A-rose-for-Emily文章赏析.docx

Analysis of A Rose for Emily姓名：**** 学号：***** 班级**** Like so many American writers, Faulkner found himself again and again writing short stories, some of which are considered as equally important as his best novels. Good as his short stories are, they seem always at the threshold of being absorbed into the Yoknapatawpha saga — that legendary matrix which is Faulkner’s real achievement. However, for a beginner of Faulkner scholarship, his short stories may well be an easy start. “A Rose for Emily” is Faulkner’s first short story published in 1930. Set in the town of Jefferson in Yoknopatawpha, the story focuses on Emily Grierson, an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time, or the inevitable change and loss that accompanies it. Simple as it is in plot, the story is pregnant with meaning. As a descendent of the Southern aristocracy, Emily is typical of those in Faulkner’s Yoknapatwapha stories who are the symbols of the Old South but the prisoners of the past. In this story, Faulkner makes best use of the Gothic devices in narration, and, the deformed personality and abnormality Emily demonstrates in her relationship with her sweetheart is dramatized in such a way that we feel shocked and thrilled as we read along.A Rose for Emily recounts the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her odd relationships with her father, who controlled and manipulated her, and her lover, the Yankee road worker Homer Barron. When Homer Barron threatens to leave her, she is seen buying arsenic, which the townspeople believe she will commit suicide with. After this, Homer Barron is not heard from again, and is assumed to have returned north. Though she does not commit suicide, the townspeople of Jefferson continue to gossip about her and her eccentricities, citing her familys history of mental illness. She is heard from less and less, and rarely ever leaves her home. Un