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William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily Essay examples

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William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

I. Implied author of the story

„A Rose for Emily”, a story of horror first published in 1930, is considered by many scholars one of the most authentic and the best narratives ever written by William Faulkner. It is a story of a woman, Emily Grierson, and her relationships with her father, the man she was in love with and the community of Jefferson, the town she lived in.

While discussing any narrative text it is crucial to mention the implied author of a text. As Wayne C. Booth, the most famous follower of the Chicago School believed, it is possible and acceptable to “interpret and criticize the narrative worlds of literary works without stepping beyond the limits of the text and falling …show more content…

It may be also the symbol of a true, reciprocated love which Emily never experienced, even though she probably dreamt about it for her entire life.

The rose in the title is not the only symbol in the story, though. There are others, which play equally important roles in the narrative, as their task is to let readers get to know the protagonist from the only possible point of view: the external one. This issue will be discussed in more details in the remaining chapters of this work; however it needs to be mentioned that throughout the entire story, readers never come to know Miss Emily Grierson’s thoughts and feelings. They rather come to certain conclusions about her, thanks to the subtle clues which the implied author leaves for them to discover.

Such a clue may be, for example, the crayon portrait of Emily’s father, standing near the fireplace on the day of her funeral, as it stood thirty days earlier, symbolizing Miss Grierson’s unwillingness to let go of the past, to leave the authority of her father behind, to forget about the only man who had such a great influence on her life and to be truly alive for once.

Another symbol providing readers with valid information about the protagonist is the Grierson’s family home. In a very interesting way the reader is presented with an image of a house which immediately brings to mind its occupant, Miss Emily:

“It was a big, squarish frame

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