A Rose For Emily: Title

Frankly speaking, when I read the title for the first time, I thought that this story would tell us about a beautiful and amiable girl Emily and, maybe her beloved man and their love story. But when I read the whole story, all my hopes and predictions evaporated. The title of the story is very philosophic. Faulkner could very well have chosen to use "Miss Emily" in his title, but he did not. Since authors are very focused and selective in writing titles for their works, his choice wasn't careless or without purpose. Faulkner's diction in the title points the reader toward themes in the story. Faulkner described the title as “an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who has had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute just as if you were to make a gesture, a salute to anyone: to a woman you would hand a rose…”

A Rose For Emily: Setting

 The events in the analysed text happened in small town, named Jefferson in the old house of Miss Emily Grierson. The author pays a lot of attention to the details in the description of the hose: “"It was a big, squarish frame house that hadonce 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 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"\ "She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her grey head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight"\ "The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the mans toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks"\ "They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse a close, dank smell. 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 that 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. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emilys father".

To my mind such a description creates  special atmosphere and mood, which help to get around the feelings  and emotions of the main characters.

A Rose For Emily: Plot

We can not find the chronological order in this story, because it is consisted of 5 chapters which contain the author’s reminiscences and flashbacks. In Chapter I the narrator recalls the time of Emily Grierson’s death and how the entire town attended her funeral in her home, which no stranger had entered for more than ten years and gives a thorough description of it. He also tells that after her father’s death she was freed on taxes, because Colonel Sartoris, the town’s previous mayor, lied to her that Mr. Grierson had once lent the community a significant sum. Chapter 2 describes a time thirty years earlier, when Emily’s neighbors noticed an odor came from Emily’s apartment, so they informed the local authorities. Chapter 3 shows a time When Northern laborer Homer Barron comes to town, Emily takes an interest in him despite his lower social standing. The citizens tries to prevent their relations but all their efforts fails. Emily buys arsenic. In Chapter 4 Emily buys a men’s toiletry set, presaging marriage. Homer disappears and Emily becomes a recluse. In Cgapter 5 she dies, and  a man’s skeleton is found on a bed in Emily’s upstairs room next to an indented pillow and a long gray hair.