Conflict Between Traditionalism and Modernism in a Term Paper

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Conflict between Traditionalism and Modernism in a Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

More often, literature provides people not only with a medium with which to entertain themselves, but also to know, understand, and empathize with the characters as the audience place themselves in the social environment and realities that the characters experience in works of literature. These characters and social environment and realities are portrayed in a subjective manner, where the writer/author puts his/her subjective interpretation of a social event or phenomenon, illustrating events in a manner that will have a profound effect on the readers/audience.

This is exactly the main thrust centered in William Faulkner's short story, A Rose for Emily. The story centers on the character of Emily Grierson, a member of the wealthy Anglo-Saxon class that had been the dominant and prevalent class in American society prior to the emergence of the 20th century. Through a third-person narrative, Faulkner uses Emily's neighbor as the speaker of the story, to provide an 'outsider's view on the life of Emily.

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Primarily, the life of Emily is narrated to the reader in the context and opinion of her community; there is no chance where Emily, as the main character, was able to speak out for herself, to provide her own account of the events in her life vis-a-vis Faulkner's third-person (speaker) narrative.

In line with this kind of story, the main theme depicted in the short story is the 'unspoken' conflict between the traditional and modern society, where the traditionalist stance is subsisted to by the character of Emily and her community as the modern society. This is explicitly illustrated in the speaker's description of their community, where Emily's house represents the wealthy families of the past, but has now become only a remembrance of this past, as a new and more powerful class, the middle class, emerged in the Grierson's once exclusive community: "... garages and cotton gins had encroached and….....

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"Conflict Between Traditionalism And Modernism In A", 27 February 2004, Accessed.5 June. 2026,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/conflict-traditionalism-modernism-165847