献给艾米莉的玫瑰的主题

The Theme of \

A Rose For Emily, written by William Faulkner, is a murder story, in which Miss Emily, the last heir of the degrading South Aristocrat family, Grieson, refused to keep in touch with the outside society at first, but suddenly fell in love with a yankee, and surprisingly, she murdered the man in the end and slept with her dead lover for thirty years.

This story at first seems a tragedy of love, in which the eagerness for a rose eventually turned into insane desire. However, the story is more than that. Its theme lies behind the attracting and surprising plot, relating to the contemporary social background and the author himself.

William Faulkner was born in a descending south aristocrat family in Mississippi, and he experienced the social changes after the war and the hardship of life. His works were often about the south descending rich, expressing his sympathy to those families. However, he had to accept the reality, for no matter what those glory and nobility had already gone. In the story A Rose For Emily, he tactfully described how Emily somehow struggled to change but still could not get out of the “comfortable” zone, hiding in her high tower of the past Grieson glory.

. However the old people in the town were more worried than before. They did not think Miss Emily GRIESON should marry to some Yankee—especially that he was a day labor! One day Miss Emily suddenly appeared in the drug store for some arsenic. The shop owner requested to know why Emily wanted it, but he surrendered when Emily just” stare at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye”. It seemed that even she had moved onto a lover, Miss Emily was still stubborn and arrogant. After a few days, Homer Barron came back to Miss Emily, but “that was the last we saw of Homer Barron”. Miss Emily seemed to be vanquished and “we” started to feel sorry for her again, and that was when her house began to smell bad and she became again stubborn and arrogant to the town. Her struggle—we thought—failed, for her lover finally left her. Even until she died “we” kept feeling sorry for her. She finally could not jump out of her family history and started her new life in correspondence to time and society. At this point, “we” discovered Homer Barron’s body in surprise, and the story came to a sudden halt at this climax.

In the whole story the author uses details to show the social environment in which the story took place. By describing her house with dim, dust, disuse, Faulkner demonstrates vividly Miss Emily’s reluctance to change after the war; by repeating “See Colonel Sartoris” for several times, Faulkner sets up a figure that was stubborn—she stuck to Colonel Sartoris who has been dead ten years before instead

of recognizing the contemporary authority. The author also used details to illustrate those subtle changes of Miss Emily: She dated Barron in the yellow-wheeled car—yellow! Before Barron, everything around Miss Emily seemed grey and black, but this time yellow! Also, Faulkner used a large part to describe, not Miss Emily, but other people in the town. He used first-person perspective to tell the whole story, including how the old generation tried to appreciate and flatter the Griesons and how the rising generation disapprove such kind of appreciation. Miss Emily and her tragedy was a main line of the story, but its theme is obviously the conflict between the ex-aristocrat southern elderlies and the new-born young generation after the civil war—or even Reconstruction. Faulkner was trying to honor his family, and, as Raymond Chandler said in his novel “The Long Goodbye”, the only

salvation for a writer is to write. Faulkner, I guess, was in his way trying to redeem himself and all

the southerners from the loss of their life style and the loss of the “cotton king” era, and to move on.

Emily was at first protected by her aristocrat father, who kept all the men out because he was convinced that no man had ever been good enough for Emily. After her father passed away, Emily was noticed more by the people in the town. Old people murmured “poor Emily”, but young people expected to see changes. Although time had been moving on and the Griesons were no longer the noble Grieson, Emily obviously refused to change. She refused to pay the tax: “I have no taxes in

Jefferson”, refused to communicate with any other person in the town, and even refused to admit that her father had died at first. To our surprise, upon the appearance of Homer Barron, a yankee coming with a construction team, Miss Emily began to change a little. She started hanging out with him in the yellow-wheeled car. The dating with Homer Barron was the struggling part—Miss Emily did fall in love with someone regardless of her “noblelsse oblige”, and it seemed that she was pursuing new life.

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