2. I WOULD LIKE TO
EXPLAIN PSYCHO
ANALYZE OF SHORT
STORY A ROSE FOR EMILY
BY William Faulkner
3. BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM
FAULKNER
William Faulkner
The man himself never stood taller than five feet, six inches tall, but in the realm of American
literature, William Faulkner is a giant. More than simply a renowned Mississippi writer, the Nobel
Prize-winning novelist and short story writer is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the
twentieth century’s greatest writers, one who transformed his “postage stamp” of native soil into an
apocryphal setting in which he explored, articulated, and challenged “the old verities and truths of
the heart.” During what is generally considered his period of greatest artistic achievement, from The
Sound and the Fury in 1929 to Go Down, Moses in 1942, Faulkner accomplished in a little over a decade
more artistically than most writers accomplish over a lifetime of writing. It is one of the more
remarkable feats of American literature, how a young man who never graduated from high school,
never received a college degree, living in a small town in the poorest state in the nation, all the while
balancing a growing family of dependents and impending financial ruin, could during the Great
Depression write a series of novels all set in the same small Southern county — novels that include As
I Lay Dying, Light in August, and above all, Absalom, Absalom! — that would one day be recognized
as among the greatest novels ever written by an American.
The Early Years William Cuthbert Falkner (as his name was then spelled) was born on September 25,
1897, in New Albany, Mississippi, the first of four sons born to Murry and Maud Butler Falkner. He
was named after his great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, the “Old Colonel,” who had been killed
eight years earlier in a duel with his former business partner in the streets of Ripley, Mississippi. A
lawyer, politician, planter, businessman, Civil War colonel, railroad financier, and finally a best-
selling writer (of the novel The White Rose of Memphis), the Old Colonel, even in death, loomed as a
larger-than-life model of personal and professional success for his male descendants.
4. SUMMARY Short story of A rose for
emily
The story is divided into five sections. In section 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. In a once-elegant, upscale neighborhood, Emily’s house is the last vestige of the
grandeur of a lost era. Colonel Sartoris, the town’s previous mayor, had suspended Emily’s tax
responsibilities to the town after her father’s death, justifying the action by claiming that Mr.
Grierson had once lent the community a significant sum. As new town leaders take over, they make
unsuccessful attempts to get Emily to resume payments. When members of the Board of Aldermen
pay her a visit, in the dusty and antiquated parlor, Emily reasserts the fact that she is not required to
pay taxes in Jefferson and that the officials should talk to Colonel Sartoris about the matter. However,
at that point he has been dead for almost a decade. She asks her servant, Tobe, to show the men out.
In section II, the narrator describes a time thirty years earlier when Emily resists another official
inquiry on behalf of the town leaders, when the townspeople detect a powerful odor emanating from
her property. Her father has just died, and Emily has been abandoned by the man whom the
townsfolk believed Emily was to marry. As complaints mount, Judge Stevens, the mayor at the time,
decides to have lime sprinkled along the foundation of the Grierson home in the middle of the night.
Within a couple of weeks, the odor subsides, but the townspeople begin to pity the increasingly
reclusive Emily, remembering how her great aunt had succumbed to insanity. The townspeople have
always believed that the Griersons thought too highly of themselves, with Emily’s father driving off
the many suitors deemed not good enough to marry his daughter. With no offer of marriage in sight,
Emily is still single by the time she turns thirty.
5. PSYCHO ANALYZE
Emily stands as an emblem of the Old South, a grand lady whose respectability and charm rapidly
decline through the years, much like the outdated sensibilities the Griersons represent. The death of
the old social order will prevail, despite many townspeople’s attempts to stay true to the old ways.
Emily attempts to exert power over death by denying the fact of death itself. Her bizarre relationship
to the dead bodies of the men she has loved her necrophilia is revealed first when her father dies.
Unable to admit that he has died, Emily clings to the controlling paternal figure whose denial and
control became the only yet extreme form of love she knew. She gives up his body only reluctantly.
When Homer dies, Emily refuses to acknowledge it once again although this time, she herself was
responsible for bringing about the death. In killing Homer, she was able to keep him near her.
However, Homer’s lifelessness rendered him permanently distant. Emily and Homer’s grotesque
marriage reveals Emily’s disturbing attempt to fuse life and death. However, death ultimately
triumphs.
When the town noticed Emily and Homer spending time together, the town frowned upon the union.
Emily, in spite of her lack of money, was still revered with old-fashioned Southern expectations.
Homer was a working class fellow, not good enough for Emily by most standards.
Also, that Emily and Homer were dating without any talk of marriage was considered scandalous. The
narrator describes Emily as a fallen woman. A fallen woman is a woman who has been guilty of
adultery or sex before marriage. It's an outdated term. This is just an example of how society judged
women at this point in history.
The climax of the story takes place in part three, when Emily decides to buy arsenic from the local
pharmacy. While she allows the pharmacist to assume it's for killing rats, there's definitely a red flag
here for the reader.
