"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner (1897-1962)

Aim:

• What is the significance of the narrator’s use of "we" to tell the story?
• What is the significance of the title?
• What does Emily and her family represent for the town people and the narrator?
• What values does the narrator appear to hold?
•  How does it affect your experience of the story?
   

Motivational Activities:

1. Who is William Faulkner?
2. What issues are brought up in Criticism 1 (Criticism 2 Criticism 3 ) on the short story? What issues seem to be interesting  and probing?

Elicited answer:

• Was is is.
• Why didn't Emily move on with her life instead she stopped the time?
• Why is the town's collective voice so influential?
• Who determines the values for the town? What makes the town so repressive ,powerful, and destructive?
• Why does Emily hold on to her father even after his death? To Homer Barron? To her old beliefs and values? Her dignity?
• Why does the narrator give accolades to Emily while the town goes against her?

Do Now: In your journal, please respond :

• In what circumstances do people hold on to the past? What consequences could it lead to?
• What do you consider those who go against the time and trend (i.e. peer pressure) and follow what they think is right?

Activities:

• Pre-Reading Pre-Reading

• Vocabulary:

• remit – pardon	tableau – scene
  gilt – gold-edged	cabal – secret intrigue
  pallid – pale	impervious – not able to pass through
  hue – color/shade	acrid – bitter
  temerity – courage	thwart – to keep from happening; to stand in the way
  teeming – swarming	august – magnificent; inspiring awe
  diffident – shy	august – magnificent; inspiring awe
  encroach-TRESPASS	perpetuity-eternity
  obliterate-remove	deputation- a group of people
  tarnish-dull	teem-to be filled with
  diffident-hesitant	slunk-lurk
  imperviousness-IMPENETRABLE	divulge-reveal
  circumvent-to hem in	acrid-bitter
  deprecation – derogatory (belittle)	cuckold – husband of an adulterous wife

• Characters: Emily Grierson , Colonel Sartoris , Tobe , Judge Stevens ,Homer Barron

• Study Questions:

  1. What metaphor is used to describe Miss Emily in the first paragraph?
  2. How is the house personified in the second paragraph?
  3. What had Colonel Sartoris done for Miss Emily in 1894?
  4.  What did the next generation of town leaders do on the first of the year?
  5. How does Faulkner describe Miss Emily in the sixth paragraph? 
  6. What are the neighbors complaining about?  What does Judge Stevens say probably has caused it?
  7. What did Miss Emily tell her visitors the day after her father’s death?
  8. Why did the townspeople not think she was crazy for this?
  9. Who began to date Miss Emily in Part III?  Why was  he in town?
  10. What did the townspeople think of Miss Emily and her new boyfriend?
  11. Miss Emily is thirty at this time and holds her head high in spite of the rumors she must be aware of.  How does she show she has kept her dignity  (thinking she is  better than the other townspeople) when she visits the druggist?
  12. In Part IV, who do some of the ladies go to see about Miss Emily’s situation?  Why?
  13. What does Miss Emily do that makes the townspeople think that she and her boyfriend have wed?
  14. When was the last time the townspeople saw the boyfriend/husband?
  15. Why had the men sprinkled the lime around her house in Part II?
  16. When Miss Emily was about forty, what had she done to earn money? 
  17. In Part V, who returns to hold Miss Emily’s funeral?
  18. There is a room upstairs that no one has seen for forty years.  After Miss Emily’s funeral, the door to it is broken down.  What do the townspeople find there?
  19. What is noticed about the second pillow on the bed in the last paragraph?
  20. What had happened to Homer Barron? 
  21. What details foreshadow the conclusion of the story? Could the ending be anticipated?
  22. Contrast the events of the story with the order in which they are told.
      Can you reconstruct a chronological list of events? Why is the story told in this way?
  23. What is the significance of the narrator’s use of "we" to tell the story?
  24. Develop a list of the descriptive details associated with Emily: her appearance, surroundings, the way in which she appears to the townspeople, etc.
  25. What does Emily and her family represent for the townspeople and the narrator?

Homework #9 Select one of the following written assignments to do-

1. Rewrite the story in a chronological order following the timeline of Emily's life before her father's death to her own death.
2. Why "Was is is" to Emily?
3. Write a Character Analysis essay on Emily. Since Emily is described  from the narrator's  perspective and her image is also mixed with opinions from  "us" the town people, you need to gather factual information about Emily (for instance, her refusing to acknowledge her father's death, her appearing in public with Homer Barron, etc.) to describe what kind of person Emily truly is. You need to sort out all the descriptions about Emily in the story and based on various descriptions, you can explore how her life changes from one stage to another or how the town people view her.
4. Write a critical essay commenting on "we" based on how the narrator thinks about Emily at different stages of her life. What makes the town's collective voice so repressive ,powerful, and destructive?
5. Write an analysis of the title. What does it mean?  What significance does the setting( in terms of time and place and historical background) play in the story?
6. Create an original written response that demonstrates the main idea of the story and your interpretation of the story.

For E8FC students, you also need to create a graphic to illustrate the story.

Brainstorm on-

1. What images come to mind when you finish reading the entire story?
2. What does the rose symbolize? What color  might it be ?
3. What do you think is the most powerful image for the story?

Do a preliminary sketch on paper before you start composing in the computer.