This topic contains a solution. Click here to go to the answer

Author Question: What contrasts does the narrator draw between changing reality andEmilys refusal or inability to ... (Read 996 times)

stephzh

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 556
What contrasts does the narrator draw between changing reality andEmilys refusal or inability to recognize change?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

What foreshadowings of the discovery of the body of Homer Barron arewe given earlier in the story? Share your experience in reading A Rose for Emily: did the foreshadowings give away the ending for you? Did they heighten your interest?
 
  What will be an ideal response?



Related Topics

Need homework help now?

Ask unlimited questions for free

Ask a Question
Marked as best answer by a Subject Expert

JCABRERA33

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 344
Answer to Question 1


  • A Rose for Emily contains many contrasts that demonstrate Emilys refusal to recognize change. For example, this refusal is suggested in the symbol of her invisible watch (par. 7), with its hint that she lives according to a private, secret time of her own. Her once-beautifully decorated house seems an extension of her person in its stubborn and coquettish decay (par. 2). Years later the house becomes an eyesore among eyesores amid gasoline pumps, garages, and cotton gins; it refuses, like its owner, to be part of a new era. The story contains many such images of stasis: when Emily confronts the aldermen, she looks bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water (par. 6)a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the discovery of Homers long-guarded dust.



Answer to Question 2


  • Students will want to make sure of exactly what happens in the story. Just as Emily Grierson had clung to her conviction that her father and Colonel Sartoris were still alive, she had come to believe that Homer Barron had faithfully married her, and she successfully ignored for forty years all the testimony of her senses. The conclusion of the story is foreshadowed by Emilys refusal to allow her father to be buried, by her purchase of rat poison, by the disappearance of Homer Barron, and by the pervasive smell of decay.


In fact, these foreshadowings are so evident it is a wonder that, for those reading the story for the first time, the ending is so surprising. Much of the surprise seems due to the narrators back-and-forth, non-chronological method of telling the events of the story. We arent told in proper sequence that (1) Emily buys poison, (2) Homer disappears, and (3) there is a mysterious odora chain of events that might immediately rouse our suspicions. Instead, we hear about odor, poison, and disappearance, in that order. By this arrangement, any connection between these events is made to seem a little less obvious, adding to the storys Gothic tone.
Faulkners mysterious story also resembles a riddle, argues Charles Clay Doyle of the University of Georgia. The resemblance exists not so much in the storys structure or rhetoric,
as in the tricky way it presents clues, clues that tell the truth but at the same time mislead or fail to enlighten. The pleasure of discovery experienced by readers of the story resembles the pleasure we take in learning the answer to a riddle: we are astonished that the solution, which now seems so obvious, so inevitable, could have eluded us. (Mute Witnesses: Faulkners Use of a Popular Riddle, Mississippi Folklore Register 24 1990: 5355)
Furthermore, Doyle identifies an allusion to a well-known riddle in Faulkners final description of Emilys chamber: Homers two mute shoes and the discarded socks. The riddle is, What has a tongue but cant speak? (Answer: a shoe.) Taking the phrase mute shoes to echo the riddle, Doyle thinks the shoes are a pair of silent witnesses who, in their way, resemble the narrator himself, who shows us the truth but does not state it outright





 

Did you know?

Nitroglycerin is used to alleviate various heart-related conditions, and it is also the chief component of dynamite (but mixed in a solid clay base to stabilize it).

Did you know?

Cocaine was isolated in 1860 and first used as a local anesthetic in 1884. Its first clinical use was by Sigmund Freud to wean a patient from morphine addiction. The fictional character Sherlock Holmes was supposed to be addicted to cocaine by injection.

Did you know?

More than 2,500 barbiturates have been synthesized. At the height of their popularity, about 50 were marketed for human use.

Did you know?

More than 4.4billion prescriptions were dispensed within the United States in 2016.

Did you know?

People who have myopia, or nearsightedness, are not able to see objects at a distance but only up close. It occurs when the cornea is either curved too steeply, the eye is too long, or both. This condition is progressive and worsens with time. More than 100 million people in the United States are nearsighted, but only 20% of those are born with the condition. Diet, eye exercise, drug therapy, and corrective lenses can all help manage nearsightedness.

For a complete list of videos, visit our video library