A Rose for Emily By William Faulkner

Activity Draw a portrait for Miss Emily according to your understanding of the story. (10 mins)

Introduction to William Faulkner (1897-1962) Faulkner was an American writer from Mississippi. He worked in a variety of media: he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his childhood.

Awards and writing style Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Two of his works, A Fable(《寓言》，1954) and his last novel the Reivers (《掠夺者》，1962), both won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner's style is not very easy-in this he has connections to European literary modernism. His sentences are long and hypnotic, sometimes he withholds important details, or refers to people or events that the reader will not learn about until much later.

Historical background of the story “A Rose for Emily happened in post-civil war Jefferson, a small town in the deep south of the United States. ”

Understanding the setting The hierarchical regime in the town of Jefferson (Can you find out the sentences illustrating the hierarchy from the story?) The status of the Griersons Ordinance of the mayor- Colonel Sartoris Negro women could not even walk the street without an apron. …

Understanding the setting Faulkner’s setting also helps the reader understand the mentality and actions of the town. The townspeople seem oddly fascinated with Miss Emily as a relic of an older time. They have put her in a special position among the others. While they have not maintained any direct contact with her, they are still curious even after her death about her mystery. This could be attributed to the fact that as the times are changing, they need someone to restore or uphold their southern pride or majesty and as she is a Grierson, she is their only link to that past.

Understanding sentences 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… What made Emily so important a figure in the town that the whole town went to her funeral? Why did men and women hold different feeling to her death?

Understanding sentences On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father. What is the purpose of describing the portrait of Emily’s father?

Understanding sentences Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. she looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand. What is the impression the author want to present for Miss Emily?

Understanding sentences So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. What is the function of this sentence?

Understanding sentences SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows—sort of tragic and serene. Why did Miss Emily changed herself after the death of her father?

Understanding sentences She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was fallen. What does this sentence mean?

Understanding sentences The two female cousins came at one. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them no by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years. Translate this into Chinese.

两位堂姐妹也随即赶到，他们第二天就举行了葬礼，全镇的人都跑 来看看覆盖着鲜花的艾米莉小姐的尸体。停尸架上方悬挂着她父亲 的炭笔画像，一脸深刻沉思的表情，妇女们叽叽喳喳地谈论着死亡， 而老年男子呢——有些人还穿上了刷得干干净净的南方同盟军制 服——则在走廊上，草坪上纷纷谈论着艾米莉小姐的一生，仿佛她 是他们的同时代人，而且还相信和她跳过舞，甚至向她求过爱，他 们把按数学级数向前推进的时间给搅乱了。这是老年人常有的情形。 在他们看来，过去的岁月不是一条越来越窄的路，而是一片广袤的 连冬天也对它无所影响的大草地，只是近十年来才像窄小的瓶口一 样，把他们同过去隔断了。

Inner world of Emily Crierson Tax incident Staying with Homer Barron The rat poison incident Killing Homer Keeping Homer’

The metaphor of “ROSE” What is the implication of “ROSE” in the title and the whole story? Who gave the “ROSE” for Emily? Why did they give “ROSE” to Emily?

What makes the tragedy of Emily? Male-dominant society? Inequality of love between men and women? Feminine morality of Puritanism? …