A Rose for Emily Plot Analysis

Most good stories start with a fundamental

list of ingredients: the initial situation,
conflict, complication, climax, suspense,
denouement, and conclusion. Great writers
sometimes shake up the recipe and add some
spice.
*Initial Situation
Death and Taxes
As we discuss in "Symbols, Imagery,
Allegory," Faulkner might be playing on the
Benjamin Franklin quote, "In this world
nothing can be said to be certain, except
death and taxes," in this initial scene. We
move from a huge funeral attended by
everybody in town, to this strange little story
about taxes.
*Conflict
Taxes aren't the only thing that stinks.
The taxes seem tame compared to what
comes next. In Section II, we learn lots of
bizarre stuff about Miss Emily: when her
father died she refused to believe it (or let
on she believed it) for four days (counting
the day he died); the summer after her

father died, she finally gets a boyfriend

(she's in her thirties); when worried that her
boyfriend might leave her, she bought some
poison and her boyfriend disappeared, but
there was a bad smell around her house. We
technically have enough information to figure
everything out right here, but we are thrown
off by the issue of the taxes, and by the way
in which facts are jumbled together.
*Complication
The Town's Conscience
For this stage it might be helpful to think of
this story as the town's confession. This
section is what complicates things for the
town's conscience. The town was horrible to
Miss Emily when she started dating Homer
Barron. They wanted to hold her to the
southern lady ideals her forbearers had
mapped out for her. She was finally able to
break free when her father died, but the
town won't let her do it. When they can't
stop her from dating Homer themselves, they
sick the cousins on her.
*Climax
"For Rats"

Even though this story seems all jumbled up

chronologically, the climax comes roughly in
the middle of the story, lending the story a
smooth, symmetrical feel. According to
Faulkner, Homer probably was a bit of a rat,
one which noble Miss Emily would have felt
perfectly in the right to exterminate. Yet, she
also wanted to hold tight to the dream that
she might have a normal life, with love and a
family. When she sees that everybody the
townspeople, the minister, her cousins, and
even Homer himself is bent on messing up
her plans, she has an extreme reaction.
That's why, for us, the climax is encapsulated
in the image of the skull and crossbones on
the arsenic package and the warning, "For
rats."
*Suspense
Deadly Gossip
As with the climax, Faulkner follows a
traditional plot structure, at least in terms of
the story of Emily and Homer. Emily buys the
arsenic, and at that moment the information
is beamed into the brains of the
townspeople. This is one of the nastiest

sections. The town is in suspense over

whether they are married, soon will be, or
never will be. Their reactions range from
murderous, to pitying, to downright
interference. We also learn that Homer
Barron was last seen entering the residence
of Miss Emily Grierson on the night in
question. So, we can be in suspense about
what happened to him, though by the time
we can appreciate that this is something to
be suspenseful about, we already know what
happened.
*Denouement
The Next 40 Years
At this point, we've already been given a
rough outline of Emily's life, beginning with
her funeral, going back ten years to when the
"newer generation" came to collect the
taxes, and then back another thirty some odd
years to the death of Emily's father, the
subsequent affair with Homer, and the
disappearance of Homer. The story winds
down by filling us in on Miss Emily's goings
on in the 40 years between Homer's
disappearance and Emily's funeral. Other

than the painting lessons, her life during that

time is a mystery, because she stayed inside.
*Conclusion
The Bed, the Rotting Corpse, and the
Hair
The townspeople enter the bedroom that's
been locked for 40 years, only to find the
rotting corpse of Homer Barron.
A Rose for Emily Characters
Meet the Cast
*Miss Emily Grierson
Character Analysis
Miss Emily is an old-school southern belle
trapped in a society bent on forcing her to
stay in her role. She clings to the old ways
even as she tries to break free. When she's
not even forty, she's on a road that involves
dying alone in a seemingly haunted house. At
thirty-something she is already a murderer,
which only adds to her outcast status.
Miss Emily is a truly tragic figure, but one
who we only see from the outside. Granted,
the townspeople who tell her story know her
better than we do, but not really by much.
This is why Emily is called "impervious." We

can't quite penetrate her or completely

understand her. But, perhaps there is a little
Emily in all of us. In the spirit of finding the
human being behind the mask, lets zero in on
a few aspects of Emily, the person.
Daughter and Woman
As far as we know, Emily is an only child. The
story doesn't mention any siblings. It also
doesn't mention her mother. It strikes us as
odd that the narrator doesn't say anything
about her mother at all. We can't really think
of a reasonable explanation for this, other
than that the narrator wants to emphasize
just how much Emily was her father's
daughter, and just how alone she was with
him when he was alive. From all evidence, he
controlled her completely until his death, and
even continued to control her from beyond
the grave. By separating her so severely from
the rest of the town when he was alive,
going as far as to make sure she didn't have
any lovers or a husband, he set her up for a
way of life that was impossible for her to
escape, until her death.
We might think of her as weak, or as

unwilling to take a stand against her father

in life. This assessment is kind of like
blaming the victim though. The bare sketch
we have of her father shows a man who was
unusually controlling, domineering, and
perhaps capable of deep cruelty, even toward
his only daughter. This theory also disguises
her behavior after his death, when she tried
desperately to shed the image of dutiful
daughter, and, probably for the first time, at
thirty-something, pursued her own desires for
love and sex.
When this attempt at womanhood failed
miserably, she reverted back to the life her
father created for her a lonely, loveless,
isolated life. Except now, with Homer Barron
rotting away upstairs, there are two men that
haunt her.
Artist
We don't know for sure if Emily's artistic
ability extended beyond china-painting. Some
readers and critics seem to think that Miss
Emily is responsible for the "crayon portrait
of Miss Emily's father" (1.4) that sits on an
easel in the parlor. This may well be the

case. (Also, it should be noted that "crayon"

here could refer to black or colored charcoal,
chalk, or oil crayons.)
Even though we don't have the full lowdown
on Emily's art, thinking of her as an artist
helps us to see the tragedy of her life, and
also provides us a bit of a hopeful angle of
vision. On the tragic side, we see that while
Emily's art was at first a link to the town, a
way to be a member of the community and
to have some contact with the outside world.
Once the "newer generation" pieced
together her secret, even this last link was
gone. On the hopeful side, there is some
possibility that Emily was able to turn to her
art as a source of comfort and for something
to do. Maybe after the townspeople found
Homer Barron's corpse, they found a
houseful of Miss Emily's art as well.
Miss Emily's Legacy
In "What's Up With the Ending?", we discuss
that the townspeople aren't at all surprised
to find Homer Barron's body rotting in the
closed off room. They broke into the room to
confirm what had probably become common

knowledge over the years. When Emily didn't

kill herself with the arsenic, and when the
smell appears, they drew the logical
conclusion (passed down from one generation
to the next) that Emily must have used the
poison on Homer. There is some indication
that the townspeople were surprised to find
Miss Emily's hair on the pillow beside his
body. The imprint of a head in the dust
suggests that she might have lain there in
the not so distant past.
It's possible that she left this "evidence"
there on purpose, her final comment on life
before she died. It's not much of a will, but
perhaps it's still an important legacy for the
townspeople, whose parents had cruelly
interfered in Emily's happiness, and who
themselves further isolated her out of fear,
disgust, and general spite. Everyone pitied
Emily, but that's a lot different than loving
her. What she left them was the legacy of
just how human she was, of just how much
she wanted love, and just how warped and
twisted the desire for love can become when
it is declared off limits.

*Tobe
Character Analysis
Tobe, first described as "an old man-servant
a combined gardener and cook" (1.1). He is
an even more mysterious character than
Emily, and, ironically, probably the only one
who knows the answers to all the mysteries
in the story. He's also a major connection to
the theme "Compassion and Forgiveness."
Read on to see what we mean.
Caregiver
Tobe gave his whole life to the care of Miss
Emily. We don't know what kind of
relationship they had beyond that of
employer and servant, but there isn't any
indication that either of them abused the
other. Perhaps they have us all fooled, and
there in the haunted old house they carried
on a loving, caring relationship.
Whatever the case, we have to hand it to
Tobe for taking care of Miss Emily for most
of her life, and most of his (as we talk about
in the next section). He also must have been
the one to alert the town to both Emily's
father's death, and also to her own death.

Loyal and discreet, he protected her privacy

from the prying eyes and ears of the town.
This might be part of why he split after her
death, to avoid having to divulge her secrets
to the town. Of course, he probably also left
because his duty was finally done, and he
could escape the stinking, rotting crypt of a
house.
The Tragedy of Tobe
In the section above, we speculate about
Tobe. That analysis doesn't really get at the
tragedy of his life. He was probably born
around the same time as Emily
(approximately 1861) and so was almost
definitely born a slave, probably on a
plantation that Emily's father may have
owned.
Assuming he was born with the family or was
with them from a young age, he stayed with
them through the Civil War , and, as we have
seen, through all the rest, too. As a black
man in the South his options were limited,
maybe even more limited than Emily's. Like
her, he might have become convinced that
the world outside that house was not the

place for him. He might have felt intense

loyalty to Miss Emily, and maybe even, like
the town, an obligation to her. If they were
raised together, they might easily have
developed a kind of brother-sister
relationship. Alternatively, he might have
despised her, or been disgusted and horrified
by her. He might have wished for her death.
As a human being in a completely bizarre
situation, he might have felt a complex
tangle of all of those things, and more.
*Homer Barron
Character Analysis
Homer is the man Emily murderers. Yet,
somehow, the focus of the tragedy is on
Emily. Given the information we know about
Homer, he isn't a very sympathetic character.
This is partly because the town, as
represented by the narrator, doesn't like him.
Jeffersonians don't like him because he's a
rough-talking, charismatic northerner and an
overseer in town working on a sidewalkpaving project.
How involved with Emily he was, we don't
know. He may have intended to marry her,

but became dissuaded by the wacky antics of

her cousins and the town. Why he went to
her house that last time, and how exactly he
ended up dead in the bed, we don't know.
We don't even know if he really did, or was
about to, break off his relationship with Emily
before she killed him.
Homer 's Sexuality
We also don't know if he was gay. We bring
this up because this is one of the big
questions students have after reading the
story. The following line is the source of this
confusion:
Then we said, "She will persuade him yet,"
because Homer himself had remarked he
liked men, and it was known that he drank
with the younger men in the Elks' Club that
he was not a marrying man. (4.1)
What a strange sentence to unpack.
Remember also, that it's gossip, in the most
hard-core gossip section of the story. In this
fragment, the town seems to be saying that
even though Homer is gay, and even though
he isn't the marrying kind, Emily will still
manage to hook him. Unpacked, we can really

see the spite. Their comments means that

she definitely won't succeed, but that if she
does, he's not the kind of man she thinks he
is.
Nothing in the story tells us whether Homer
was gay or not, but you can be pretty sure
that's what the town people were
insinuating.
The Guy Deserves Some Compassion
It's hard to find anything nice to say about
Homer, but that doesn't mean we can't
extend to him that compassion this story tries
(in it's macabre way) to bring out in us.
Whatever he did, whoever he was, he didn't
deserve to be murdered. In oversympathizing with Emily, and with the town's
rationalization and cover-up of the murder,
we run the risk of erring where they erred.
While Emily probably would have ended up in
an awful insane asylum had the town
investigated the disappearance of Homer
Barron officially, Homer Barron might have
had family or friends that never learned
about what happened to him. Even if he
didn't, isn't it important that the justice

speak for those victims who can't speak for

themselves?
*Miss Emily's Father
Character Analysis
Emily's father is the guy with the gigantic
horsewhip. He's only referred to as "Emily's
father." Faulkner himself didn't approve of
the man at all. In an interview, Faulkner
expounds on this character:
In this case there was the young girl with a
young girl's normal aspirations to find love
and then a husband and a family, who was
brow-beaten and kept down by her father, a
selfish man who didn't want her to leave
home because he wanted a housekeeper, and
it was a natural instinct of repressed which
you can't repress it you can mash it down
but it comes up somewhere else and very
likely in a tragic form, and that was simply
another manifestation of man's injustice to
man, of the poor tragic human being
struggling with its own heart, with others,
with its environment, for the simple things
which all human beings want. In that case it
was a young girl that just wanted to be loved

and to love and to have a husband and a

family. (source )
That description is pretty straightforward.
The story is meant to show a very selfish
man in a very selfish society. He's kind of a
one-note fellow, and that note is Me, me,
me, me, me!
*Colonel Sartoris
Character Analysis
The Colonel is the guy who initially dreamed
up the scheme to relieve Emily of her tax
obligations when her father died. That was a
nice thing to do. But, this same Colonel, the
mayor, "who," we are told also "fathered the
edict that no Negro woman should appear on
the streets without an apron" (1.3). That's
not so nice. Unfortunately, the coexistence of
these two modes was the norm in those days
among powerful political figures
*Judge Stevens
Character Analysis
Judge Stevens gets one of the best lines in
the story: "Dammit, sir, will you accuse a lady
to her face of smelling bad?" (2.9) Given
everything the town knows at this point, the

smell should have generated a warrant to

inspect her home. He's portrayed as an older,
(he's 80), powerful, and a very southern
man, and he raises a little question.OK, we
know that Colonel Sartoris was the mayor
when Emily's father died, and we know that
it was two years later that the townspeople
began complaining about the smell. The town
could have changed mayors in two years, but
would they have elected a mayor that was
eighty years old? We challenge you to figure
this out.
*Old Lady Wyatt
Character Analysis
Old lady Wyatt is Emily's great-aunt (on her
father's side, we believe). Before her death,
according to the townspeople, old lady Wyatt
is "completely crazy" (2.11). She seems to
be in the story to suggest that insanity runs
in Emily's family.
*The Cousins
Character Analysis
The town thinks Miss Emily's "two female
cousins are even more Grierson than Miss
Emily had ever been" (4.4). That is definitely

not a compliment. These cousins from

Alabama are relatives of old lady Wyatt and
had been estranged from Emily's father since
the time of old lady Wyatt's death. In fact,
they were so estranged that they didn't even
show up to Emily's father's funeral.
The situation with the cousins exposes some
of the dark irony of the story. The
townspeople call in the cousins to stop Emily
from dating Homer, but when they decide
they hate the cousins, they switch sides and
try to push Emily and Homer together.

A Rose for Emily Narrator POV:

Who is the narrator, can she or he read
minds, and, more importantly, can we trust
her or him?
First Person ( Peripheral Narrator)
The fascinating narrator of "A Rose for
Emily" is more rightly called "first people"
than "first person." Usually referring to itself
as "we," the narrator speaks sometimes for
the men of Jefferson, sometimes for the
women, and often for both. It also spans
three generations of Jeffersonians, including

the generation of Miss Emily's father, Miss

Emily's generation, and the "newer
generation," made up of the children of Miss
Emily's contemporaries. The narrator is
pretty hard on the first two generations, and
it's easy to see how their treatment of Miss
Emily may have led to her downfall. This
lends the narrative a somewhat confessional
feel.
While we are on the subject of "we," notice
no one townsperson is completely responsible
for what happened to Emily. (It is fair to say,
though that some are more responsible than
others.) The willingness of the town to now
admit responsibility is a hopeful sign, and
one that allows us to envision a better future
for generations to come. We discuss this
further in "Tone," so check out that section
for more information.

A Rose for Emily Setting

Where It All Goes Down
A creepy old house in Jefferson,
Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi,
1861- 1933 (approximately)

Setting is usually pretty rich in Faulkner.

SimCity-style, William Faulkner created his
own Mississippi County, Yoknapatawpha, as
the setting for much of his fiction. This
county comes complete with several different
families including the Grierson family. "A
Rose for Emily" is set in the county seat of
Yoknapatawpha, Jefferson and as you know,
focuses on Emily Grierson, the last living
Grierson. For a map and a detailed
description of Yoknapatawpha, click here.
OK, so the where is pretty easy. Though
Jefferson and its inhabitants are unique, we
can see their town as any southern town
during that period. The situations that arise
in the story develop in large part because
many southerners who lived during the
slavery era didn't know what to do when that
whole way of life ended. Imagine if suddenly
you are told and shown that your whole way
of life is a sham, an atrocity, an evil. Then
heap on a generous helping of southern
pride, and you have tragedies like this one.
This story also explores how future
generations deal with this legacy. To really

feel the movement of history in the story,

and to understand the movements of Emily's
life, it important to pin down the chronology
of events.
The dates we use, other than 1874, are just a
little rough, but in the ballpark.
1861 Miss Emily Grierson is born.
1870s The Grierson house is built.
1893 Miss Emily's father dies.
1893 Miss Emily falls ill.
1893 Miss Emily's taxes are remitted (in
December).
1894 Miss Emily meets Homer Barron (in
the summer).
1895 Homer is last seen entering Miss
Emily's house (Emily is "over thirty; we use
thirty-three for our calculations).
1895 The townspeople become concerned
about the smell of the Grierson house and
sprinkle lime around Emily's place.
1895 Miss Emily stays in for six months.
1895-1898 Miss Emily emerges and her hair
gradually turns gray.
1899 Miss Emily stops opening her door,
and doesn't leave the house for about five

years.
1904 Miss Emily emerges to give chinapainting lessons for about seven years.
1911 Miss Emily stops giving painting
lessons. Over ten years pass before she has
any contact with the town.
1925 They "newer generation" comes to
ask about the taxes. This is thirty years after
the business with the lime. This is the last
contact she has with the town before her
death.
1935 Miss Emily dies at 74 years old. Tobe
leaves the house. Two days later the funeral
is held at the Grierson house. At the funeral,
the townspeople break down the door to the
bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen
in 40 years.
This doesn't answer all the questions by any
means. Since nobody in the town ever knew
what was really going on in Emily's house,
there are numerous holes and gaps in this
history. Still, you can use this as a guide to
help make sense of some of the confusing
moments.

A Rose for Emily Tone

Take a story's temperature by studying its
tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Ironic, Confessional, Gossipy,
Angry, Hopeful
We can think of a bunch more adjectives to
describe the tone of the story, these seems
to be the dominant emotional tones the
narrator is expressing as Miss Emily's story is
told. (Keep in mind that it's also the town's
story.)
The irony of the story is closely tied to the
rose in the title, and to Williams Faulkner's
explanation of it:
[The title] was an allegorical title; the
meaning was, here was a woman who had
had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and
nothing could be done about it, and I pitied
her and this was a saluteto a woman you
would hand a rose. (source )
It's ironic because in the story Miss Emily is
continually handed thorns, not roses, and she
herself produces many thorns in return. This
is where the "confessional" part comes in.
Since the narrator is a member of the town,

and takes responsibility for all the

townspeople's actions, the narrator is
confessing the town's crimes against Emily.
Confession can be another word for gossip,
especially when you are confessing the
crimes of others. (Here one of the big crimes
is gossip.) The chilling first line of Section IV
is a good representative of the elements of
tone we've been discussing so far: "So the
next day we all said, 'She will kill herself';
and we said it would be the best thing." This
is where the anger comes in. Because this
makes us angry, we feel that the narrator too
is angry, particularly in this whole section.
This leads us back to confession and
hopefulness.
The hopefulness of the town is the hardest
for us to understand. It comes in part from
the title again if we can put ourselves in
the same space as Faulkner and manage to
give Emily a rose, to have compassion for her
even though she is a murderer, to recognize
her tragedy for what it is, this might allow us
to build a more compassionate future for
ourselves, a future where tragedies like

Emily's don't occur. This also entails taking

off our "rose-colored glasses" (as we discuss
in "What's Up With the Title?") and facing
the ugly truths of life, even confessing our
shortcomings. Hopefully, we can manage to
take those glasses off before death takes
them off for us.

A Rose for Emily Genre

Horror or Gothic Fiction , Southern
Gothic, Literary Fiction , Tragedy,
Modernism
Even before we see the forty-year-old corpse
of Homer Barron rotting into the bed, the
creepy house, and the creepy Miss Emily let
us know that we are in the realm of horror or
Gothic fiction. Combine that with a southern
setting and we realize that it's not just
Gothic, but Southern Gothic. The Southern
Gothic genre focuses sometimes subtly,
sometimes overtly on slavery, or the
aftermath of slavery in the South. You can
definitely see this in "A Rose for Emily."
Since author William Faulkner won the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice (first in 1955

for A Fable , and then in 1963 for The

Reivers), and the Nobel Prize for Literature
(1949) we'd also have to put it in the
category of "Literary Fiction."
Even if Faulkner hadn't won all those prizes,
we'd still put "A Rose for Emily" in this
category. The story is masterfully told, and
it's obvious that much care and skill went
into it. It's also strikingly original and
experimental in terms of form. This is part of
what makes it a classic Modernist text. The
Southern Gothic is a perfect field on which to
perform a Modernist experiment. Modernist is
all about what happens when everything you
thought was true is revealed to be false,
resulting in shattered identities. Modernism
tries to make something constructive out of
the pieces. We can see all that loud and
clear in "A Rose for Emily."

What s Up With the Title ?

You probably noticed that there is no rose in
the story, though we do find the word "rose"
four times. Check out the first two times the
word is used:

When the Negro opened the blinds of one

window, they could see that the leather was
cracked; and when they sat down a faint dust
rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning
with slow motes in the single sun-ray. (1.5)
They rose when she entered a small, fat
woman in black, with a thin gold chain
descending to her waist and vanishing into
her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a
tarnished gold head. (1.6)
These first two times "rose" (as you can see)
is used as a verb, which is why we barely
notice the subtle echo of the "rose" in the
title when we read. We are concentrating on
the image, first, of the inside of Miss Emily's
lonely parlor, and then of Miss Emily herself.
In both cases, the word "rose" is working on
us, maybe even subconsciously, to contribute
to the image.
We have to look at a few more things before
we can get at why these passages are
significant.
First, let's consider the next two mentions of
"rose," which occur at the very end of the
story:

A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to

lie everywhere upon this room decked and
furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance
curtains of faded rose color, upon the roseshaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon
the delicate array of crystal and the man's
toilet things backed with tarnished silver,
silver so tarnished that the monogram was
obscured. (5.4)
Things are starting to make sense here we
are talking about the color "rose" from the
curtains to the lampshades, rose was the
dominant color of Miss Emily's bridal
chamber. We've all heard about the dangers
of seeing through 'rose colored' glasses. This
was a particular problem for people of Miss
Emily's generation in the South.
As we discuss in "Setting," Emily was born in
the early 1860s, probably near the beginning
of the Civil War . Emily's father basically
raised her to believe that nothing had really
changed after the war. He instilled in her
that being part of the southern aristocracy
(those who made money on backs of slaves)
was still something to be proud of, and that

people like them were above the law.

But, in this moment, we realize just how rosy
Miss Emily's glasses were, and that death
trumps glasses, rose colored or otherwise.
The reality of death cannot be avoided. Now
that the bridal chamber has turned into a
death chamber, the rose color is bathed in
the hues of decay and death, shaded by the
"acrid pall as of the tomb." Which might
make you wonder just what an "acrid pall" is.
"Acrid" is easy, it's used to refer to
something that's nasty smelling. "Pall" is
actually a pretty interesting word, and one
that isn't normally thrown around in
conversation. It usually refers to some kind
of covering, like a cloak or a blanket draped
over a coffin. We can see how the word
works literally and figuratively to thicken the
atmosphere of death and decomposition. It
works because even if we don't know
precisely what a "pall" is, we can hear the
deathly, pale tones it holds.
Well, we're not quite done yet. Lucky for us,
William Faulkner told an interviewer what he
meant by the title:

[The title] was an allegorical title; the

meaning was, here was a woman who had
had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and
nothing could be done about it, and I pitied
her and this was a saluteto a woman you
would hand a rose. (source )
We think this perspective is very important,
not just because it provides a straightforward
explanation, but also because it persuades us
to indulge in a more compassionate reading.
It's easy to judge Miss Emily, and maybe to
forget she's a human being who has had a
tragic life. For a look at how this explanation
exposes the story's irony, check out our
discussion of "Writing Style." Needless to
say, there are many possible interpretations
of the title, "A Rose for Emily," and you can
feel free to think creatively when trying to
figure out what this title means.