参考使用高级英语6.8教案
在校大学生当兵政策-同音词
教 案
教学单位
课程名称
任课教师
授课专业及班级
武汉体院英语专业 《高级英语》课程
教案
周次
10
课次 1、2 上课日期 20104，9
课程名称：高级英语
教学对象：英语专业本科三年级
教学内容：《现代大学英语》第六册第八课A Rose for Emily
教学目的：
1)Learning The background information about
the author;
2）Introducing the author‘s
writing style of the short story;
3) Studying
the author‘s writing techniques in the story:
vague references, ambiguities, symbolism, jumbled
time
sequences, etc.
4) Learning to create
an atmosphere needed for story-telling: How to
explore the inner world of a human being, or
the inner struggle in the human heart;
5)
Trying to understand and appreciate the theme of
the complex story and the implication of the
title;
教学重点：the implied meaning of the story;
the narrative techniques and the fragment of the
chronological time
教学难点：the conflicts of the
story: different levels, the South and the North;
the fragment of the chronological
time.
教学形式：课前预习、问答、分组合作学习、
讲授、讨论、模仿、练习
教学辅助手段：多媒体课件、课文录音
授课时间：180分钟
相关网址：
http:sentationtccampa-65521-rose-emily-
analysis-faulkner-literature-story-fiction-
educati
on-
ppt-powerpoint
教学过程：
1. Warm-up: 1) Dictation of important
vocabulary as a check of the students’ preparation
of this text
(10min.) 2) Picture
description（10min.）
2. Background
information about the author through asking the
students to talk first and the teacher
summarizing: (15min.)
3. Questions to the
text (30min.)
1. Does this story contain
elements that you associate with Gothic traditions
in horror stories or mystery
stories? What
makes it an example of Southern Gothic fiction?
2. When you first read the story, when did you
realize how it would end? What is your response to
the end?
3. After you read the ending, did
your view of earlier scenes change, such as the
parts about about buying
poison and the odor?
In retrospect, where are there hints about the
plot ?
4. What is the conflict in this story?
If Miss Emily is the protagonist, who is the
antagonist (a character or
force that acts
against the protagonist, denying his or her
desires)?
5. In the beginning, Miss Emily
receives a deputation from the Board of Aldermen.
We already know her
attitude toward taxes
before this. If this anecdote does not advance
the plot or offer a clue to the eventual story
of Emily and her lover, what function does it
serve in the story?
6. What people and values
does the narrator represent? Does your view of
the narrator affect your reception
of the
story?
7. In paragraphs 1 and 2, the author
speaks of buildings and structures, describing
Miss Emily as a fallen
monument. Where
else do related images occur? If Miss Emily is a
fallen monument, what is she a monument
to?
8. Notice references to the Civil War in this
story. Where do they occur? How does that war
play a role in
the story?
9. In this
story, an aristocratic Southerner murders a Yankee
carpetbagger. Is the story about the triumph of a
defeated South over a supposedly triumphant
North? What is this story really about?
10.
See question 4. If you are tempted to think of
Homer Barron as antagonist, does it matter that
the story
continues thirty years after his
death? (Remember that conflict in stories does
not necessarily occur between
individuals.)
11. In paragraph 15, what do horse and foot
mean? To what or to whom is Miss Emily being
compared here?
12. What is the significance of
sidewalks?
13. What do you think happened when
the Baptist minister called on Miss Emily? Is it
important that you think
you understand what
happened?
14. Why are we not surprised when
Homer disappears? How does the storyteller ensure
that we are not
surprised?
15. After
reading, reconstruct the sequence of events. When
did Homer Barron die? How did he die? Why
is
the story structured in the way that it is?
16. It has been said of this story that
What is her shadow?
17. Why do we need to
know about Miss Emily's hair changing color?
18. Had Miss Emily really shut up the top
floor of her house? Why does the narrator say
19. What purpose is served by telling us that
the Negro
was not seen again
20. Toward the
end is a lyrical and metaphorical account of the
old people's sense of the past, a poetic kind of
prose with which a self-indulgent author will
sometimes pad out a story or tease us by delaying
the resolution of
our suspense. What is
Faulkner doing here? Playing a trick on us?
Does this image present an alternative or
parallel to anything else in the story?
21. Why did they wait until after the funeral
to open the closed room? What word in the story
informs you
about the reasons for this delay?
Is the delay consistent with the world of this
story?
4. Plot summary: (15min.)
5.
Character analysis: (10min.)
6. Conflicts:
(10min.)
7. Setting (10min.)
8. Climax
(5min.)
9. Point of view (10min.)
10.
Tone (5min.)
11. Choice of language:
(15min.)
12. Theme (10min.)
13.
Symbolism(13min.)
14. Structural
analysis(10min.)
15. Brief summary of the
class and homework assignment (2min.)
16.
Detailed study of the text (90min.)
课后评议与小结：
课外作业：
1） Finish all the exercises
of
the text.
Try to read one novel by
William Faulkner.
2）
《现代大学英语》第六册第八课讲稿
A Rose For Emily
Part One Warm-up
1）. Dictation of the following words of the
text (10min.)
temerity deprecate torso
tableau slender
vindicate insanity pauper
condole condolence impervious arsenic haughty
glitter
disgrace divulge circumvent thwart
virulent furious tranquil dodder sibilant
macabre pervade crescent grimace
mythical balcony edict easel
dismantale
encroach apron obese
supremacy obliterate
remit pallid
chivalrous august perpetuity hue
legitimate stubborn alderman errand
thematic coquette sheriff vanqui
squarish
coquettish archaic
cupola cemetery deputation
spire anonymous sluggish
scroll hereditary
tarnish
2）Picture description: use the
imagination to tell what happens in the
picture(课前口头描述
图画练习 )（10min.）
由口头描述课文相关图画入手，
以了解学生预习课文内容的深度，
提高学生描述场景的口语表达能力，帮助学生把扩充词汇量和在具体情
景中使用词汇有
机结合起来。课前有趣的话题、竞争的气氛和合作的态度也有助于加快学生进入最佳的<
br>学习状态。
What’s in the
picture?
Where? When?
Part Two
Background information about the author(15min.)
1. Faulkner’s fictional world
that I
would never live long enough to exhaust it, and
that by sublimating(使升华,理想化) the
actual into
the apocryphal(虚构的,伪的) I would have complete
liberty to use whatever talent I
might have to
its absolute top. It opened up a gold mine of
other people, so I created a cosmos of
my
own.
Most of Faulkner‘s works are set in
the American South, with his emphasis on the
Southern
subjects and consciousness. Of the
nineteen novels and seventy-five short stories,
fifteen novels
and many of his
stories are about people from a small region in
Northern Mississippi,
Yoknapatawpha County
which is actually an imaginary place based on
Faulkner‘s childhood
memory about the place
where he grew up, the town of Oxford in his native
Lafayette County.
With his rich imagination,
Faulkner turned the land, the people and the
history of the region into a
literary creation
and a mythical kingdom. The Yoknapatawpha stories
deal, generally, with the
historical period
from the Civil War up to the 1920s when the First
World War broke out, and
people of
stratified(分层次) society, the aristocrats, the new
rich, the poor white, and the blacks.
As a
result, Yoknapatawpha County has become an
allegory or a parable of the Old South, with
which Faulkner has managed successfully to
show a panorama of the experience and
consciousness of the whole Southern society.
1.2 His invention and experimentation in form
and narrative technique
Faulkner has always
been regarded as a man with great might of
invention and
experimentation. He added to the
theory of the novel as an art form and evolved his
own literary
strategies. To him, the primary
duty of a writer was to explore and represent the
infinite
possibilities inherent in human life.
Therefore a writer should observe with no judgment
whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to
the lowest minimum. The range of narrative
techniques used by Faulkner is remarkable. He
would never step between the characters and the
reader to explain, but let the characters
explain themselves and hinder as little as
possible the
reader‘s direct experience of the
work of art. The most characteristic way of
structuring his stories
is to fragment the
chronological time. He deliberately broke up the
chronology of his narrative by
juxtaposing the
past with the present, in the way the montage does
in a movie. The modern
stream-of consciousness
technique was also frequently and skillfully
exploited by Faulkner to
emphasize the
reactions and inner musings of the narrator. And
the interior monologue Faulkner
used helps him
achieve the most desirable effect of exploring the
nature of human consciousness.
Moreover,
Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of
view, which gave the story a
circular form,
wherein one event is centered, with various points
of view radiating from it, or
different people
responding to the same story. Thus a high degree
of truth could be reached. The
other narrative
techniques Faulkner used to construct his stories
include symbolism and
mythological and
biblical allusion.
1.3 Style
Faulkner was
a master of his own particular style of writing.
Great writers such as Edgar
Allen Poe,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James and James Joyce
all had a part in influencing
Faulkner. His
prose, marked by long and embedded sentences,
complex syntax, and vague
reference pronouns
on the one hand and a variety of ―registers‖ of
the English language on the
other, is very
difficult to read. It is not surprising to find in
Faulkner‘s writings his syntactical
structures
and verbals paralleled, negatives balanced against
positives, compounded adjectives
swelling his
sentences, complex modifying elements placed after
the nouns, etc. In contrast,
Faulkner could
sound very casual or informal sometimes. He
capture the dialects of the
Mississippi
characters, including Negroes and the redneck, as
well as more refined and educated
narrators
like Quentin. As to the symbols and imageries,
they are most of them drawn from nature.
1.4
Achievement
Winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize
for Literature, Faulkner's recognition as a writer
came years
after he had written his best
works. Today he is regarded as an important
interpreter of the
universal theme of
Mississippi, which became the prototype
of Jefferson, in the mythical county of
Yoknapatawpha,
the setting of many of his
works. Sometimes difficult to read, Faulkner
experimented in the use of
stream-of-
consciousness technique and in the dislocation of
narrative time. His fiction discusses
issues
of sex, class, race relations, and relations with
nature.
1.5 Primary Works
The Marble
Faun, 1924; Soldier's Pay, 1926; Mosquitoes, 1927;
Sartoris, 1929; The Sound
and the Fury, 1929;
As I Lay Dying, 1930; Sanctuary, 1931; These 13,
1931; Light in August,
1932; Doctor Martino
and Other Stories, 1934; Pylon, 1935; Absalom,
Absalom!, 1936; The
Unvanquished, 1938; The
Wild Palms, 1939; The Hamlet, 1940; Go Down,
Moses, 1942; Intruder
in the Dust, 1948;
Knight's Gambit, 1949; Collected Stories of
William Faulkner, 1950; Requiem
for a Nun,
1951; A Fable, 1954; Big Woods, 1955; The Town,
1957; The Mansion, 1959; The
Reivers, 1962.
Part Three Questions to the text (30min.)
（Refer to the teacher’s book）
Part Four Plot
summary: (15min.)
The difficulty of reading
this story lies in the unusual narrative sequence
(non-chronological)
and point of view (time
and causality. The narrator's scope of
perception is limited. These two traits make the
story read
like a detective story. To know
what happen, you may have to make a chronology of
the events.
The chronology will help you to
perceive the causality obscured by the narrator.
Here is a
chronology of the events in
Time
Event Narrative
(Emily's What happen
Order order
age)
1
When Emily was
30, Emily‘s father died (II. paragraph. 26)
Emily
II. 25-7
Emily refused to
accept her father‘s death. When the town people
was 30
forced to bury her father, she
broke down. (II. Paragraph 27)
--Emily was
sick for a long time.
--In the summer after
the Emily‘s father, the town had a contract for
paving the sidewalks.
III. 30, --Emily
acquainted with a day worker, Homer Barron (a
Yankee—a
33 big, dark, ready man, with a big
voice and eyes lighter than his face).
(III.
Paragraph 30)
--The town ladies started to
gossip about the love affair. ―Poor Emily.‖
(III. Paragraphs 33).
III. 34-40 --Emily
bought rat poison. (III. Paragraphs 34-40)
IV.
43
The next day after Emily bought the
arsenic, the town people thought
Emily would
kill herself. (IV. Paragraph 43)
Disturbances
of the love affair:
--Town people (especially
the ladies) disagreed and gossiped.
‖She will
persuade him yet‖, because Homer Barron had
remarked—he liked men (IV. Paragraph 43).
2
3
4
(32)
(32)
5 (32)
IV. 44
--Some town ladies interfered,
and for the Baptist minister to called
upon
her.
--The next Sunday, they (Emily and Homer)
again drove about the
street. The following
day, the minister‘s wife wrote to Emily‘s
relations in Alabama. (IV. 44)
Emily went
to the jeweler‘s and order a man‘s toilet set in
silver, with
the letter H.B. on each piece.
She also bought a complete outfit of
men‘s
clothing, including a nightshirt. The town people
believed that
―They are married.‖ (IV, 45)
--The town people were surprised that Homer
Barron had gone. (IV.
46).
--‖Within three
days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw
the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at
dusk one evening‖.
(IV. 46)
--
for
some time.
6 (32) IV. 45
7 32
IV. 46,
47
8 32
Two years after the death of
Emily‘s father: Emily was 32
--Emily‘s
sweetheart ―the one we believed would marry her
had
deserted her.‖ (II, Paragraph 15)
II.
15-24
--The smell developed. After Emily‘s
neighbor‘s complaint, Judge
Stevens (80 years
old) investigated the source of the smell without
result. (II. Paragraphs 15-24)
--When
Emily was about 40, she started to give china
painting lessons
to the ladies (daughters and
granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris‘s
contemporaries). This lasted for about six or
seven years. Meanwhile
her taxes had been
remitted. (IV. 49)
--In 1894, Colonel Sartoris
remitted the taxes of Miss Emily Grierson.
(I.
2)
Colonel Sartoris died—Emily was 52. (II.
Paragraph 14)
Emily was about 52~54. Emily
stopped given china painting lesson
to the
town ladies—Since that time, nobody visited the
Grierson
house.. (I. Paragraph 5)
The
second generation became the backbone of the town.
They
stopped sent girls to Miss Emily‘s
painting class. ―When the town
got free postal
delivery Miss Emily alone refused to let them
fasten
the metal numbers above her door and
attach a mailbox to it. She
would not listen
to them.‖ (IV. 50)
32 (30 +2) years after the
death of Emily‘s father, and 10 years after
the death of Colonel Sartoris:
Emily was
62 (―a small, fat woman in black, . . . . She
looked bloated,
like a body long submerged in
motionless water, and of that pallid
hue.‖)
9
40, IV. 49
In 1894 I. 2
10
11
52
52~54
II. 14
I. 5
12
52~54 IV. 50
13 62 I. 4-14
--The
town aldermen asked Emily Grierson to pay taxes,
but she
refused. (I. Paragraphs 4-14)
IV.
48,
53
I. 1-2
Emily died at the age
of 74. (IV. 48).‖
―She died in one of the
downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with
a
curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow
and moldly with
age and lack of sunlight.‖
(IV. 53)
The town people went to Miss Emily
Grierson‘s funeral. (I. 1-2)
Miss Emily was
put ―beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the
crayon face of her father musing profoundly
above the bier. . . .‖ (V.
55.)
Two female
cousins came to the funeral. (Only two) (V. 55)
14 74
15 74
16 74 V. 55
17 74
After the funeral, the town people intruded into
Emily‘s bedroom,
which no one had seen in
forty years.
Emily‘s room was furnished as for
a bridal, with the curtain of rose
V. 56-60
color. (Rose was mentioned only in this
paragraph!) And they found a
man‘s body lay in
the bed, with a long strand of iron-gray hair. (V.
56-60)
Part Five Character analysis:
(10min.)
Characterization refers to the
techniques a writer uses to develop characters. In
the story A Rose for
Emily William Faulkner
uses characterization to reveal the character of
Miss Emily. He expresses the
content of her
character through physical description, through
her actions, words, and feelings, through a
narrator's direct comments about the
character's nature, and through the actions,
words, and feelings, of
other characters.
Faulkner best uses characterization to examine the
theme of the story, too much pride
can end in
homicidal madness
Emily Grierson,
Homer Barron, a day worker
Colonel
Sartoris,
Judge Stevens,
Wyatt (old lady)
Two of Emily's cousins
Town people
Part Six Conflicts: (5min.)
Emily vs
Emily‘s father
Emily vs Emily herself
Emily vs Homer
Emily vs her town‘s
peoplecousins
Part Seven Setting (10min.)
In William Faulkner‘s ―A Rose for Emily,‖
Faulkner‘s details about setting and atmosphere
give the reader background as to the values
and beliefs of the characters, helping the reader
to
understand the motivations, actions and
reactions of Miss Emily and the rest of the town,
and
changing the mood or tone in the setting
in ―A Rose for Emily‖ is Faulkner‘s fictitious
post-civil war Jefferson, a small town in the
deep south of the United States. Faulkner‘s use of
this
particular time-period or genre, is
successful in giving the reader an understanding
or background
to the values and beliefs
of the characters in the story. The town of
Jefferson is a fallen legacy. The
hierarchical
regime of the Griersons and the class system of
the time where by ordinance of the
mayor-
Colonel Sartoris, a Negro women could not even
walk the street without an apron, had
changed
into a place where even the street on which Miss
Emily lived, that had once been the
most
select, had now been encroached and obliterated,
her house an eyesore among eyesores. Both
the
town and Miss Emily herself, now looked upon Miss
Emily as the only remnant of that greater
time. This fact gives the reader an
understanding of the mindset of the ―town,‖ who is
narrating
Miss Emily‘s story to us in a form
resembling a gossip circle, where stories of
various
townspeople are pieced together and of
Miss Emily, the protagonist who lived alone except
for her
lone servant.
The actions of Miss
Emily range from eccentric to absurd but it is the
readers understanding
of the setting that keep
the story believable. Miss Emily becomes reclusive
and introverted after
the death of her father
and the estrangement from the Yankee- Homer
Barron. It is also revealed at
the end of the
story that she went as far as poisoning Homer,
keeping his dead body in his house,
and
sleeping next to him as well. She is doing what
she feels necessary in response to the pressure
placed on her by the town. She is still trying
to maintain the role of the southern women,
dignified
and proper while struggling with all
the other issues in her life and dealing with the
madness that
is said to run in her family. She
is also not accepting of the changing times and
flat out refuses to
change with them.
Faulkner‘s setting also helps the reader
understand the mentality and actions of the town.
The townspeople seem oddly fascinated with
Miss Emily as a relic of an older time. They have
put
her in a special position among the others
and while they have not maintained any direct
contact
with her, they are still curious even
after her death about her mystery. This could be
attributed to
the fact that as the times are
changing, they need someone to restore or uphold
their southern pride
or majesty and as she is
a Grierson, she is their only link to that past.
They even take it upon
themselves to try to
correct her mistakes by calling on her cousins
while she was involved with
Homer. They felt
that she was setting a bad example and because she
was supposed to be of a
higher class and
epitomize morals and decency in the changing south
they felt that they had to do
something to
restore her moral standing for her.
Besides
helping the reader understand the motivations and
events in the story, the setting also
changed
the tone of the story. The descriptions that
Faulkner gave and the images he conjured
gave
the story a very gothic feel to it. The image of
the Grierson place with its out of date structure
and furnishings, and of Miss Emily herself as
a fat old woman resembling death itself also
helped
to create a clear picture of an old run
down town. The physical setting was parallel to
the social
change that was taking place at the
time and could be used to symbolize the breakdown
of the old
structures that had once held their
society up.
In all the cases, the essential
element in Faulkner‘s story that gave the reader
both
background and insight into the story,
was the setting. The use of a familiar genre
supported the
actions and motivations of the
characters in the story and elevated the tone for
the reader‘s
William Faulkner‘s ―A Rose for
Emily,‖ Faulkner‘s details about setting and
atmosphere give the reader background as to
the values and beliefs of the characters, helping
the
reader to understand the motivations,
actions and reactions of Miss Emily and the rest
of the town,
and changing the mood or tone in
the story.
The setting in ―A Rose for Emily‖
is Faulkner‘s fictitious post-civil war Jefferson,
a small
town in the deep south of the
United States. Faulkner‘s use of this particular
time-period or genre,
is successful in giving
the reader an understanding or background to the
values and beliefs of the
characters in the
story. The town of Jefferson is a fallen legacy.
The hierarchical regime of the
Griersons and
the class system of the time where by ordinance of
the mayor- Colonel Sartoris, a
Negro women
could not even walk the street without an apron,
had changed into a place where
even the street
on which Miss Emily lived, that had once been the
most select, had now been
encroached and
obliterated, her house an eyesore among eyesores.
Both the town and Miss Emily
herself, now
looked upon Miss Emily as the only remnant of that
greater time. This fact gives the
reader an
understanding of the mindset of the ―town,‖ who is
narrating Miss Emily‘s story to us in
a form
resembling a gossip circle, where stories of
various townspeople are pieced together and of
Miss Emily, the protagonist who lived alone
except for her lone servant.
The actions of
Miss Emily range from eccentric to absurd but it
is the readers understanding
of the setting
that keep the story believable. Miss Emily becomes
reclusive and introverted after
the death of
her father and the estrangement from the Yankee-
Homer Barron. It is also revealed at
the end
of the story that she went as far as poisoning
Homer, keeping his dead body in his house,
and
sleeping next to him as well. She is doing what
she feels necessary in response to the pressure
placed on her by the town. She is still trying
to maintain the role of the southern women,
dignified
and proper while struggling with all
the other issues in her life and dealing with the
madness that
is said to run in her family. She
is also not accepting of the changing times and
flat out refuses to
change with them.
Faulkner‘s setting also helps the reader
understand the mentality and actions of the town.
The
townspeople seem oddly fascinated with
Miss Emily as a relic of an older time. They have
put her
in a special position among the others
and while they have not maintained any direct
contact with
her, they are still curious even
after her death about her mystery. This could be
attributed to the
fact that as the times are
changing, they need someone to restore or uphold
their southern pride or
majesty and as she is
a Grierson, she is their only link to that past.
They even take it upon
themselves to try to
correct her mistakes by calling on her cousins
while she was involved with
Homer. They felt
that she was setting a bad example and because she
was supposed to be of a
higher class and
epitomize morals and decency in the changing south
they felt that they had to do
something to
restore her moral standing for her.
Besides
helping the reader understand the motivations and
events in the story, the setting also
changed
the tone of the story. The descriptions that
Faulkner gave and the images he conjured
gave
the story a very gothic feel to it. The image of
the Grierson place with its out of date structure
and furnishings, and of Miss Emily herself as
a fat old woman resembling death itself also
helped
to create a clear picture of an old run
down town. The physical setting was parallel to
the social
change that was taking place at the
time and could be used to symbolize the breakdown
of the old
structures that had once held their
society up.
In all the cases, the essential
element in Faulkner‘s story that gave the reader
both
background and insight into the story,
was the setting. The use of a familiar genre
supported the
actions and motivations of the
characters in the story and elevated the tone for
the reader‘s
enjoyment.
Part Eight Climax
(5min.)
1. After Emily is buried, some
of the people of the town force open the room
above the stairs in her house. They find the
skeletal remains of Homer Barron, but the
climactic part of this is when they find the
long strand of gray hair on the pillow
beside
Homer. The narrator hints several times in the
story that the town suspects
Emily of killing
Homer, but I don't think any of them dreamed that
his body had been
kept in Emily's house for
over 40 years. The only hint of this is when she
wouldn't
allow her father's body to be removed
for three days. But at that point, the reader
tends to assume it's because her father was
all she had.
Part Nine Point of view (10min.)
―A Rose for Emily‖ is a successful story
not only because of its intricately complex
chronology, but also because of its unique
narrative point of view. Most critics incorrectly
consider the narrator, who uses ―we‖ as though
speaking for the entire town, to be young,
impressionable, and male; however, on close
examination, we realize that the narrator is not
young
and is never identified as being either
male or female. The character of the narrator is
better
understood by examining the tone of the
lines spoken by this ―we‖ person, who changes
hisher
mind about Miss Emily at certain points
in the narration.
Consider the opening
sentence of the story and the reasons given for
the townspeople‘s
attending Miss Emily‘s
funeral: ―. . . the men [went] through a sort of
respectful affection for a
fallen monument.‖
Is the narrator saying that the town views Miss
Emily respectfully? Do the men
remember her
with affection? What has Miss Emily done to
deserve the honor of being referred to
as a
―monument‖? Once we discover that she has poisoned
her lover and then slept with his dead
body
for an untold number of years, we wonder how the
narrator can still feel affection for her.
And
why does the narrator think that it is important
to tell us Miss Emily‘s story?
In general,
the narrator is sympathetic to Miss Emily, never
condemning her actions.
Sometimes unabashedly
and sometimes grudgingly, the narrator admires her
ability to use her
aristocratic bearing in
order to vanquish the members of the city council
or to buy poison. The
narrator also admires
her aristocratic aloofness, especially in her
disdain of such common matters
as paying taxes
or associating with lower-class people. And yet,
for a lover she chooses Homer
Barron, a man of
the lowest class, and more troubling than his
social status is the fact that he is a
Yankee.
Ironically, the narrator admires Miss Emily‘s
high-and-mighty bearing as she distances
herself from the gross, vulgar, and teeming
world, even while committing one of the ultimate
acts
of desperation—necrophilia—with a low-
life Yankee.
The narrator, who does not
condemn Miss Emily for her obsession with Homer,
nevertheless
complains that the Griersons
―held themselves a little too high.‖ But even this
criticism is softened:
Recalling when Miss
Emily and her father rode through the town in an
aristocratically disdainful
manner, the
narrator grudgingly admits, ―We had long thought
of them as a tableau‖—that is, as
an artistic
work too refined for the common, workaday world.
Also, the narrator almost perversely
delights
in the fact that, at age 30, Miss Emily is still
single: ―We were not pleased exactly, but
vindicated.‖ After Miss Emily‘s father‘s
death, the narrator‘s ambiguous feelings are
evident: ―At
last [we] could pity Miss Emily.‖
The townspeople seem glad that she is a pauper;
because of her
new economic status, she
becomes ―humanized.‖
Moving from admiring
Miss Emily as a monument to taking petty delight
in her plight, the
narrator again pities her,
this time when she refuses to bury her father
immediately after he dies:
―We
remembered all the young men her father had driven
away, and we knew that with nothing
left, she
would have to cling to that which had robbed her,
as people will.‖ The word ―cling‖
prepares us
for her clinging to Homer‘s dead body.
With
the appearance of Homer, the narrator, now
obviously representing the town‘s views, is
―glad‖ that Miss Emily has a love interest,
but this feeling quickly turns to indignation at
the very
idea of a Northerner presuming to be
an equal of Miss Emily, a Southern, aristocratic
lady. The
narrator cannot imagine that she
would stoop so low as ―to forget noblesse oblige‖
and become
seriously involved with a common
Yankee day laborer. In other words, Miss Emily
should be
courteous and kind to Homer, but she
should not become sexually active with him.
Once the town believes that Miss Emily is
engaging in adultery, the narrator‘s attitude
about
her and Homer‘s affair changes from that
of the town‘s. With great pride, the narrator
asserts that
Miss Emily ―carried her head high
enough—even when we believed that she was fallen.‖
Unlike
the town, the narrator is proud to
recognize the dignity with which she faces
adversity. To hold
one‘s head high, to
confront disaster with dignity, to rise above the
common masses, these are the
attitudes of the
traditional Southern aristocracy. For example,
when Miss Emily requests poison
from the
druggist, she does so with the same aristocratic
haughtiness with which she earlier
vanquished
the aldermen. When the druggist asks why she wants
poison, she merely stares at him,
―her head
tilted back in order to look him eye for eye,‖
until he wraps up the poison for her. In the
Southern culture of the time, to inquire about
a person‘s intent was a vulgar intrusion into
one‘s
privacy. Yet, at this point, despite the
narrator‘s admiration of Miss Emily‘s aristocratic
haughtiness, we question a society that allows
its members to use their high positions, respect,
and
authority to sidestep the law. We wonder
about the values of the narrator.
Who, then,
is this narrator, who seemingly speaks for the
town but simultaneously draws
back from it?
The narrator makes judgments both for and against
Miss Emily, and also presents
outside
observations—particularly in Section IV, when we
first learn many details about her. At
the
beginning of the story, the narrator seems young,
is easily influenced, and is very impressed by
Miss Emily‘s arrogant, aristocratic existence;
later, in Section IV, this person seems as old as
Miss
Emily and has related all the important
things Miss Emily has done during her lifetime;
and by the
story‘s end, the narrator, having
grown old with her, is presenting her with a
―rose‖ by
sympathetically and compassionately
telling her bizarre and macabre story.
By
using the ―we‖ narrator, Faulkner creates a sense
of closeness between readers and his
story.
The narrator-as-the-town judges Miss Emily as a
fallen monument, but simultaneously as a
lady
who is above reproach, who is too good for the
common townspeople, and who holds herself
aloof. While the narrator obviously admires
her tremendously—the use of the word ―Grierson‖
evokes a certain type of aristocratic
behavior—the townspeople resent her arrogance and
her
superiority; longing to place her on a
pedestal above everyone else, at the same time
they wish to
see her dragged down in disgrace.
Nevertheless, the town, including the new council
members,
shows complete deference and
subservience toward her. She belongs to the Old
South aristocracy,
and, consequently, she has
special privileges.
Part Ten Tone (`5min.)
The tone could be described as one of
complicity and guilt. Note how often Faulkener
intrudes with the prounouns
whole town
went to the funeral.
Guilt and complicity can
be seen in the way Emily is treated while alive.
Once part of a
proud (and wealthy)
Southern family, she is considered duty; and a
care; sort of hereditary
obligation.
Mistreatment, in the form of
negligence, eventually compounds their guilt after
Emily's death.
The pieces come together. She
was lonely, needed help, not judgment and
isolation. At the close of
the story, Faulkner
once again uses
strand of iron-gray
hair.
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
salute…to 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
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:
'She will kill
herself'; and we said it would be the best
thing.
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
discuss in 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.
Part Eleven Choice of language:
(15min.)
Faulker begins his tale at the end:
after learning of Miss Emily‘s death, we catch a
glimpse of
her dwelling, itself a reflection
of its late owner. The house lifts ―its stubborn
and coquettish
decay‖ above new traditions
just as its spinster is seen to do, ―an eyesore
among eyesores‖
(Faulkner 666). The narrative
voice suggests the gossipy nature of a Southern
town where
everyone knows everyone else, and
nosy neighbors speculate about the affairs of Miss
Emily,
noting her often antiquated ways and
her early retirement. In fact,
it appears as
if the town itself is describing the events of
Miss Emily‘s life, the first-person plural
―we‖ a telling indication. The first explicit
example of this occurrence takes
place during
the flashback in the second section, when, in
speaking of her sweetheart, thenarrator
parenthetically adds ―the one we believed
would marry her‖ (667).
In the opening
characterization, many descriptive words
foreshadow the ultimate irony at the
climatic
ending: ―her skeleton was small and sparse,‖ ―she
looked bloated, like a body long
submerged in
motionless water, and of that pallid hue‖ . We
learn that ―her voice was dry and
cold‖ and
that she did not accept no for an answer (667).
Her
house, a fading photograph, ―smelled of
dust and disuse—a closed, dank smell,‖ and when
her
guests are seated a ―faint dust‖ rises
―sluggishly about their thighs‖ (667). All of
these terms
suggest neglect, decay, entropy:
each of these elements tie in with the surface
layer as well as the
deeper themes upon which
Faulkner tiers.
After carefully building such
descriptive statements, Faulkner flashes back in
time and
examines the events that lead up to
the moment of death. This toggling of events has
been
skillfully constructed, building suspense
in a way that a straight forward chronology could
not.
The first unusual element that catches
the curiosity of the reader is the mention of ―the
smell,‖
which happened ―thirty years before‖
(667).
The smell, however, continues to
persist, rapping on the reader‘s curiosity for
attention: What is the significance of this
infernal ―smell‖? Faulkner chooses to tell us only
enough to keep us guessing, diverting us with
the four men who ―slunk about the house like
burglars, sniffing along the base of the
brickwork‖ with a single man forming a ―regular
sowing
motion‖ with the lime in his hand
(668). No sooner is this done, however, than the
light comes on
and Emily‘s ―upright torso
[sits] motionless as that of an idol‖ (668). Here
we see the first instance
of this ―idolatrous‖
description. We again are shown this image (as
well as the first person plural
narrator)
after the mysterious smell leaves in several weeks
and Emily has aged to the point of
near death,
her image in the window ―like the carven torso of
an idol in a niche, looking or not
looking at
us, we could never tell which‖ (671). Not only
does this form an interesting snapsnot,
but we
learn that (again note the first person plural
narrator) ―We had long thought of them as a
tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white
in the background, her father a spraddled
silhouette
in the foreground, his back to her
and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed
by the
back-flung front door‖ (668). It would
seem that Faulkner is trying to tell us something
on another
level if we will pay careful
attention. Is Emily a portrait, a tableau vivant
of a past that clings on in
its own tenacious
ways, disturbing the otherwise tranquil flow of
the future? We will come back to
this idea in
a moment.
In describing the death of Emily‘s
father, Faulkner again foreshadows or alludes to
the tragic
ending: ―She told them that her
father was not dead,‖ and ―did that for three
days,‖ until she
finally broke down and
allowed him to be buried properly (669). To this
end, the ―town narrator‖
comments ―We did not
say she was crazy then,‖ hinting perhaps that ―we‖
do say she is crazy now
(669). From here,
Faulker brings forth Homer Barron, a largely flat
character who nonetheless
plays an integral
part, for it is he that supplies the cadaver so
imperative to the plot. According to
the
collective narrator, he is ―a Northerner, a day
laborer,‖ ―a big, dark, ready man,‖ he laughs a
lot, and he curses ―the niggers‖ (669).
In
this case, Faulkner again returns to Miss Emily‘s
austere characterization: when she
purchases
the arsenic, she looks through her ―cold, haughty
black eyes‖ which peer from a ―face
the flesh
of which was strained across the temples and the
eye-sockets‖ (670). Just as Faulkner
deftly
employs Miss Emily‘s haughtiness to keep important
details from the reader, so too does he
use
her elusive habits to suggest a mysterious element
that helps heighten suspense. These
―haughty
black eyes‖ effectively stare down the druggist,
and for good reason, because if they did
not, Faulkner would have forced Emily‘s
hand and ruined the suspense. Since he does not
but
rather allows her silence to reign supreme
and enigmatic, the next day ―we all said, ‗She
will kill
herself,’” but she doesn‘t (670).
The reader is further engaged, wondering where all
these
individual details might lead: first the
smell, then the arsenic, and now it appears that
she is to
marry Homer Barron—if we are
inclined to trust the collective narrator—though
he soon
disappears out of the story as another
odd detail wonting further explanation (671).
Miss Emily emerges as a historical figure
frozen in a sort of stasis, though throughout it
all,
Faulkner never makes her any less complex
and ambiguous. Resistant to change though she may
be, even she cannot hold back the effects of
aging, growing steadily older: ―the next few
years‖
her hair ―grew grayer and grayer until
it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray,
when it ceased
turning‖ (671). This emphasis
on the graying of Miss Emily and its final state
of ―iron-gray‖ is
crucial to determining with
surety just whose ―long strand of iron-gray hair‖
we find in the
indented pillow next to
Barron‘s remains at the end of the story (672).
Within this exposition is
again juxtaposed the
concept of Miss Emily (representative of the old)
versus the new: ―then the
newer generation
became the backbone and spirit of the town, and
the painting pupils grew up and
fell away and
did not send their children to her with boxes of
color and tedious brushes and
pictures cut
from ladies‘ magazines‖ (671). It would seem that
Miss Emily, along with the China
she taught
children to paint, had become something of a relic
herself, resistant to the demands of
the
younger generation.
Her Negro manservant also
remains impervious to the ebb and flow of time,
though the
years gray his hair down just as
readily, leaving him increasingly stooped and
haggard (671). In
fact, we watch this process
happen ―daily, monthly, yearly,‖ which seems a
clear parallel to
Faulkner‘s interest in the
role of time and the interplay of the new versus
the old (671). It is here
that we read Miss
Emily described for the second time as ―an idol in
a niche,‖ a metaphor that
would further bear
out Miss Emily‘s defiance in the face of a
changing world that might not be
able to
change her habits, but nonetheless changes her as
is the wont of time and entropy (671).
This
―idol in a niche‖ is the last living portrait
Faulkner paints of Miss Emily before she dies
(671).
It is interesting that she does not
die in the fateful room, but instead is found in a
room
downstairs ―in a heavy walnut bed with a
curtain, her gray head propped up on a pillow
yellow
and moldy with age and lack of
sunlight‖ (672). The ladies from the town come
over with their
―hushed, sibilant voices and
their quick, curious glances,‖ apparently
oblivious to the
manservant‘s stealthy exit
out the back door (672). At her funeral the ladies
are once again
―sibilant‖—snakelike?—and
―macabre,‖ both suggestive of the final
suspenseful outcome (672).
The manservant—not
a particularly important character though without
him the plot would
have lacked an added layer
of richness—has finally outlived his usefulness
and Faulkner handily
shuffles him off the
story board, adding one last element of mystery to
the tale in the process:
―Why did the Negro
disappear?‖ Faulkner realizes that the discerning
reader will likely question
this disappearance
and total it with the mounting evidence in the
series of unusual events
preceding, only to
catch the unwary reader off guard with the
conclusion.
At the funeral, some of the very
old men were ―in their brushed Confederate
uniforms,‖
suggesting something of the
historical undercurrent running through Faulkner‘s
piece . Perhaps,
however, the deeper meaning
to Faulkner‘s thoughts is found in the description
of these men who
have confused ―time with its
mathematical progression, as the old do, [and] to
whom all the past is
not a
diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which
no winter ever quite touches, divided
from
them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the
most recent decade of years‖ . This
description would seem to explain the static
nature of an
unchanging Miss Emily—―the carven
torso of the idol in a niche‖ —the tableau vivant
framed by the ―back-flung front door‖ through
which the secret might be unlocked—and
the
unchanging nature of the manservant. It would seem
Faulkner has woven a multifaceted
tapestry
with its warp and woof firmly anchored to
universal—and therefore timeless—truth,
while
his historical particulars form the aesthetic shag
bedecking its surface:
the changeless world
of being beneath, the straining world of becoming
above.
12. Theme (10min.)
Symbols convey
special meanings to the reader throughout literary
genres. William Faulkner, a
regional writer,
employs symbolism in a good amount of his works.
Faulkner utilizes conventional
symbols,
allegories, and unconventional symbols. In his
short story,
uses unconventional symbols.
Symbols provide greater understanding of the
setting, help define
the aura of Miss Emily's
character, and play a crucial role in revealing
the story's theme.
Symbols equip the reader
with ample understanding of the setting. Endearing
characters unveil
the true thought behind
Faulkner's choice of setting. The central
character Miss Emily Grierson, a
true Southern
Belle, brings the Old South back to life. Miss
Emily, like the fallen South turns into,
on and leaves her the last Grierson she
wants more recognition, respect, and the legacy of
a grand
monument,
the last Grierson; as if
it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm
her imperviousness
Miss Emily and her home
represent a grandiose era that has fallen away,
leaving them an
amusement to visitors. In the
manner one preserves a rose for beauty, Miss Emily
preserves
Homer for love. Symbolism helps the
reader discern Miss Emily's aura. Insight into how
symbols
function in
Emily and her home
showing their age, But garages and cotton gins had
encroached and
obliterated even the august
names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's
house was left, lifting
its stubborn and
coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and
gasoline pumps? (p. Stubborn in
her ways of
the Old South, Miss Emily refuses to modernize.
Miss Emily and her home, once a
real life
Scarlet and Tara , stand alone among new
technology. Homer, like the North to the South,
comes to modernize the town, The construction
company came with niggers and mules and
machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a
Yankee? (p. The story revolves around the Old
South setting. It is a story of the Old
South's trials before, during, and after the Civil
War. 2
The terms are a direct reference to
Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Grasping
Faulkner's symbolism results in understanding
discovering the theme.
13.
Symbolism(13min.)
14. Structural analysis
(10min.)
I. 1. The story started with the
description of the states of the minds of
different people at her
death.
2. The
description of her house and neighborhood.
3. (Flashback) When she was alive, she had been a
tradition, a duty, and a care.. She got the
special privilege not to pay taxes from the
old leader of the town.
4. (Flashback) New
leaders asked her to pay taxes.
5.
(Flashback)New leader sent men to call on her and
ask her pay taxes.
6.
(Flashback)Appearance of Miss Emily—very fat and
dressed in black: an image of old or
pastime
and color of horror.
7-14 (Flashback)Her
attitude toward the deputy—obstinately refuse to
pay anything and drive
them out of the door
completely.
II. (Flashback even further)
1. She seldom went after her sweetheart‘s
death and refuse any visit.
2-10 A terrible
smell issued from his house and the neighbors
complained to the leaders of the
town, and the
leader thought it not proper to tell that, so men
were sent to put down the smell
secretly on a
night.
men were frightened by her image at he
window and ran away.
12.(go back further to
her youth when her father was alive) Emily dressed
in white, color of
innocence and pure, behind
her father, her father drive away all the suitors
so that she lost
the chance of love and
marriage.
13. The death of her father left her
poor.
14. People wanted to offer condolence
and aid, but she refused and kept her father‘s
body for
three days at home, then buried in
hurry.
15. People seem to understand her
strange behavior to do that.
III. She tried to
start a new life after her father‘s death by
marrying Homer Barron
1. She took on a new
image when she appeared again in the street after
her fathers death—like a
angel.
2. She
fell in love with a Northerner named Homer Barron,
a foreman of road- building
workers and
driving in art with him.
3. Different
reactions about her date with Homer and her
relatives were called to remind her of
her
behavior.
4. Old people talked about her
behind her back and thought she had morally
fallen.
5. She paid no attention to others and
as dignity and doggy as she bought the poison,
arsenic.
6-14. A description of the procedure
of her buying arsenic.
IV. From her purchase
of the poison until her death 40 years later
1. People thought she would kill herself if Homer
refused to marry her.
ladies worried her
driving with Homer in the streets would be bad for
the young and
asked the minister to stop it,
but useless.
3. Her cousins were asked to
stop it, but Emily was found to prepare stuffs for
marriage.
4. Homer had gone when the road
finished and came back when Emily‘s cousins left.
People
thought he would get married with Emily
and take her away.
Homer never appeared
again, and Emily stayed at home; the terrible
smell issuing
from her room.
6. Her
image changed when she was seen again—fat with
grey hair.
7. Her front door remained
closed, she gave painting lessons to colonel
Sartoris‘s off-springs
and get free taxes.
8. She lived in the past, refusing the
development of the society.
9. Door closed
and taxes refused to pay even the new leaders
demanded again and again, she
could only be
seen through windows, like the carved torso of an
idol in a niche.
10-11 (Back to the
present) she fell ill and died, only her Negro
servant with her. Her room
filled with dust
and shadow.(Gothic atmosphere)
V. She was a
murder.
1. The Negro open the front door
after her death and let ladies in and then
disappeared.
2. On her funeral, old men wore
Confederate uniforms to show respect, the monument
of old
collapsed. Old people tend to remember
the old happy days.
3-4. The mythical room
upstairs was discovered to be the bride chamber
full of dust and
everything of the wedding
night remained untouched. (Compare it with Charles
Dickens's Great
Expectations, Miss Havisham, a
rich woman who was once cheated and betrayed and
deserted by
her lover on the very eve of their
wedding, her expectation is to bring up Estella as
a beautiful,
cold-hearted weapon of revenge
upon all male folk in the World;)
5. Homer
lay dead in bed.
6-7 Emily slept with
Homer‘s dead body for many years.
15.
Brief summary of the class and homework assignment
(2min.)
1) Finish all the exercises to
the text. Try to read one novel by William
Faulkner.
16. Detailed study of the text
(90min.) (Refer to the teacher’s book.)