By William Faulkner

 Please make at least three statements involving at least a man, a woman and an apartment. Then try designing a plot based on these statements.  E.g. A man fell in love with a woman when looking for an apartment. A woman killed a man for an apartment. A man was died in an apartment, with a woman.

 Local legends and gossip frequently served as the spark for Faulkner’s stories. As John B. Cullen, writing in Old Times in Faulkner Country, notes, “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner’s first nationally published short story, was based on the tale of Oxford’s aristocratic “Miss Mary” Neilson, who married Captain Jack Hume, the charming Yankee foreman of a street-paving crew, over her family’s shocked protests. According to Cullen, one of Faulkner’s neighbors said he created his story “out of fears and rumors” –the dire predictions of what might happen if Mary Neilson married her Yankee.

 Cultural Context: The Old South has been idealized as a land of prosperous plantations, large white houses, cultured people, and a stable economy based on cotton. Like any utopia, however, this picture is a distortion. It hides many of the unpleasant, even appalling, realities of plantation life—one of which was slavery. Still, long after the Civil War ( ), with much of the South destroyed and beset by economic hardship, the myth persisted among many white Southerners (like Emily and her neighbors) as a kind of nostalgia for a golden age.

 Reading Time

 Are the events arranged in chronological order? If no, what are the sequence of events? And why?  Can you find examples of foreshadowing? How does foreshadowing enrich the story?  What kind of person was Miss Emily? Who are the characters in conflict with Emily?  Which part do you think is the climax of the story?  What do you think about the ending?  Who might this narrator be? How do you suppose the narrator might know so much about Emily? Why do you think the narrator use we instead of I?

Arrange these events in the sequence in which they actually occur:  Homer’s arrival in town  The aldermen’s visit  Emily purchase of poison  Colonel Sartoris’s decision to remit Emily’s taxes  The development of the odor around Emily’s house  Emily’s father’s death  The arrival of Emily’s relatives  Homer’s disappearance  Emily’s funeral  The opening of the room upstairs

Actually happenedPresented in the Story A. Emily’s father’s death B. Colonel Sartoris’s decision to remit Emily’s taxes C. Homer’s arrival in town D. The arrival of Emily’s relatives E. Emily purchase of poison F. Homer’s disappearance G. The development of the odor around Emily’s house H. The aldermen’s visit I. Emily’s funeral J. The opening of the room upstairs 1. Emily’s funeral 2. Colonel Sartoris’s decision to remit Emily’s taxes 3. The aldermen’s visit 4. The development of the odor around Emily’s house 5. Emily’s father’s death 6. Homer’s arrival in town 7. Emily purchase of poison 8. The arrival of Emily’s relatives 9. Homer’s disappearance 10. The opening of the room upstairs

 When asked at a seminar at the University of Virginia about the meaning of the title “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner replied, “Oh, it’s simply the poor woman had no life at all. Her father had kept her more or less locked up and then she had a lover who was about to quit her, she had to murder him. It was just ‘A Rose for Emily’—that’s all.” In another interview, asked the same question, he replied, “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, as you would lift a cup of sake to a man.” What do you make of Faulkner’s responses? Can you offer other possible interpretations of the title’s significance?

 In his essay “William Faulkner: An American Dickens,” literary critic Leslie A. Fiedler characterizes Faulkner as “primarily… a sentimental writer; not a writer with the occasional vice of sentimentality, but one whose basic mode of experience is sentimental.” He continues, “In a writer whose very method is self-indulgence, that sentimentality becomes sometimes downright embarrassing.” Fielder also notes Faulkner’s “excesses of maudlin feelings and absurd indulgences in overripe rhetoric.” Do you think these criticisms apply to “A Rose for Emily” ? If so, does the “vice of sentimentality” diminish the story, or do you agree with Fiedler—who calls Faulkner a “a supereminently good ‘bad’ writer” –that the author is able to transcend these excesses? --from Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing (5 th edition), p.109

 Summary and study guide of eNotes  Wikipedia introduction y y

 Please read from p.68-p.77 to find out 1. What are the functions of a narrator in fiction? 2. What does Lubbock think that all techniques of the novel are bound to be adjusted by point of view? 3. What do the following terms mean? Omniscient point of view editorial omniscience impartial omniscience limited point of view selective omniscience limited omniscience innocent/naïve narrator unreliable narrator ironic point of view  Please read Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”.