Category Archives: William Faulkner

Cuckolded

noun

a man whose wife is unfaithful; the husband of an adulteress

source;: Merriam Webster dictionary

A came across this word while reading “A Rose for Emily” it is found in the second to last paragraph.

Based on the meaning of this would I think it was referring to Emily cheating on Homer with perhaps death.

 

 

Change of Narration in “A Rose For Emily”

Project Part 1 -> First Person (Emily’s Perspective) 

   One day, I decided to go to the arsenic and wanted to buy some rat poison. The rule in this town is that whenever someone buys poison, they have to say why they are buying it and for what they are going to use it. Due to the previous dilemmas of my father dying and me not feeling like myself, I Just stared at him without saying a word. He also was looking at me with his big round eyes, but in a few minutes he wrapped up the poison and decided to give it to me. Without any extra words, I left and started to walk down the street.I knew that people around me were all thinking that I bought this poison for myself and that I was going to kill myself. But those fools did not know a single thing. Throughout my whole life everything was chose for me, whether or not something happened depended on my father’s wishes. After my father’s death, the only thing of value that I have left is my family title. A family title that is honored throughout the town and no one dares to go against me.

   Before I never had a choice to choose on who to love or who to care for, but for some reason Homer Barron’ really stuck to me and now I feel like I need to keep him forever. This poison that is in my hands will make sure to keep him next to me until my death. This time, no one will choose for me or make decisions without my acknowledgement. This is something that I purely settled on myself. That same night I decided to invite Homer over, and while he was occupied I put some droplets for the poison in his glass. In a few minutes he started to feel unwell. At that time he was talking about how we can leave this old town and move to somewhere quite. We would have a happy family and a house. My eyes met his and I started feeling this emotion of regret. Maybe I should not have done this, maybe I should also drink this poison, to join him in the afterlife. Right as I thought that, Homer fell to the ground and ceased breathing. I brought him upstairs and put him on the bed. This was the best time to do this because, the word spread that he was leaving town. So nothing would be suspicious at all.I stopped letting people into my home, unless it was the servant who brought the food for me. Each morning and night I laid next to his body and treated him like a living person. Years went by and time came for me to also lie down next to him. Whenever the town find out that I have died, they will probably break through all the doors and  find Homer stuck to the bed after all these years. Whatever they will think about me won’t matter anymore, I was finally able to do something for myself without and third party helping me or forcing me. I guess you can say that our love was eternal.

Project Part 2-> Reasoning for changing perspective

Throughout the story of “A Rose for Emily” the narrator that is telling the story is not the protagonist but someone from the town or one of Emily’s servants. Due to this, the narrator cannot be too trustworthy because they are telling the story from their perspective and from what the think happens/happened. This is exactly why i chose to write a part of the story as a homodiegetic narrator. In other the narrator that takes part in the story itself. One of the biggest changes with using the narrator as the protagonist is that the ending and the start of the story can vary. In the original story Emily dies and then we get to imagine and see through the eyes of the town like we did throughout  the whole story what they found in her house. But with the part that i rewrote, the story cuts off after Emily’s death. I could have added like an imaginative ending, of how she tells us about what happened after her death, but that would seem highly absurd. Changing the perspective from the town to Emily, we are able to see and experience the story in more detail and a bit differently.

As stated before, most of the information we learn about Emily and her family are from the town folk or maybe even the servants that took care of Emily after her father’s death. Everything we hear are just speculations and opinions from others. For example when Emily buys the rat poison, the narrator says this “So the next day we all said,She will kill herself”. This opinion was plausible but incorrect. When I rewrote the story through Emily’s point of view, I made sure to import this part and show that no one actually knew anything about her plans and her feelings. They didn’t even have a clue that she will use the poison on Homer Barron. When looking through the Emily’s eyes, we get to actually feel this sense of lost hope and desperation. After her father’s death, she could not accept it for couple of weeks. Losing someone that you knew your whole life can have a huge toll on your body, mentally and physically. Even though she also felt some relief of losing the person who was controlling her life, she still felt some emotions of depression. When we are told the story, we are barely shown this side of her, everyone thinks that things will get better, she will get married and move on. Sadly something was different about her and no one was able to figure out what.

With the protagonist being the narrator, we can see most of the thoughts and ideas that come to her head. So we are not just sitting there wondering what would happen. We are actually also involved in the poisoning plot and know why she is buying the poison. This quote from the original story; “ the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years”, left us with a huge gap. On the other hand it does drag us deeper into the mysterious plot without knowing all the details, but nothing is better than experiencing the story “first-hand” .

Going back to the different endings that I mentioned; there are tons of ways to end the story differently and uniquely. In this case because I chose to write the narration as the protagonist Emily, it changed the way I can end the story. Instead of seeing the full aftermath, we get cut-off after her death. We don’t really learn too much on what happens afterwards. By losing this ending, we gain mostly all of the thoughts of Emily. We can see clearly the plans that she has in stored, and the motives behind her actions. We don’t have to be guessing like the towns people on what will she do next. Then again while we gain all of that, we lose the suspense. So it all depends on how the reader would prefer for the story to be written or portrayed. Whether they want to all the facts to be kept hidden from them or be involved in the story and see everything through the eyes of the main protagonist.

The stories might vary with their endings and whether or not there is suspense, but in the end everyone gets the general idea on what the story is about and witness the acts that Emily commits. Once again it all depends on the reader, I prefer to actually be involved in the story fully, and be part of Emily’s train of thought. Also, while we imagine the story from the towns perspective, we get all the information from what they think and their opinions(somewhat bias). If the story would have been told as I portrayed it, then our experiences would have been a bit different.

Cabal

Cabal (noun) – the contrived schemes of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government); also : a group engaged in such schemes.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cabal

From “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

“We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily’s coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily’s allies to help circumvent the cousins.)”

Here, the author uses the word cabal to show how all the people were trying to help Miss Emily avoid her cousins. Since cabal means to unite, the townspeople united to find a way to make the cousins leave.

 

Finishing with Faulkner; moving along to Gilman

Three of you have volunteered to post for Monday’s class (meaning post by end-of-day on Friday). Are there two or three more volunteers to post as well? If so, please respond here with a comment letting me know you intend to be one of our posters. Everyone should respond to your classmates’ posts by Monday at 10am. Try to generate a conversation, rather than just a series of agreements!

If you need to remind yourself of what we’re doing, re-read this semester’s blogging assignment.

If you want to know more about what I’ve asked you to think about, read all previous homework assignment posts, or your classmates’ homework posts.

Here are some thoughts to get our conversations started:

An unreliable narrator is a narrator that the reader cannot trust to be truthful or fully depicting the story. Use that term to consider any of the narrators we have encountered so far, using quotations from texts to support your argument.

Choose three quotations from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” that convince you that the protagonist is an unreliable narrator and explain why for each.

Choose three quotations from “The Yellow Wall-Paper” that present the married couple’s relationship, and explain what you understand about John as a character, and about the protagonist as a narrator for the way she depicts John.

We might use the words utopia and dystopia to describe the two short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that we read. What do those words mean? Which story is utopian and which is dystopian? Why?

How do the different settings come into play in these two short stories by Gilman? In what ways might we read the settings as similar but the inhabitants of those worlds as different?

Is Malda a reliable narrator in “The Cottagette”? why or why not? Incorporate quotations into your answer to support your argument.

What unfinished business do we have about “A Rose for Emily”? Use this opportunity to focus our attention on a particular passage or series of passages that you want to insist we get to before we move on to focus more on other texts.

What unfinished business do we have about any of our texts from this semester? Use this opportunity to focus our attention on a particular passage or series of passages that you want to insist we get to before we move on to focus more on other texts.

I’m very interested in reading about your thoughts on these two stories next week!

Errand

Errand (archaic)

Errand – an oral message entrusted to a person

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/errand

I have encountered this word from the reading “A Rose For Emily”. The word was located at I page 1/6, last paragraph, and it quoted,”Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.” After understanding the meaning of this word I can say that it means while the narrator was describing Emily dead corpse the people say their prayer towards Emily. Some what like a goodbye message.

“A Rose for Emily”

Why didn’t Emily marry Homer Barron or any other suitor after her father’s death?

In the story of “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner, since Emily’s family was upper-class level, Emily’s father never wanted to let her daughter find herself a good suitor. Maybe he thought, no one was good enough to marry his daughter because Emily was very kind and soft girl.

” So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.”

When Emily’s father died, she decided to date with Homer Barron but she could not marry him. Was it maybe because of the town people gossiped saying that Homer Barron is not a match for her or was it, Emily, herself who got used to not being with someone else. But, she loved Homer Barron, she loved him so much that she ended up murdering him because she knew she couldn’t live with him yet she couldn’t live without him as well. Meaning, it was better for her that his dead body being next to her, she felt like he’s always with her. I think she is psychologically not right.

jalousies

Blindsjalousies (noun) – a blind with adjustable horizontal slats for admitting light and air while excluding direct sun and rain.

i found this word in “A Rose for Emily”
by William Faulkner (1930)

“This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and
satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the
thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”

now that i understand that this is a shutter i get a better understanding of the sentence. the blinds were stopping the sun from coming in so it gives you a sense of the setting.

 

 

 

“A Rose for Emily” discussion

In “A Rose for Emily”:

How do we know what we know?

Why are we told what we’re told?

Who is the narrator? 1st person, “our”–a collective of the townspeople

Focalization: who is the focalizer: whose focus do we see? this is the point-of-view character

different kinds of first-person narrators: homodiegetic (first-person character narrator) and autodiegetic (first-person protagonist narrator)

do we know more than the narrator? is that possible?

When/where does Emily exercise her power?

What do we find at the end of the story?

 

What I know and want to know about A Rose for Emily

What do you want to know more about when reading “A Rose for Emily”?

While reading A Rose for Emily I wanted to know why the author started off the story by saying that Miss Emily Grierson died. This way of starting the story off in my point of view is to set up for the rest of the story. It’s like a preview to what will come later. The author tells us that she dies and then starts to tell us about Miss Emily Grierson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor–he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity.

Also I wanted to know more about what Miss Emily did as a occupation.

 

Inextricable

Inextricable (adjective)

Inextricable – forming a maze or tangle from which it is impossible to get free.

sources: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inextricable

I have encountered this word while reading the story of “A Rose For Emily”. It is located on section five, on the the last page, third paragraph, also on page 6/6. This word was in a sentences “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patent and biding dust.” Now that I have understand the meaning of this word, inextricable means that you can’t escape from something. Just like it was said in the story “had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay;” is telling us that he can not be separated, or escape from where he is. Which can also be trying to say that he can not escape his death.

Image result for cant escape from death

Southern Gothic writing in “A Rose for Emily”

What does gothic mean?  What is Southern Gothic, specifically? Wikipedia might be a good place to get a definition and explanation of what Southern Gothic is. How is “A Rose for Emily” an example of this? You might add that as your vocabulary word as well.

There are many genres that cover different writing styles throughout the history of literature. These genres help with identifying the themes and context of literature, which can be found in William Faulkners “A Rose for Emily”. One example of this is Southern Gothic.

Southern Gothic is known to be a subgenre of Gothic literature containing dark themes. The subgenre was common during the early 19th century and much of it stems from views and events of the American South. It covered controversial and grotesque characters, often known for its dark humor and ironic writing. These fictional stories are made from the inspiration of the Souths past of slavery, decay, and societal issues. William Faulkner is well known for writing in this subgenre and this story shows elements of it.

In the story itself, we learn about Emily from an outsiders perspective, us readers being fed information only from those who seem to know her. Within the story, rumors are spread based on the actions she takes.

“So THE NEXT day we all said, ‘She will kill herself’; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, ‘She will marry him.'”

There are expectations for her to commit suicide, believing that it would be the best. This is one of the central themes as the story starts with Emily’s death, and further along the reader learns about how the death of her father affects her mentally. As she ages, her mental state becomes more unstable and she hides away from the eyes of society. The story fits in with the subgenre as it relates to the decaying home Emily lives in along with a transformation that leads to the worst. Her life shows a twisted form of reality, ending with her corpse being found in her bedroom.