Rose For Emily Point Of View Analysis

Narration can be used to manipulate a story. The author chooses who and how a story is told. It can manipulate the reader’s views of characters and situations in the story. The point of view that “A Rose for Emily” was written in was third person. It served as a collective town voice and let the reader in on the thoughts and opinions the townspeople had on Miss Emily. This type of narration can be used to detach a reader from the story or characters, but in Faulkner’s case he wrote it in a way that the narrator is slowly pushing us to feel empathy for Miss Emily.

This short story is from the view point of the towns people; you will notice a lot in William Faulkner’s writing of A Rose for Emily that it mentions the word “we” or “the town” talking about the people as a whole. From reading this story it seems the townspeople are revisiting old moments that have happened with Miss Emily in the past. It begins by talking about how the whole town went to Miss Emily’s funeral either out of respect or simply out of curiosity since no one had seen the inside of her house in over ten years. When Miss Emily was alive she was viewed as an obligation to the town, she was someone they always had a problem with, but they had to tip toe around to fix any problems involving her. They then go into talking about how

In the story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner makes use of a point of view that is seldom used in literature. He uses first-person plural narration to tell the tale through an unnamed character's point of view. Although the narration comes from the first-person point of view, the narrator often uses pronouns that are usually associated with third-person such as “they”, “she”, and so forth. Also, through an unconventional, yet brilliant manipulation of point of view, Faulkner was able to create a definitive impact on how the readers view and think about Ms. Emily Grierson. The pronouns and diction used by narrator, who collectively is representative of the thoughts of the townspeople, demonstrated the isolative nature surrounding Ms. Grierson,

William Faulkner’s style of writing evokes sympathy for his characters, regardless of how horrible the actions they committed were. The point of view in which he wrote the story determines how the story was told. Emily's version of the events would be quite different from someone else's version. Any person in the town would tell the story from his own experiences with Emily and his own attitudes toward her. By choosing a narrator who is not a part of the town, Faulker is able to achieve several things. He characterizes the town in addition to developing Emily's character. The town itself becomes a character in the story.

The story, “A Rose for Emily” is told in first person peripheral point of view. The word “we” is used throughout the story and the narrator does not just speak for one particular person, party, or town, in this fictional story the narrator also speaks for the men of Jefferson and for the women. Three generations are also laid out in this story, which reflects on the second and one could ultimately say that the way Emily is treated is what caused her downfall. The narrator becomes somewhat emotional and begins to confess feelings throughout

Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," a story that entails a man's epiphany about a misplaced prejudice, is narrated from the first person point of view to enable the reader to fully understand the narrator's thoughts. However, in William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" just the opposite is true. In Faulkner's story, the narrator has a limited third person point of view which allows the reader to dodge any emotional ties with Emily, the main character, and to form his own ideas about Emily's actions. Both story's meanings rely on the fact that the author's choice of point of view gives the reader the ability to experience the narrator's epiphany as the narrator does.

In the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner there are several changes between the point of view of the narrator. The identity and reliability of the narrator is unascertainable and creates more questions than it answers. The narrator is present for all of the scenes that take place in the story, but does not play a role in the events, and speaks for the town as a whole. The reader is introduced to Miss Emily Grierson by an onlooker, someone who is not Miss Emily, but a part of the town that rejects her. The narrator changes point of view as his opinion of Emily change. The character of the narrator is better understood by examining the tone of the lines spoken by this “we” person, who changes his/her mind about Miss Emily at certain points in the narration.

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 the past history of the town, they are in a way obsessed about her because they want to know more about her than what she is saying. Who wouldn’t find her strange, and who wouldn’t want to know more about her and why she did the things

When reading Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” what struck me primarily was the use of first person plural pronouns. Immediately, we hear “our whole town went to the funeral” suggesting a unified front relaying the story. Foster talks about the social functions of gossip, and I feel that his definition and theories about the social functions of gossip can most directly comment on Faulkner’s use of the first person plural pronoun. Miss Emily Grierson was a unifying entity to the people of her town. Through talk about her, there is a social cohesion that is achieved. The women would gather together and call upon her, or the men would go in packs to sprinkle lime around the doors and windows, all of which ended in friendship and community. Miss Emily

Throughout the course of the story, the narrator remains a nameless “we” and “us” that presumably speaks on behalf of the townspeople. The narrator continuously refers to Emily Grierson as “Miss Emily.” This hints that the narrator is familiar with the woman and or thinks fondly or highly of her. If the narrator is indeed the townspeople, then the reader recognizes the townspeople's respect for the woman. Yet “we” could be a disguise the narrator uses to hide his/her identity and turn his/her thoughts into commonly held beliefs of the townspeople. Because the point of view is first-person, the image conveyed of Miss Emily may be biased and therefore a skewed or inaccurate representation of the kind of character Emily Grierson is. The narrator seems to hold a high level of respect, sympathy, and even admiration towards the woman. In addition, the narrator expresses, “We did not say she [Miss Emily] was crazy

In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the

Miss Emily’s story is certainly bizarre, suspenseful, and mysterious enough to engage the reader’s attention fully For example, her affair with Homer Barron may be seen as a middle-aged woman’s belated rebellion against her repressive father and against the town’s burdensome expectations. That William Faulkner intended her story to have a much larger dimension is suggested by his choice of an unnamed citizen of Jefferson to tell it. Faulkner never speaks or writes as an individual, never uses the pronoun “I,” always speaks as “we.” As representative of the townspeople, Faulkner feels a compulsion to tell the story of a woman who represents something important to the community. Black voices are excluded from this collective voice as it speaks out of old and new generations.

The short answer to that question is that nobody knows who the narrator is. Or you could say that the only person who truly knows the narrator's identity is William Faulkner himself. The narrator remains unnamed for the entire story. The narrator uses the collective pronoun "we" in reference to himself or herself. It's not even known if the narrator is male or female. "We" allows the narrator at times to be the collective voice of the town itself or the townspeople as a whole. Critics also disagree on who exactly the narrator is. Some say that he/she is a former lover of Emily's or even the town gossip. There is some speculation that the narrator is Emily's servant -- Tobe. This suggestion has some merit, because the narrator has a

“Who is the narrator? Not a single person because Faulkner uses a first- person plural point of view, "we"; that "we" is townspeople, but only such as are in position to watch Miss Emily constantly for fifty or sixty years; they are anonymous townspeople, for neither names nor sexes nor occupations are given” (Sullivan, 160).

Point of view is a unique element of the story A rose for Emily; And there are more than one point of view in the story.