by retreating into her rose-tinted world of the past, a world in which death was denied at the same time that it is shown to have existed" (Leone 71). Emily, however, has a difficult time coping with changes, especially the death of her father and of Homer. That is exactly how her relationship is with reality as well. ""The principle contrast in William Faulkner's short story 'A Rose for Emily' is between past time and present time: the past as represented in Emily herself, in Colonel Sartoris, in the old Negro servant, and in the Board of Alderman who accepted the Colonel's attitude toward Emily and rescinded her taxes; the present is depicted through the unnamed narrator and is represented in the new Board of Alderman, in Homer Barron (the representative of Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and through them toward the entire South) and in what is called 'the next generation with its more modern ideas'" (Leone 65). The fact that Faulkner uses the linking past to present technique really emphasizes readers on time and how desperate Emily is to live in the past. "She acted as though death did not exist, as though she could retain her unfaithful lover by poisoning him and holding his physical self prisoner in a world which had all the appearances of reality except the most necessary of all things - life" (Leone 72).
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Acceptance Essays
