A ROSE FOR EMILY
ByWilliam Faulkner

Author
 William Cuthbert Faulkner
 September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962
 an American writer and Nobel Prize
laureate from Oxford, Mississippi.
 Other famous novels are The Sound and the
fury (1929), As i lay dying (1930),Light in
August(1932), and Absalom,Absalom!(1936)

Point of View
 First Person (Peripheral Narrator)
 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.

Setting
 A creepy old house in Jefferson,
Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 1861-
1933 (approximately)

Characters
 Miss Emily Grierson
 An old maid living with her servantTobe.
 Had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of
hereditary obligation upon the town.
 Went ill after fathers death.
 Tobe
 Miss Emily’s servant– Gardener/ Cook
 Left on miss Emily’s wake, and never came back.

 Homer Barron
 Involved with Miss Emily.
 The man Miss Emily murdered.
 Jeffersonians don't like him because he's a rough-
talking, charismatic northerner and an overseer in
town working on a sidewalk-paving project
 Had sexuality issues- 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.

 Miss Emily’s Father
 A very strict father
 Drove away all the men trying to court miss Emily
 Colonel Sartoris
 Former mayor of the town
 Relieved miss Emily of her tax obligations
 "fathered the edict that no Negro woman should
appear on the streets without an apron"

 Judge Stevens
 "Dammit, sir, will you accuse a lady to her face of
smelling bad?"
 Old Lady Wyatt
 Miss Emily’s aunt who is described as
“completely crazy” by the townsmen
 The Cousins
 Miss Emily’s two female cousins
 Called in by the townsmen in order to stop miss
Emily from dating Homer Barron

Plot Analysis
 Initial Situation
 In the initial situation, we move from Miss Emily
Grierson’s funeral attended by everybody in town,
to this strange little story about taxes.

 Conflict
 New generation lawmen asks miss Emily to pay her
taxes
 Father’s death- miss Emily can’t accept the fact
 Miss Emily met Homer Baron
 Complication
 The town was horrible to Miss Emily when she
started dating Homer Baron
 Miss Emily’s cousins came to town

 Climax
 Things didn’t workout for miss Emily’s plans so
she decides with a radical plan.
 Miss Emily buys an arsenic at the drugstore
 Suspense
 Miss Emily’s act of buying an arsenic spread
through the town
 Gossips if miss Emily and Homer are married or
not
 Homer was last seen entering miss Emily’s home
at night

 Denouement
 Miss Emily’s life between Homer’s disapperance
and her death
 The mystery of her life
 Conclusion
 The Bed
 The Rotting Corpse
 The Hair (miss Emily’s)