A Rose for Emily Plot Analysis

Most good stories start with a fundamental

list of ingredients: the initial situation,

conflict, complication, climax, suspense,

denouement, and conclusion. Great writers

sometimes shake up the recipe and add some

spice.

*Initial Situation

Death and Taxes

As we discuss in "Symbols, Imagery,

Allegory," Faulkner might be playing on the

Benjamin Franklin quote, "In this world

nothing can be said to be certain, except

death and taxes," in this initial scene. We

move from a huge funeral attended by

everybody in town, to this strange little story

about taxes.

*Conflict

Taxes aren't the only thing that stinks.

The taxes seem tame compared to what

comes next. In Section II, we learn lots of

bizarre stuff about Miss Emily: when her

father died she refused to believe it (or let

on she believed it) for four days (counting

the day he died); the summer after her

father died, she finally gets a boyfriend

(she's in her thirties); when worried that her

boyfriend might leave her, she bought some

poison and her boyfriend disappeared, but

there was a bad smell around her house. We

technically have enough information to figure

everything out right here, but we are thrown

off by the issue of the taxes, and by the way

in which facts are jumbled together.

*Complication

The Town's Conscience

For this stage it might be helpful to think of

this story as the town's confession. This

section is what complicates things for the

town's conscience. The town was horrible to

Miss Emily when she started dating Homer

Barron. They wanted to hold her to the

southern lady ideals her forbearers had

mapped out for her. She was finally able to

break free when her father died, but the

town won't let her do it. When they can't

stop her from dating Homer themselves, they

sick the cousins on her.

*Climax

"For Rats"

Even though this story seems all jumbled up

chronologically, the climax comes roughly in

the middle of the story, lending the story a

smooth, symmetrical feel. According to

Faulkner, Homer probably was a bit of a rat,

one which noble Miss Emily would have felt

perfectly in the right to exterminate. Yet, she

also wanted to hold tight to the dream that

she might have a normal life, with love and a

family. When she sees that everybody – the

townspeople, the minister, her cousins, and

even Homer himself – is bent on messing up

her plans, she has an extreme reaction.

That's why, for us, the climax is encapsulated

in the image of the skull and crossbones on

the arsenic package and the warning, "For

rats."

*Suspense

Deadly Gossip

As with the climax, Faulkner follows a

traditional plot structure, at least in terms of

the story of Emily and Homer. Emily buys the

arsenic, and at that moment the information

is beamed into the brains of the

townspeople. This is one of the nastiest

sections. The town is in suspense over

whether they are married, soon will be, or

never will be. Their reactions range from

murderous, to pitying, to downright

interference. We also learn that Homer

Barron was last seen entering the residence

of Miss Emily Grierson on the night in

question. So, we can be in suspense about

what happened to him, though by the time

we can appreciate that this is something to

be suspenseful about, we already know what

happened.

*Denouement

The Next 40 Years

At this point, we've already been given a

rough outline of Emily's life, beginning with

her funeral, going back ten years to when the

"newer generation" came to collect the

taxes, and then back another thirty some odd

years to the death of Emily's father, the

subsequent affair with Homer, and the

disappearance of Homer. The story winds

down by filling us in on Miss Emily's goings

on in the 40 years between Homer's

disappearance and Emily's funeral. Other

than the painting lessons, her life during that

time is a mystery, because she stayed inside.

*Conclusion

The Bed, the Rotting Corpse, and the

Hair

The townspeople enter the bedroom that's

been locked for 40 years, only to find the

rotting corpse of Homer Barron.

A Rose for Emily Characters

Meet the Cast

*Miss Emily Grierson

Character Analysis

Miss Emily is an old-school southern belle

trapped in a society bent on forcing her to

stay in her role. She clings to the old ways

even as she tries to break free. When she's

not even forty, she's on a road that involves

dying alone in a seemingly haunted house. At

thirty-something she is already a murderer,

which only adds to her outcast status.

Miss Emily is a truly tragic figure, but one

who we only see from the outside. Granted,

the townspeople who tell her story know her

better than we do, but not really by much.

This is why Emily is called "impervious." We

can't quite penetrate her or completely

understand her. But, perhaps there is a little

Emily in all of us. In the spirit of finding the

human being behind the mask, lets zero in on

a few aspects of Emily, the person.

Daughter and Woman

As far as we know, Emily is an only child. The

story doesn't mention any siblings. It also

doesn't mention her mother. It strikes us as

odd that the narrator doesn't say anything

about her mother at all. We can't really think

of a reasonable explanation for this, other

than that the narrator wants to emphasize

just how much Emily was her father's

daughter, and just how alone she was with

him when he was alive. From all evidence, he

controlled her completely until his death, and

even continued to control her from beyond

the grave. By separating her so severely from

the rest of the town when he was alive,

going as far as to make sure she didn't have

any lovers or a husband, he set her up for a

way of life that was impossible for her to

escape, until her death.

We might think of her as weak, or as

unwilling to take a stand against her father

in life. This assessment is kind of like

blaming the victim though. The bare sketch

we have of her father shows a man who was

unusually controlling, domineering, and

perhaps capable of deep cruelty, even toward

his only daughter. This theory also disguises

her behavior after his death, when she tried

desperately to shed the image of dutiful

daughter, and, probably for the first time, at

thirty-something, pursued her own desires for

love and sex.

When this attempt at womanhood failed

miserably, she reverted back to the life her

father created for her – a lonely, loveless,

isolated life. Except now, with Homer Barron

rotting away upstairs, there are two men that

haunt her.

Artist

We don't know for sure if Emily's artistic

ability extended beyond china-painting. Some

readers and critics seem to think that Miss

Emily is responsible for the "crayon portrait

of Miss Emily's father" (1.4) that sits on an

easel in the parlor. This may well be the

case. (Also, it should be noted that "crayon"

here could refer to black or colored charcoal,

chalk, or oil crayons.)

Even though we don't have the full lowdown

on Emily's art, thinking of her as an artist

helps us to see the tragedy of her life, and

also provides us a bit of a hopeful angle of

vision. On the tragic side, we see that while

Emily's art was at first a link to the town, a

way to be a member of the community and

to have some contact with the outside world.

Once the "newer generation" pieced

together her secret, even this last link was

gone. On the hopeful side, there is some

possibility that Emily was able to turn to her

art as a source of comfort and for something

to do. Maybe after the townspeople found

Homer Barron's corpse, they found a

houseful of Miss Emily's art as well.

Miss Emily's Legacy

In "What's Up With the Ending?", we discuss

that the townspeople aren't at all surprised

to find Homer Barron's body rotting in the

closed off room. They broke into the room to

confirm what had probably become common

knowledge over the years. When Emily didn't

kill herself with the arsenic, and when the

smell appears, they drew the logical

conclusion (passed down from one generation

to the next) that Emily must have used the

poison on Homer. There is some indication

that the townspeople were surprised to find

Miss Emily's hair on the pillow beside his

body. The imprint of a head in the dust

suggests that she might have lain there in

the not so distant past.

It's possible that she left this "evidence"

there on purpose, her final comment on life

before she died. It's not much of a will, but

perhaps it's still an important legacy for the

townspeople, whose parents had cruelly

interfered in Emily's happiness, and who

themselves further isolated her out of fear,

disgust, and general spite. Everyone pitied

Emily, but that's a lot different than loving

her. What she left them was the legacy of

just how human she was, of just how much

she wanted love, and just how warped and

twisted the desire for love can become when

it is declared off limits.

*Tobe

Character Analysis

Tobe, first described as "an old man-servant

– a combined gardener and cook" (1.1). He is

an even more mysterious character than

Emily, and, ironically, probably the only one

who knows the answers to all the mysteries

in the story. He's also a major connection to

the theme "Compassion and Forgiveness."

Read on to see what we mean.

Caregiver

Tobe gave his whole life to the care of Miss

Emily. We don't know what kind of

relationship they had beyond that of

employer and servant, but there isn't any

indication that either of them abused the

other. Perhaps they have us all fooled, and

there in the haunted old house they carried

on a loving, caring relationship.

Whatever the case, we have to hand it to

Tobe for taking care of Miss Emily for most

of her life, and most of his (as we talk about

in the next section). He also must have been

the one to alert the town to both Emily's

father's death, and also to her own death.

Loyal and discreet, he protected her privacy

from the prying eyes and ears of the town.

This might be part of why he split after her

death, to avoid having to divulge her secrets

to the town. Of course, he probably also left

because his duty was finally done, and he

could escape the stinking, rotting crypt of a

house.

The Tragedy of Tobe

In the section above, we speculate about

Tobe. That analysis doesn't really get at the

tragedy of his life. He was probably born

around the same time as Emily

(approximately 1861) and so was almost

definitely born a slave, probably on a

plantation that Emily's father may have

owned.

Assuming he was born with the family or was

with them from a young age, he stayed with

them through the Civil War , and, as we have

seen, through all the rest, too. As a black

man in the South his options were limited,

maybe even more limited than Emily's. Like

her, he might have become convinced that

the world outside that house was not the

place for him. He might have felt intense

loyalty to Miss Emily, and maybe even, like

the town, an obligation to her. If they were

raised together, they might easily have

developed a kind of brother-sister

relationship. Alternatively, he might have

despised her, or been disgusted and horrified

by her. He might have wished for her death.

As a human being in a completely bizarre

situation, he might have felt a complex

tangle of all of those things, and more.

*Homer Barron

Character Analysis

Homer is the man Emily murderers. Yet,

somehow, the focus of the tragedy is on

Emily. Given the information we know about

Homer, he isn't a very sympathetic character.

This is partly because the town, as

represented by the narrator, doesn't like him.

Jeffersonians don't like him because he's a

rough-talking, charismatic northerner and an

overseer in town working on a sidewalk-

paving project.

How involved with Emily he was, we don't

know. He may have intended to marry her,

but became dissuaded by the wacky antics of

her cousins and the town. Why he went to

her house that last time, and how exactly he

ended up dead in the bed, we don't know.

We don't even know if he really did, or was

about to, break off his relationship with Emily

before she killed him.

Homer 's Sexuality

We also don't know if he was gay. We bring

this up because this is one of the big

questions students have after reading the

story. The following line is the source of this

confusion:

Then we said, "She will persuade him yet,"

because Homer himself had remarked – he

liked men, and it was known that he drank

with the younger men in the Elks' Club – that

he was not a marrying man. (4.1)

What a strange sentence to unpack.

Remember also, that it's gossip, in the most

hard-core gossip section of the story. In this

fragment, the town seems to be saying that

even though Homer is gay, and even though

he isn't the marrying kind, Emily will still

manage to hook him. Unpacked, we can really

see the spite. Their comments means that

she definitely won't succeed, but that if she

does, he's not the kind of man she thinks he

is.

Nothing in the story tells us whether Homer

was gay or not, but you can be pretty sure

that's what the town people were

insinuating.

The Guy Deserves Some Compassion

It's hard to find anything nice to say about

Homer, but that doesn't mean we can't

extend to him that compassion this story tries

(in it's macabre way) to bring out in us.

Whatever he did, whoever he was, he didn't

deserve to be murdered. In over-

sympathizing with Emily, and with the town's

rationalization and cover-up of the murder,

we run the risk of erring where they erred.

While Emily probably would have ended up in

an awful insane asylum had the town

investigated the disappearance of Homer

Barron officially, Homer Barron might have

had family or friends that never learned

about what happened to him. Even if he

didn't, isn't it important that the justice

speak for those victims who can't speak for

themselves?

*Miss Emily's Father

Character Analysis

Emily's father is the guy with the gigantic

horsewhip. He's only referred to as "Emily's

father." Faulkner himself didn't approve of

the man at all. In an interview, Faulkner

expounds on this character:

In this case there was the young girl with a

young girl's normal aspirations to find love

and then a husband and a family, who was

brow-beaten and kept down by her father, a

selfish man who didn't want her to leave

home because he wanted a housekeeper, and

it was a natural instinct of – repressed which

– you can't repress it – you can mash it down

but it comes up somewhere else and very

likely in a tragic form, and that was simply

another manifestation of man's injustice to

man, of the poor tragic human being

struggling with its own heart, with others,

with its environment, for the simple things

which all human beings want. In that case it

was a young girl that just wanted to be loved

and to love and to have a husband and a

family. (source )

That description is pretty straightforward.

The story is meant to show a very selfish

man in a very selfish society. He's kind of a

one-note fellow, and that note is Me, me,

me, me, me!

*Colonel Sartoris

Character Analysis

The Colonel is the guy who initially dreamed

up the scheme to relieve Emily of her tax

obligations when her father died. That was a

nice thing to do. But, this same Colonel, the

mayor, "who," we are told also "fathered the

edict that no Negro woman should appear on

the streets without an apron" (1.3). That's

not so nice. Unfortunately, the coexistence of

these two modes was the norm in those days

among powerful political figures

*Judge Stevens

Character Analysis

Judge Stevens gets one of the best lines in

the story: "Dammit, sir, will you accuse a lady

to her face of smelling bad?" (2.9) Given

everything the town knows at this point, the

smell should have generated a warrant to

inspect her home. He's portrayed as an older,

(he's 80), powerful, and a very southern

man, and he raises a little question.OK, we

know that Colonel Sartoris was the mayor

when Emily's father died, and we know that

it was two years later that the townspeople

began complaining about the smell. The town

could have changed mayors in two years, but

would they have elected a mayor that was

eighty years old? We challenge you to figure

this out.

*Old Lady Wyatt

Character Analysis

Old lady Wyatt is Emily's great-aunt (on her

father's side, we believe). Before her death,

according to the townspeople, old lady Wyatt

is "completely crazy" (2.11). She seems to

be in the story to suggest that insanity runs

in Emily's family.

*The Cousins

Character Analysis

The town thinks Miss Emily's "two female

cousins are even more Grierson than Miss

Emily had ever been" (4.4). That is definitely

not a compliment. These cousins from

Alabama are relatives of old lady Wyatt and

had been estranged from Emily's father since

the time of old lady Wyatt's death. In fact,

they were so estranged that they didn't even

show up to Emily's father's funeral.

The situation with the cousins exposes some

of the dark irony of the story. The

townspeople call in the cousins to stop Emily

from dating Homer, but when they decide

they hate the cousins, they switch sides and

try to push Emily and Homer together.

A Rose for Emily Narrator POV:

Who is the narrator, can she or he read

minds, and, more importantly, can we trust

her or him?

First Person ( Peripheral Narrator)

The fascinating narrator of "A Rose for

Emily" is more rightly called "first people"

than "first person." Usually referring to itself

as "we," the narrator speaks sometimes for

the men of Jefferson, sometimes for the

women, and often for both. It also spans

three generations of Jeffersonians, including

the generation of Miss Emily's father, Miss

Emily's generation, and the "newer

generation," made up of the children of Miss

Emily's contemporaries. The narrator is

pretty hard on the first two generations, and

it's easy to see how their treatment of Miss

Emily may have led to her downfall. This

lends the narrative a somewhat confessional

feel.

While we are on the subject of "we," notice

no one townsperson is completely responsible

for what happened to Emily. (It is fair to say,

though that some are more responsible than

others.) The willingness of the town to now

admit responsibility is a hopeful sign, and

one that allows us to envision a better future

for generations to come. We discuss this

further in "Tone," so check out that section

for more information.

A Rose for Emily Setting

Where It All Goes Down

A creepy old house in Jefferson,

Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi,

1861- 1933 (approximately)

Setting is usually pretty rich in Faulkner.

SimCity-style, William Faulkner created his

own Mississippi County, Yoknapatawpha, as

the setting for much of his fiction. This

county comes complete with several different

families including the Grierson family. "A

Rose for Emily" is set in the county seat of

Yoknapatawpha, Jefferson and as you know,

focuses on Emily Grierson, the last living

Grierson. For a map and a detailed

description of Yoknapatawpha, click here.

OK, so the where is pretty easy. Though

Jefferson and its inhabitants are unique, we

can see their town as any southern town

during that period. The situations that arise

in the story develop in large part because

many southerners who lived during the

slavery era didn't know what to do when that

whole way of life ended. Imagine if suddenly

you are told and shown that your whole way

of life is a sham, an atrocity, an evil. Then

heap on a generous helping of southern

pride, and you have tragedies like this one.

This story also explores how future

generations deal with this legacy. To really

feel the movement of history in the story,

and to understand the movements of Emily's

life, it important to pin down the chronology

of events.

The dates we use, other than 1874, are just a

little rough, but in the ballpark.

1861 – Miss Emily Grierson is born.

1870s – The Grierson house is built.

1893 – Miss Emily's father dies.

1893 – Miss Emily falls ill.

1893 – Miss Emily's taxes are remitted (in

December).

1894 – Miss Emily meets Homer Barron (in

the summer).

1895 – Homer is last seen entering Miss

Emily's house (Emily is "over thirty; we use

thirty-three for our calculations).

1895 – The townspeople become concerned

about the smell of the Grierson house and

sprinkle lime around Emily's place.

1895 – Miss Emily stays in for six months.

1895-1898 – Miss Emily emerges and her hair

gradually turns gray.

1899 – Miss Emily stops opening her door,

and doesn't leave the house for about five

years.

1904 – Miss Emily emerges to give china-

painting lessons for about seven years.

1911 – Miss Emily stops giving painting

lessons. Over ten years pass before she has

any contact with the town.

1925 – They "newer generation" comes to

ask about the taxes. This is thirty years after

the business with the lime. This is the last

contact she has with the town before her

death.

1935 – Miss Emily dies at 74 years old. Tobe

leaves the house. Two days later the funeral

is held at the Grierson house. At the funeral,

the townspeople break down the door to the

bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen

in 40 years.

This doesn't answer all the questions by any

means. Since nobody in the town ever knew

what was really going on in Emily's house,

there are numerous holes and gaps in this

history. Still, you can use this as a guide to

help make sense of some of the confusing

moments.

A Rose for Emily Tone

Take a story's temperature by studying its

tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Ironic, Confessional, Gossipy,

Angry, Hopeful

We can think of a bunch more adjectives to

describe the tone of the story, these seems

to be the dominant emotional tones the

narrator is expressing as Miss Emily's story is

told. (Keep in mind that it's also the town's

story.)

The irony of the story is closely tied to the

rose in the title, and to Williams Faulkner's

explanation of it:

[The title] was an allegorical title; the

meaning was, here was a woman who had

had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and

nothing could be done about it, and I pitied

her and this was a salute…to a woman you

would hand a rose. (source )

It's ironic because in the story Miss Emily is

continually handed thorns, not roses, and she

herself produces many thorns in return. This

is where the "confessional" part comes in.

Since the narrator is a member of the town,

and takes responsibility for all the

townspeople's actions, the narrator is

confessing the town's crimes against Emily.

Confession can be another word for gossip,

especially when you are confessing the

crimes of others. (Here one of the big crimes

is gossip.) The chilling first line of Section IV

is a good representative of the elements of

tone we've been discussing so far: "So the

next day we all said, 'She will kill herself';

and we said it would be the best thing." This

is where the anger comes in. Because this

makes us angry, we feel that the narrator too

is angry, particularly in this whole section.

This leads us back to confession and

hopefulness.

The hopefulness of the town is the hardest

for us to understand. It comes in part from

the title again – if we can put ourselves in

the same space as Faulkner and manage to

give Emily a rose, to have compassion for her

even though she is a murderer, to recognize

her tragedy for what it is, this might allow us

to build a more compassionate future for

ourselves, a future where tragedies like

Emily's don't occur. This also entails taking

off our "rose-colored glasses" (as we discuss

in "What's Up With the Title?") and facing

the ugly truths of life, even confessing our

shortcomings. Hopefully, we can manage to

take those glasses off before death takes

them off for us.

A Rose for Emily Genre

Horror or Gothic Fiction , Southern

Gothic, Literary Fiction , Tragedy,

Modernism

Even before we see the forty-year-old corpse

of Homer Barron rotting into the bed, the

creepy house, and the creepy Miss Emily let

us know that we are in the realm of horror or

Gothic fiction. Combine that with a southern

setting and we realize that it's not just

Gothic, but Southern Gothic. The Southern

Gothic genre focuses – sometimes subtly,

sometimes overtly – on slavery, or the

aftermath of slavery in the South. You can

definitely see this in "A Rose for Emily."

Since author William Faulkner won the

Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice (first in 1955

for A Fable , and then in 1963 for The

Reivers), and the Nobel Prize for Literature

(1949) we'd also have to put it in the

category of "Literary Fiction."

Even if Faulkner hadn't won all those prizes,

we'd still put "A Rose for Emily" in this

category. The story is masterfully told, and

it's obvious that much care and skill went

into it. It's also strikingly original and

experimental in terms of form. This is part of

what makes it a classic Modernist text. The

Southern Gothic is a perfect field on which to

perform a Modernist experiment. Modernist is

all about what happens when everything you

thought was true is revealed to be false,

resulting in shattered identities. Modernism

tries to make something constructive out of

the pieces. We can see all that loud and

clear in "A Rose for Emily."

What ’s Up With the Title ?

You probably noticed that there is no rose in

the story, though we do find the word "rose"

four times. Check out the first two times the

word is used:

When the Negro opened the blinds of one

window, they could see that the leather was

cracked; and when they sat down a faint dust

rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning

with slow motes in the single sun-ray. (1.5)

They rose when she entered – a small, fat

woman in black, with a thin gold chain

descending to her waist and vanishing into

her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a

tarnished gold head. (1.6)

These first two times "rose" (as you can see)

is used as a verb, which is why we barely

notice the subtle echo of the "rose" in the

title when we read. We are concentrating on

the image, first, of the inside of Miss Emily's

lonely parlor, and then of Miss Emily herself.

In both cases, the word "rose" is working on

us, maybe even subconsciously, to contribute

to the image.

We have to look at a few more things before

we can get at why these passages are

significant.

First, let's consider the next two mentions of

"rose," which occur at the very end of the

story:

A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to

lie everywhere upon this room decked and

furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance

curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-

shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon

the delicate array of crystal and the man's

toilet things backed with tarnished silver,

silver so tarnished that the monogram was

obscured. (5.4)

Things are starting to make sense – here we

are talking about the color "rose" – from the

curtains to the lampshades, rose was the

dominant color of Miss Emily's bridal

chamber. We've all heard about the dangers

of seeing through 'rose colored' glasses. This

was a particular problem for people of Miss

Emily's generation in the South.

As we discuss in "Setting," Emily was born in

the early 1860s, probably near the beginning

of the Civil War . Emily's father basically

raised her to believe that nothing had really

changed after the war. He instilled in her

that being part of the southern aristocracy

(those who made money on backs of slaves)

was still something to be proud of, and that

people like them were above the law.

But, in this moment, we realize just how rosy

Miss Emily's glasses were, and that death

trumps glasses, rose colored or otherwise.

The reality of death cannot be avoided. Now

that the bridal chamber has turned into a

death chamber, the rose color is bathed in

the hues of decay and death, shaded by the

"acrid pall as of the tomb." Which might

make you wonder just what an "acrid pall" is.

"Acrid" is easy, it's used to refer to

something that's nasty smelling. "Pall" is

actually a pretty interesting word, and one

that isn't normally thrown around in

conversation. It usually refers to some kind

of covering, like a cloak or a blanket draped

over a coffin. We can see how the word

works literally and figuratively to thicken the

atmosphere of death and decomposition. It

works because even if we don't know

precisely what a "pall" is, we can hear the

deathly, pale tones it holds.

Well, we're not quite done yet. Lucky for us,

William Faulkner told an interviewer what he

meant by the title:

[The title] was an allegorical title; the

meaning was, here was a woman who had

had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and

nothing could be done about it, and I pitied

her and this was a salute…to a woman you

would hand a rose. (source )

We think this perspective is very important,

not just because it provides a straightforward

explanation, but also because it persuades us

to indulge in a more compassionate reading.

It's easy to judge Miss Emily, and maybe to

forget she's a human being who has had a

tragic life. For a look at how this explanation

exposes the story's irony, check out our

discussion of "Writing Style." Needless to

say, there are many possible interpretations

of the title, "A Rose for Emily," and you can

feel free to think creatively when trying to

figure out what this title means.