Short Story and William Faulkner Essay

Submitted By roshonda25
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Pages: 3

Reaction to "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner

Abruptly after the Civil War, William Faulkner wrote “Rose for Emily.” In this reading I think that William Faulkner was trying to create a story about a woman who was in love and wanted to live a normal life with her family. Emily believed that she had found a man that she so richly deserved but she resulted in killing him because she discovered that he does not want her. Faulkner writing creates a perfect picture of her. Emily father kept her in the house most of her life. After he passed away she proceeded to live a normal life. Things did not go as she wished but as I read I hoped that she would find this love of her life that she desired.
In this short story, “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner tells Emily life story from the ending to beginning. He speaks about Emily’s death and her funeral before he writes about her life from the beginning. The people of the town spoke about her death in the beginning of the story. I usually think it is strange for a writer to start a story by telling about a death before giving life pointers, but it became very interesting in this particular story. We know that the citizens of this town had a huge interest about Emily Grierson life because in the beginning of the story Faulkner writes, “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old Negro manservant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years” (Faulkner, 1930 page 50). The story continues to tell you about Emily’s life with her father and how she was raised mostly in the house. She meets a man that she believed she would marry after her father passed. Unfortunately, things did not work at for the two as she expected. We have an ideal life we tend to live but not often does it turn out that way, so we have to deal with the cards we are dealt. However, Emily believed different about her cards. She could handle living heartbroken so she poisoned and killed her lover because she thought it was the only way to keep him near her. In conclusion, Emily was a lonely young lady who desired to seek love. Once she found him he broke her heart. So the love that she thought she had fallen apart. This short story made me bitter and brought