Monthly Archives: February 2015

Homework, Week 2

Analysis of Power “A Rose For Emily”

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In order to write an analysis on power one must first know the definition. Power is the right to control the lives of people and objects. We know by the narration of “A Rose for Emily” that the Grierson last name had control in the town of Jefferson. She was able to get away with not paying taxes. According to Emily she didn’t owe any taxes. The tax collectors were swiftly escorted out by Tobe her servant, which proves she’s used to getting her way. Another example of Emily’s power was from the rotten smell coming from her home. The Mayor was hesitant to approach Emily with any concerns so instead he took it upon himself and had her yard disenfected with lemons.

The people of Jefferson feared Emily for some reason unfortunately we dont get any facts or inside Emily’s mind. Her life affected theirs. She isolated herself from society people were assuming she was going to kill herself. When Homer Barron came into town Emily resurfaced, that had the town on edge. Some ladies went to the church to inform the congregation that unwed Emily was hanging around with a man, becoming a bad example to the young people. She enjoyed Homer’s company, she did so much she never let him leave continuing her power and control in the story. Homer was powerless he was just enjoying his time with a women and his life was taken away because Emily didnt allow him to leave.

We know Emily poisoned Homer because of her outside affairs, she went to the doctor and asked for arsenic and Homer was never seen again. Well that was until Emily died. When news went around that Emily passed people were once again curious. Some went to her home to pay their respects and look around the home that no one has seen for decades. They entered Emily’s bedroom a corpse was found and beside the corpse was a pillow with a head imprint and a gray strand of hair. Emily was sleeping with a dead man’s body.

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Week 2

“A Rose for Emily” Power Dynamic Analysis

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The narrator in Flaukner story was one of the town’s people who knew Emily. The narrator lived and experienced actions as Emily was alive. The narrator was aware of many things happened that time and that what makes the story detailed and very powerful. When Emily’s father was alive, he was the character with power in beginning of the story. He was keeping everyone away from Emily, which caused her this mental illness that came form loneliness. Afterwards, I believe Emily was having the largest portion of power in the story. First of all, she didn’t pay taxes and she always ignores and disclaims the tax notices.  In the passage, “They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff’s office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape,” (Page I, p.4) the author mentions that the sheriff has sent Emily multiple notices and even asked her to reach his office at her convenience. That show the position of power Miss Emily had.

Miss Emily’s power can be demonstrated in the passage where the city authorities were trying to get in touch with her and “She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt,” (Page I, p.7).

According to my understanding, Miss Emily was that type of person who was living her separate world applying her own ideas and rules on her life.

 

 

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Homework, Week 2

Power Dynamic with Life

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Choose (and include in your post) a passage or a few related passages that highlight some aspect of the power dynamics at play in the story. Who has power, who doesn’t, how do they interact, how to they negotiate their positions of powerfulness or lack of power?  Other factors to consider: how does narration style, point of view, setting, characterization or other elements of fiction play a role in the power dynamic you’re analyzing?  Much of what was raised in our online discussion touched on power, but in very different ways. If there is a different topic that you would like to address, either see how it intersects with this topic of power, or raise it in our discussion either on the site or in Wednesday’s class

The main character Emily has power, yet she can not help the things that happen in her life. This happens again and again in the story. In the beginning, Emily has the power to stop people from making her do something about her house smelling. This can be displayed with the Judge Stevens repeated failed to confront Emily about the house. Instead of talking to her like the neighbors suggested, he sent people to lime the house on her behalf. Later in the story, Emily has the power to refuse to pay tax (partly because of her father’s influence). She ‘vanquished them’ like she did for the smell.

Another example could be seen in this passage:

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. “Why, of course,” the druggist said. “If that’s what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.” Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn’t come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: “For rats.”

Even though the druggist knew for a fact nothing required something as strong as arsenic, Emily had the power to make the druggist give it to her anyways.

The only thing she was powerless for was when her father died, and her lover left her. In order to prevent this powerless feeling, she preserved Homer Barron’s love by keeping him by her side forever.

Even more so, people are always whispering about Emily, gossiping about Emily, and talking about Emily. The narration of the story focuses on Emily in a way that tells us that everyone in town also focuses on Emily. This gives the readers a feeling that she was a powerful person, and that she was important. The main power dynamic was between Emily and life.

Ultimately, this was an amazing read! Love the twist and the though provoking writing!

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Glossary

vanquish

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In ” A Rose for Emily” part II, paragraph 1.

Vanquish

– to overcome in battle :  subdue completely
– to defeat in a conflict or contest
– to gain mastery over (an emotion, passion, or temptation) <vanquish your fear>

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vanquish

Example:

They were vanquished in a battle.  Means they lost the battle.

In ” A Rose for Emily” part II, paragraph 1.

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Homework, Week 2

Analysis of Power in “A Rose for Emily”

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In “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily is shown to have more power than frailties. Miss Emily’s power is first seen with her not paying her taxes. During Colonel Sartoris lifetime, Miss Emily was “remitted” for her taxes (Page I, p.3). However, a decade had passed since the Colonel’s death and she still believed his made up story of her father “lending money to the town” (Page I, p.3). When tax notices were sent to her from a new generation of state officials, she refused to pay. The city authorities also came to her home to confront her for her unpaid taxes but she denied the charges and drove them out of her home by stating that “she had no taxes in Jefferson” (Page I, p.8). The taxes were meant for negro women that refused to wear an apron on the streets of Jefferson (Page I, p.3), however, in the time period this story was written, I do not believe Miss Emily could get away with not paying her taxes without getting arrested by the city officials. If Miss Emily was an African American in that period of racial divide and tension, she would be severally punished for not paying her taxes. However, Faulkner addressed Miss Emily as “Miss Emily,” he never called her a “negro or nigga” woman except for the black man that was her housekeeper/maid. So, a question still remains on whether Miss Emily was an African American? Because she got away with not paying taxes until the day she died.

Another way of seeing Miss Emily’s power is when her home started to reek of an unpleasant odor (Page II, p. 3-10). The smell was so bad that people in her town, including her eighty-year-old neighbor would complain to the town’s Judge (Page II, p.4). However, the state officials refused to confront Miss Emily openly, so, four unknown men living in the town secretly sprinkled lime in her cellar door and in all the outbuildings of her home to deodorize the smell (Page II, p.11).

Therefore, I am still unsure whether Miss Emily was an African American because the town did not treat her as an outcast of society (which African Americans were seen as in that time period) but of “a duty; a care, and a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Page I, p.3). The town officials never threaten her with imprisonment, fines, or violations; they saw that they were coming on her territory and they were not allowed to cross. She was so impervious, that she even got away with murdering her unknown suitor (which I believe to be Homer Barron) with poison and keeping the dead corpse as her sense of disillusioned comfort. The only frailty that Miss Emily exhibits in the story was her father refusing her to have a mate. Her father would “drive every young man away from her,” (Page II, p.12) “causing her to still be single at age thirty” and all alone (Page II, p.12).

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Uncategorized

A Rose for Emily

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‘’A rose for Emily’’ is about a woman who killed her lover, isolated herself and lived with her lover’s corpse for the rest of her life in her little own world. I believe that the root cause of this horrible tragedy is Mr. Grierson. Miss Emily was raised under her father’s strict rules and values that she did not seem to have any closed friends and any socialization through these years. When she grew up she was also prevented to see or date to any young men in town from her father because he thought that no one in town was suit for his daughter.  Therefore, for Emily, her father and her house was her own world and there was nothing else in her life. I think that prevent her ability to adapt or accept the change later in her life and she lived in her own little world. That is why she couldn’t accept her father’s dead and refused to bury him, refused to pay taxes, refused to fasten house numbers and attach mailbox. After her father died, she met Mrs. Barron, a construction worker who came to town for paving the sidewalks and was also the only man that she met in her life beyond her father. After she dreamed and planned about her wedding, she figured out that Mr. Barron was about to abandon her. She couldn’t lose her loved one again like her father dead body was forced to bury, so she poisoned Mr. Barron and secretly keep his dead body in house with her. I believe she has been isolated since she was young and her house is her own world and I think this is why she wanted to live with her loved one in her little own world either alive or not.

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Glossary, Week 1

Genial

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Genial adj –
1. of or relating to marriage
2. inborn, native
3.  favorable to growth

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genial
Paragraph 5 in A Jury of Her Peers.
“He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff – a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals.”

The law was sort of native to the sheriff. It can emphasized on hos he was a heavy man with a big voice and that he could get himself elected sheriff. It also says that he makes up for Mrs. Peter lack of resemblance as the sheriff’s wife by being extremely like a sheriff himself.

 

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Glossary, Week 2

Temerity

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Temerity, noun
1. excessive confidence or boldness; audacity.
2. rash or restless act

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/temerity

A Rose for EMily: Section II Paragraph 1, Page 2.
“After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man, a young man then – going in and out with a market basket”

The sentence before says that she went out little and that no one saw her. Some ladies had the confidence to call her even though no one else dared to, just asking her servant for information.

 

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Week 2

A Rose for Emily

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The best representation of who has power in the story is in section 4. In this section the story is told in the point of view of the people that live in the town and the person who has all the power is Emily because the towns people saw Emily with Homer Barron and when they found out they were not marrying they forced the Baptist minister to go interview Emily.

“Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister–Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal– to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister’s wife wrote to Miss Emily’s relations in Alabama.”

This shows that Emily holds the power because the town people sent a Baptist minister to her in effort to call her out, but since Emily was Episcopal (meaning that Emily has relation to a church that is control of a Bishop) the Baptist could not do anything to her. Another part that shows the towns people have no power is when after they failed with the Baptist, the Baptist’s wife had to write the Emily’s relatives who lived in Alabama to go over to Emily.

Through out the entire section 4 it talks about Emily and her relationship with Homer Barron and gives hints on how Emily has the power in the relationship between them. the first hint is when the towns people assume that they were getting married, but Homer said that they were not getting married. It was shown later that even though Homer did not want to get married, Emily had a different mindset on that and was preparing for the wedding by buying a ring and suit for Homer.

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Glossary

macabre

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macabre (adj) – involving death or violence in a way that is strange, frightening, or unpleasant. (by Merriam Webster)

source: Merriam Webster. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/macabre

Found in “A Rose for Emily” section 5, second paragraph, second sentence

Text: They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men –some in their brushed Confederate uniforms–on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.

The town came to Miss Emily’s funeral. The old men were wearing Confederate uniforms and talking about Miss Emily as if they believe “they had danced with her and courted her.” And the ladies who came were talking in a hissing sound (sibilant) and in gruesome and terrifying way(macabre).

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