Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Where does the exposition end and the movement toward the story's climax begin, and where does the resolution stage begin in "A Rose for Emily"?

In "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, we cannot chart
the exposition, climax and resolution as we might with another story—one that has been
told in chronological order. In fact, one of the ways that Faulkner keeps the reader so
off balance and able to surprise us so well at the story's end is by telling the story
in several parts that are not chronologically
ordered.


For instance, had the narrator told us that Miss
Emily was seen riding with Homer Barron, that she then bought a silver-backed man's
"toilet set" engraved with his initials, and finally purchased rat poison, we would not
have been too surprised by the ending; we most probably would have remembered Homer
being admitted one night by Tobe, the manservant, never to be seen again. However, by
mixing things up with flashbacks—"misdirection" by the author—we have lost the
chronology. There is really no resolution to the plot, as happens with some short
stories; what grabs us, however, is not just that Miss Emily murdered Homer, but that
the details point to evidence that she has been sleeping next to his dead body…and not
many years in the past, but recently, as shown by the hair on the pillow next to the
body: the color and length of her aged
hair:



…we saw
a long strand of iron-gray
hair.



And this is not only
the climax of the story, but the end of the story as well.

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