Rose for Emily by William Term Paper

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Point-of-view is extremely important in any story, as who is telling the story can greatly affect what gets told. If Faulkner had chosen Emily or her servant as the narrator, the story would have been very different, and readers would have known what was going on in Emily's house much sooner, but since Faulkner chose a townsperson, the secrets of Emily's disturbed mind remained hidden until the final scene where the rotting corpse of her second suitor is discovered in her bed. The story is much more entertaining this way, because finding out about Emily too early would have made the rest of the story dull and somewhat uninteresting.

Once they make the gruesome discovery, not much more analysis about Emily is needed. Each person in the town had opinions and beliefs about Emily, and the final scene lets the townspeople know whether their opinions and beliefs were correct. The one thing it does not tell the reader is why Emily did what she did. Did she hate the men? Was it a game? Was she crazy after all? Or was she just so concerned about losing the men's affection that she killed them to keep them from leaving her? The reader will never know, and Faulkner does not say. There could be a million different reasons for the deaths that Emily caused, but the story ends without the reader finding out what the actual reason was, and Faulkner does not even really hint at the main reason.

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Maybe this withholding of information about Emily is for the best, as the speculation of why Emily killed her suitors makes the story more interesting, and gives the reader something to talk about and ponder long after the story is finished. Curious readers can also return to the story looking for other clues to Emily's personality and beliefs that might help indicate why she became a murderess, but Faulkner does not give readers much help there. In the end, only Emily knew why she did it, and since it was not discovered until after her funeral, the world will never know......

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