Exploration of Plot

William Faulkner begins A Rose for Emily with "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral..." (Faulkner 90), and sets a crucial tone for the rest of the short story. The readers know that the main character of the story is dead within the first sentence, creating a dark and depressing mood while they read. The remainder of the story revolves and depends on this darkness to progress. Faulkner uses macabre elements, setting, and topics to further envelop the reader in the atmosphere he is intending. By exploring these elements, we can analyze how they affect the plot and the tone through the story.

A primary aspect of this work is the way the plot is set. When Faulkner tells the reader that Emily is dead in the first sentence, he sets a negative vibe. He then does an important thing by using a flashback, "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition..." (Faulkner 91), telling us how the ending in the beginning. The majority of the story is a flash back and works its way back to real time in paragraph 54. The final sentence, "One of us lifted...a long strand of iron-gray hair" (Faulkner 97), is the climax to the catalyst setup in the first sentence. The reader is expecting something awful to happen, but is not sure what exactly will happen until that last sentence. Will Homer Barron be found in the room alive? What happened to him? Why did the reader never see what became of Homer? It is all tied together in the end, a lost love that can never be until death.

In the story, elements that portray darkness and depression are used often and in many different forms. He uses words such as bloated, pallid, acrid, and rotted while also using drab colors in the story to further enhance the plot and tone in the imagination of the reader. Michael Meyer reports that Faulkner had been born into a family who had lost much of social influence and wealth when the Civil War began, which could be an explanation of why this story is so dark and dreary (90).

Paragraph five is a solid example of the tone being set by the diction used. It is describing Miss Emily's house as "smell[ing] of dust and disuse - a close, dank, smell...with heavy, leather-covered furniture" (Faulkner 91). These words put a tactile sensation into the story, causing the reader to not only see it in their imagination, but also feel and smell it. Many readers may interpret a close, dank, and dusty smell differently, but the effect is one and the same. It gives the reader a fuller understanding of Miss Emily and the state of despair that her and her house is in.

Another literary element that Faulkner brings into A Rose For Emily is the contrast in character. By casting Homer Barron as such a likeable fellow, "Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group", Faulkner made the acts of Miss Emily that much darker and sinister (Faulkner 93). He also brought in the character of The Negro, a wispy type man who was not in either the bright or dark side. He was the neutral element to the story and is used to connect both areas. The way Faulkner writes about the Negro, makes a reader feel sorry for him, like he is trapped by Miss Emily much as Homer was trapped. Either way, without one of these characters, I feel the story would be lacking in character.

Throughout this short story, William Faulkner takes advantage of the element of darkness to grab the readers' attention and hold it until the last sentence when the climax reveals what actually happened to the good man in the story. He also used plot to entice the reader with the first sentence and then jump back to a time before, bringing readers slowly back to the current time. By tempting the imagination with a nugget of information and then filling in the background info, the reader is put in a different disposition towards the story. His structure of A Rose for Emily is superb and a classic suspense read.

Works Cited Faulkner, William. "A Rose For Emily." The Bedford Introduction To Literature. By Michael Meyer. 7th ed. Bedford/St. Martin's P, 2005. 90-97.