Literary Analysis of the Watchful We in W.Faulkners A Rose for Emily - Essay Example

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” Analysis: the Watchful “We” The narrator of the short story “A Rose for Emily” represents the town’s voice collectively as noted by Nebeker (4). It has been debated by critics whether or not the narrator is a woman. Some critiques argue that the narrator must have been one of the former lovers of Emily Grierson or some boy who could remember Mr. Grierson with his whip in the hand. Some hold the stand that the narrator could have been the town’s gossip that lead the breaking down of the door at last, or a possibly the man servant, Tobe, in reference to how he referred to Emily Grierson as “Miss” and giving just a small description of the town mayor as Colonel Sartoris and his enforcement of the law on black women to put on aprons in public (Purdue.edu p 1). Generally, the narrator is presented as an “innocuous, naive, passive citizen of Jefferson” (Nebeker 3). Furthermore, the narrator’s identity keeps changing from our to we to they which generally implies that the narrator assumes different perspectives in telling the story. Whoever the narrator is, he/she assumes the identity assumed in the first person pronoun “we”. This enables the narrator to attribute thoughts and ideas that might be his own to the whole town. This helps them turn personal ideas into what the whole town commonly believed (spark notes par 1). This fascinating character of the narrator would more be fitting to be called “first people” and not “first person”. By referring to himself as “we” at times, the narrator speaks for men, at times women, and other times for both men and women. The view lets the reader know that there are three generations: the generation of Miss Emilys father, Miss Emilys generation, and the generation that is younger than Miss Emily (Smoop par 1). The narrator’s identity is further disguised as he/she speaks about when the town discovered the body of Homer. He/she states that “already we knew” that an upstairs bedroom had been sealed up (mhs.vic.edu.au p5). The mystery here is that he/she does not say how they did know about the room (spark notes par 2) . An immediate shift occurs when the narrator uses third person plural when he says “They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.” (purdue.edu p7). Here the narrator distances himself or herself from the town whose thoughts, ideas, actions, and speculations he/she had accepted until now. He does this as if he did not approve of the act of breaking the door. The speed is of the shift is even amazing as in the next passage he goes back to his identity as “we” (purdue.edu p7). This gives a slight hint on his identity. Whoever the narrator was he had Miss Emily dear at heart regardless of her desperate and inhuman act. Though the town tagged her to be weird, and later escalated to horror, the narrator shows some sympathy, one thing that stands out is that when the door was force open there was a symbolic turning away of the head (spark notes par 2). Though the narrator’s identity is still elusive, through his eyes the reader gets informed about who Emily was. We know how she lived, who she was close to, how long she lived and even her profession. No one really knew Emily as told by the narrator, she seldom went out, never got married and passed on at the age of 74 (Watkins 509; Anderson par 2). The narrator’s point of view Generally speaking, the narrator sympathizes with Miss Emily although he/she never condemns her; instead the narrator takes uses an unbashing and ungrudging tone. The narrator admires how Miss Emily puts to use her status to get away with things such as keeping away the city council or even acquiring poison. He also admires the fact that she uses her status to keep away from paying tax and or even getting down dealing with lower class people. The narrator brings to our attention the fact that despite the fact that Miss Emily esteems herself highly, she falls in love with a lower class person in the form of Homer Barron. Worse still is the fact that Homer is a Yankee. This brings out the irony even further since she distances herself from the gross world only to be desperately tangled with a low life Yankee (Cliffs notes par 3). The narrators at some point feels that Miss Emily’s family, the Griersons, "held themselves a little too high." (Purdue.edu p3), something that quickly disappears as he/she shows admiration when he/she says, "We had long thought of them as a tableau" (Purdue.edu p3). This restores the admiration as he compares them to a work of art not affordable to the common. The narrator is also almost caught admiring the fact that Miss Emily was single at 30, stating "We were not pleased exactly, but vindicated." But when Emily’s father dies, his vague feeling come out clear saying "At last they could pity Miss Emily." (Purdue.edu p 3). The narrator quickly shifts from admiring Miss Emily to having a slight gladness on her situation and again to having pity on her refusal to bury her father immediately after his death. The narrator states that, "We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will." (Purdue.edu p3). The narrator uses the word cling to prepare the reader to Miss Emily’s later cling to Homer when he dies (cliffsnotes par 5). When Homer appears, initially the narrator becomes the voice of the town in gladness, something that quickly disappears and he becomes displeased when Homer, a low class Northerner puts himself in a position to be equal to Miss Emily, a southern Aristocrat. What the narrator cannot understand is how a high class lady such as Miss Emily could bend to a level so low as that of a northern lowlife Yankee labourer so much as "to forget noblesse oblige" (purdue.edu p4). Simply put what the narrator feel is that Miss Emily should have just been kind to Homer but not to get sexually entangled with him (cliffsnotes par 6). When the town’s eyes are open that Miss Emily is entangled in adultery, the narrators view about both Miss Emily and Homer becomes distinct from that of the town. As if to be puffed up he says Miss Emily "carried her head high enough — even when we believed that she was fallen." (mhs.vic.edu.au p 3). In a different manner compared to the town the narrator seems proud at the dignity with which miss Emily went through hard times. This gives the reader an insight about the characters of the southerners who even when going through adversity hold their heads high. For instance miss Emily in her haughtiness asks for poison from the dealer, when the dealer tries to inquire her need for the poison she looks at him with "her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye," (mhs.vic.edu.au p 4). Among the southerners it was considered vulgar to inquire someone’s privacy, though it is obvious at this point that the narrators values are questionable (cliffsnotes par 7). In a nutshell, the narrator can be seen as both speaking for and against the town. The narrator stands as passing judgements both for and against Miss Emily as well us giving an outside opinion. From the onset he seems so young and moved by Miss Emily’s classy yet arrogant status. Later the narrator is portrayed as to be age mates with Miss Emily to an extent that he gives insights on what miss Emily had done when alive. As the story ends, the narrator who seems to have grown old with her displays her sympathetically with compassion as he tells her strange life (Cliffsnotes par 8). When Faulkner uses “we” as the narrator, it draws the reader closer to the story. The narrator becomes the town that judges miss Emily as a monument adorned and too good for the low lives yet ends up falling with such (Cliffsnotes par 9). Works cited Cliffsnotes. Summary and Analysis: "A Rose for Emily" The Narrators Point of View. Faulkners Short Stories. n.d. web. July 18, 2014. http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/faulkners-short-stories/summary-and-analysis-a-rose-for-emily/the-narrators-point-of-view Nebeker, Helen. Emilys Rose of Love: Thematic Implications of Point of View in Faulkners "A Rose for Emily". The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1970), pp. 3-13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346461 mhs.vic.edu.au. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. n.d. web. July 18, 2014. resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/creating/downloads/A_Rose_for_Emily.pdf Purdue.edu. A Rose for Emily ~ William Faulkner. n.d. web. July 18, 2014http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rebeccal/lit/238f11/pdfs/Emily_Faulkner.pdf Smoop. A Rose for Emily. n.d. web. July 18, 2014. http://www.shmoop.com/a-rose-for-emily/narrator-point-of-view.html Sparknotes. The Narrator. A rose for Emily. n.d. web. July 18, 2014. http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/a-rose-for-emily/section3.rhtml Watkins, Floyd. The Structure of "A Rose for Emily". Modern Language Notes, Vol. 69, No. 7 (Nov., 1954), pp. 508-510 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3039622 Read More