1. Unit 11 Rose for Emily
2. Introduction A Rose for Emily" was adapted for film by Chubbuck Cinema Company. Producer and director: Lyndon Chubbuck; screenwriter, H. Kaye Dyal. Santa Monica, CA: Pyramid Film & Video, 1983.
Character List
Grierson, Miss Emily
Sartoris, Colonel
Stevens, Judge
Negro man
Homer Baron
3. One of the most frequently anthologized stories by Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily" is the remarkable story of Emily Grierson, an aging spinster in Jefferson, whose death and funeral drew the attention of the entire town, "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 manservant ?a combined gardener and cook ?had seen in at least ten years."
4. The unnamed narrator, which some critics have identified as "the town" or at least a representative voice from it, in a seemingly haphazard manner relates key moments in Emily's life, including the death of her father and a brief fling with a Yankee road paver, Homer Barron. Beyond the literal level of Emily's narrative, the story is sometimes regarded as symbolic of the changes in the South during the representative period.
5. About the Author 1
William Faulkner (1897-1962), who came from an old southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during the First World War, studied for a while at the University of Mississippi, and temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper. Except for some trips to Europe and Asia, and a few brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he worked on his novels and short stories on a farm in Oxford.
6. In an attempt to create a saga of his own, Faulkner has invented a host of characters typical of the historical growth and subsequent decadence of the South. The human drama in Faulkner's novels is then built on the model of the actual, historical drama extending over almost a century and a half Each story and each novel contributes to the construction of a whole, which is the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants. Their theme is the decay of the old South, as represented by the Sartoris and Compson families, and the emergence of ruthless and brash newcomers, the Snopeses. Theme and technique - the distortion of time through the use of the inner monologue are fused particularly successfully in The Sound and the Fury (1929), the downfall of the Compson family seen through the minds of several characters.
7. The novel Sanctuary (1931) is about the degeneration of Temple Drake, a young girl from a distinguished southern family. Its sequel, Requiem For A Nun (1951), written partly as a drama, centered on the courtroom trial of a Negro woman who had once been a party to Temple Drake's debauchery. In Light in August (1932), prejudice is shown to be most destructive when it is internalized, as in Joe Christmas, who believes, though there is no proof of it, that one of his parents was a Negro. The theme of racial prejudice is brought up again in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), in which a young man is rejected by his father and brother because of his mixed blood. Faulkner's most outspoken moral evaluation of the relationship and the problems between Negroes and whites is to be found in Intruder In the Dust (1948).
8. Question - the title
Par 1
Characters of the story
Purpose of their visit
- A fallen monument
9. Question Par 2
What do the following phrases imply?
- copulas, spires, balconies - august names
- eyesore among eyesores
- had gone to join the representatives
10. Question Par 3
How was Emily considered to be in the town?
Par 4
- archaic shape, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, without comment
11. Question Par 5
What did the town people do one day?
What did they see in Emilys home?
12. Question Par 6 - 8
How was Emily like?
- appearance, voice, language, behavior,
attitude, etc
13. Question Par 9
- horse and foot
Par 10
- as if a man could keep a kitchen properly,
How did the town people know her existence?
14. Question Par 11 12
- alderman
- to her face
- cellar openings
- an upright torso of an idol
15. Question Par 13 -14
How did people feel for her? Why ?
Was there any change in her after her fathers death?
- know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny
16. Question Par 15 16
How was she after her fathers death?
Why did she break down?
- angels in colored
church windows
17. Question Par 18 -19
- yankee
- the buggy and a
matched team of
bays
What was the relationship between the man and Emily?
- noblesse oblige
18. Question Par 20 -21
- behind their hands
- rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies
- that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness
19. Question Par 22
- a lighthouse keeper
Par 23
- a stained flag
Par 24
- skull and bones
20. Question Par 25 -26
What did people say about them?
Par 27
- blood-kin under her roof
- we were really glad
- Homer Baron
21. Question Par 28 30
- to help circumvent the cousins
- too virulent and too furious to die
- it was still that vigorous iron-gray of an active man
22. Question Par 30 32
Why was her front door always closed?
- china-painting
Par 33
- from generation to generation- dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
- a niche
23. Question Par 34 -35
- given up trying to get any information from the Negro.
- a heavy walnut bed with a curtain
Her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy
24. Question Par 36 37
- the crayon face of her father musing profoundly
The past is not a diminishing road but, a huge meadow
25. Question Par 38
- there was one room in that region above the stairs
Par 39
The main idea of the paragraph
26. Question Par 40 -41
What could people see?
What could we see through the authors description?
