– “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

– Retelling in first person narrative as Homer Barron

“The Late Truth”

I go by the name of Homer Barron. I am a Foreman from the North with a rather large body size with a dark skin complexion, a booming voice, and light-colored eyes. I am a gruff and demanding boss of my company. I consider myself accepted by the town because I was able to win many admirers in Jefferson because of my gregarious nature and good sense of humor. 

It was a scorching hot summer day on the job. Me and my men were hard at work on a sidewalk-paving project in town working towards completing by the end of the week and move on the the next job, because you know what they say “time is money,” well at least thats what I always put my belief in, and it makes sense doesn’t it?

The first day on this project, as me and my men begin digging and shoveling into the ground breaking the concrete bit my bit, the jackhammers prying the hard cement open like a nutcracker breaking open a wall nut so effortlessly making a loud cracking noise like an intense thunder storm rolling into town.

It was part of the job as foreman to inform the locals of our work so I went door to door on the block to let them know that we will be working on the concrete floors not to be alarmed by the noise and apologize for the inconvenience that we may cause. This is how I came across the most beautiful creature that I have ever set my eyes on.  She had beautiful young lady with long brown hair, a beautiful pair of brown eyes that glistened in the light and velvety smooth skin. 

I formally introduced myself and informed her that there will be a lot of noise for the next few hours. A few days later I was taking her around town in my chariot and we were spending a lot of time with each other. I was sure that the towns people were talking about us because lets face it, a wealthy and beautiful young lady like Emily was not usually seen with a man of my stature.

Emily and I would go on dates every day spending countless amount of hours with each other even though it was frowned upon by the neighborhood. I know for a fact that when we pass the towns people you could hear chatter and I know it was talk about the fact that I am but a simple foreman lucky enough to have the pleasure of taking the wealthy and beautiful Ms. Emily out.

Regardless of what anyone has to say about our relationship I enjoy the time spent with Emily and I believe that Miss Emily feels the same towards me as well.

From what I’ve been told Emily does not like the company of others very much. She seemed to be a very mysterious person before I was introduced into her life. People say that no one has been inside her home since her father passed. She didn’t seem to take good care of her home, there was dust and garbage everywhere. She seemed to be in somewhat of a rut but she seemed to be much more cheerful once I introduced my self to her.

Emily was always skeptical of me coming into her home but one afternoon she invited me over for dinner so I blissfully made my way over to her home. After dinner emily asked me if I wanted a further tour of the upstairs rooms and I agreed. She brought me to the attack room, looked like any normal old room, bed night counter with a bunch of little trinkets. i then took the last gulp of the wine that was on my glass from dinner and little that I know that this would be the last liquid that I would ever consume. Complete feeling in my body had vanished and the room faded to black.

Comparison

“A Rose for Emily” is told in third person limited perspective. Third person limited could be perceived as being told from the viewpoint character. It can be used very objectively, showing what is actually happening without the filter of the protagonist’s personality, which can allow the author to reveal information that the protagonist doesn’t know or realize.

The narrator has more information about Miss Emily, her father and the town that the main character would ever reveal to the reader.

When a main character is the narrator, the story is told from a particular perspective, in this case, we would probably be even more sympathetic towards Emily than we are through the narrator’s version.

We certainly would get to know Miss Emily’s heart better.  The story does not give us insight into her thinking, only that we assume she murdered Homer Barron so that he would never leave her.  We don’t get to hear Emily’s thoughts through the narrator, that would be a nice touch. 

But the essence of horror would be minimized if Miss Emily told the story, we would see the whole experience through her eyes, she would probably rationalize her behavior.  

However I chose to take a completely different approach in telling this story. In my version of this story, “The Late Truth,” I chose to go with first person narration. First person narrative is a point of view where the story is narrated by one character at a time. This character may be speaking about him/herself or sharing events that he/she is experiencing.

While this character may share details about others in the story, we are only told what the speaker knows. An author may switch from character to character, but still use first person narrative. This way, we may learn about what other characters think and feel, but we are still limited in our knowledge because we must rely on what the character shares.

As a reader, we are not only limited by what the character shares, but what the character knows. He/she may not have all the information or knowledge about events. We would also not know what other characters are thinking. 

In “The Late Truth,” because we only see Homer Barron’s Point of view and know only his thoughts we only get one side of the story and it is very limited in information but it is interesting to get into Homer Barron’s head as the story unfolds because he was unknowing of the events that was about to take place and had no knowledge of the townspeople reaction to him and Emily’s relationship. It is certainly an interesting twist to the original story.

Thesis Statement

In the original version of “A Rose for Emily,” the story is told in third person limited perspective narration which means that the narrator is basically just telling the story from a wide open perspective. The readers are allowed to see everything that is happening within this small town. This includes inside Emily’s home, the entire town and Homer Barron’s actions. This type of Narration is not very limited at all but in my retelling i decided to go with a completely different approach. I chose to retell “A Rose for Emily” in first person narration from Homer Barron’s point of view in the story. Although this type of narration is very limited but it is also an interesting way to get a different side of the story that your not able to see with the original story. It is very interesting because with this new point of view we are able to get into Homer Barron’s head and understand his emotions towards Emily in a deeper sense where as with the original version of the story, because it is told in third person narration we are only able to just vaguely understand how Homer feels about Emily only by sight and facial expressions but with my version, because it is told in first person narration we are given more details about Homers feelings towards Emily because we are able to see his thoughts.