a rose for emily
A rose for Emily 写作技巧英文版 武汉大学
WRITING SKILLS of A Rose for Emily1.Story StructurePart I: Emily's death;She pays no taxes.Part II: Thestrangesmelling of Emily's house; Emily's father passed awayPart III:Love with Homer; Emily buy poisonPart IV: The Emily's old age;Emily's deathPart V: Emily's funeral;People found the corpse（尸体）2.Figurative languageSimile（明喻）•Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough. Personification（拟人）•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 andcoquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasolinepumps-an eyesore among eyesores.3.Narrative techniques---重点部分➢Suspense（悬念）I think the writing skill the author use most is “suspense”, at the beginning of the novel there are several questions we cannot get through , e.g. why the whole town went to her funeral ? W hat the “ fallen monument’ represent for ? Why the women were full of curiosity to the inside of her house ? What exactly was in Emily”s house ?With so many questions we have to deal with ,we are full of interests and curiosity to read the following text and find the answers.And at the other parts of the text , there are suspenses as well ,e.g. why the house of noble Emily send out bad smell ? Is the arsenic(砒霜) really formice ？➢SymbolIt seems that a teem is going to give us a detail explanation .Here we just give a brief introduction.The text have an unique title—“A Rose for Emily”,but the true flower—rose does not appear from the beginning to the end .T his is a symbol. I think the “rose” have severe symbols, e.g.a)Love . Emily did not get Homer”s true love, but the authorwant to give a “rose ” for her ,showing humanisticemotion .b)Emily herself. As the present of the old society ,she isa rose full of thorns.(带刺的玫瑰)Emily is the symbol of south traditional civilization and Puritan culture（清教文化）.Homeris the symbol of the capitalistclass.➢Chronological disorder(时序倒错法)text order :Death of 74-year- Emily-----She refused to pay taxes.----The smell from her house .-----Her exceptional perform after her father”s death .----She fell in love with Homer and then Homerdisappeared .-----She bought arsenic(砒霜).----Death of74-year- Emily.The exact order :Her exceptional perform after her father”s death .-----She refused to pay taxes. ----She fell in love with Homer and then Homer disappeared . -----She bought arsenic(砒霜). ----The smell from her house . ---- Death of 74-year-old Emily.The beginning is in harmony with the end . This disorder makes the plot complicated and confusing(扑朔迷离) , significantly highlight the love of Emil y,intensively criticize the essence of south traditional civilization based on slavery and Puritan culture.➢Unique detailsThe most important clue of the mouder is the hair of Emily. “The hair of Emily”appear many times in the text as follows : a)After her father,s death , “her hair was cut short, makingher look like a girl, with a resemblance to those angels in colored church windows.”b)After Homer,s leaving 6 monthes, “she had grown fat and herhair was turning gray. During the next few years it grewgrayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.”c)After her death “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 moldy with age and lack of sunlight. ”d)The last sentence about the death of Homer“we saw a longstrand of iron-gray hair(near the body)”The changing of her hair little by little corresponding to the declination of the noble and the civilization of old society.➢Unique narrative perspective(叙述视角)Usually we use first person“I or me” as a narrator in a novel, while the author employed a smart narrative perspective--- First Person Plural(第一人称复数) “we or us ” . “I” represent a single one ,while “we” represent large amounts of people forming sharp contrast with maverick(特立独行) Emily ,signifying the tragedy of Emily. First Person Plural(第一人称复数) which is more believable makes the ideasmore objective while first person gives more subjective opinions.。
Unit 2 A Rose for Emily-Text
A Rose for EmilyBy William Faulkner1 When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.2 It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. 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 the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.3 Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron--remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.4 When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.5 They called a special meeting of the board of aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted intostill more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. 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 sunray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.6 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. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.7 She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.8 Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."9 "But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"10 "I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff.... I have no taxes in Jefferson."11 "But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go by the--"12 "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."13 "But, Miss Emily--"14 "See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."15 So SHE VANQUISHED them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed wouldmarry her--had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man --a young man then--going in and out with a market basket.16 "Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly," the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.17 A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.18 "But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.19 "Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law?"20 "I'm sure that won't be necessary, "Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it."21 The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night the board of aldermen met--three greybeards and one younger man,a member of the rising generation.22 "It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. . ."23 "Damn it, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?"24 So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.25 That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completelycrazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough to Miss Emily and such. 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 backflung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.26 When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.27 The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.28 We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. 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.29 SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.30 The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.31 At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner,a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige--without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.32 And as soon as the old people said "Poor Emily," the whispering began. " Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."33 She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her.34 "I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, stilla slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye sockets as you imagine a lighthouse keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said.35 "Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recoin--"36 "I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."37 The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--"38 "Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"39 "Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"40 "I want arsenic."41 The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face likea strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."42 Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eyefor eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home, there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."43 SO THE NEXT DAY we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." 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. Later we said "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.44 Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal--to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama.45 So she had blood kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments . At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are married." We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.46 So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some time since--was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, 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.47 And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, asthe men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.48 When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew greyer and greyer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron gray, like the hair of an active man.49 From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.50 Then the newer generation became the backbone and the 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 the ladles' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. 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.51 Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow greyer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.52 And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with onlya doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro. He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.53 She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her grey head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.54 The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.55 The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, 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 bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.56 Already we knew that there was one room in that region abovestairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.57 The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valence curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded 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. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.58 The man himself lay in the bed.59 For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.60 Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair.。
a rose for emily解读与译赏
a rose for emily解读与译赏《A Rose for Emily》是美国作家威廉·福克纳的短篇小说，被认为是福克纳最杰出的作品之一。
这个故事揭示了一位孤独的南方女性艾米丽·格里森的生活，以及她与社会的冲突和疏离感。
故事以艾米丽的葬礼开始，随后回溯到她生前的往事。
艾米丽是一个古怪而孤立的人物，她居住在一个受到时间遗忘的南方小镇，被当地人视为传奇。
她的父亲在她年轻的时候过世，使得她变得孤独和隐居。
她与一个北方建筑师霍默·巴伦的关系引起了镇上人的不满和猜疑，但他们之间的真实情况始终是个谜。
艾米丽的生活充满了秘密和谜团，她甚至杀害了她的恋人霍默并将他的尸体保存在一个密封的房间中。
这种行为揭示了她的精神崩溃和对时间的无法接受。
她试图保存过去的美好时光，但却无法逃脱时间的流逝。
作者通过描写艾米丽的故事，深入探讨了社会和传统观念对个体的压迫和破坏。
这个故事中的玫瑰象征着美好的过去和爱情。
艾米丽失去了父亲和她的恋人，她试图保留他们的存在并抵抗时间的消逝。
她在封闭的世界里过着与现实隔绝的生活，就像一个被遗忘的花朵。
然而，随着时间的推移，玫瑰凋谢了，就像艾米丽最终被时间所击败。
《A Rose for Emily》是福克纳对南方社会的批判，揭示了社会对个人的限制和破坏力量。
艾米丽代表着被压迫和被孤立的个体，她的悲剧反映了整个社会体系的腐败和堕落。
通过描写艾米丽的故事，福克纳呈现了一个关于时间、孤独和爱的复杂而深刻的图景。
总之，《A Rose for Emily》是一部充满象征主义和深度的文学作品，通过描述一个女性的孤独和精神崩溃，揭示了社会对个体的压迫和摧毁。
福克纳通过这个故事，向读者展示了一个关于时间、爱和社会的不公的悲剧。
A rose for Emily 分析(人物,象征,背景)
A rose for EmilyThis story happens after the American Civil War，in Jefferson Town。
It’s a story about an eccentric spinster named Emily Grierson whose marriage is totally manipulated by her father. Two years after her father's death，poor Emily is acquainted with a northerner called Homer Barron，a day laborer and she falls in love with him. However，their relation is short—lived as Homer becomes tired of her and intends to get rid of her。
In order to keep Homer at hand, Emily kills him with arsenic and “obtain” him，thus, she sleeps with his corpse for decades。
This is the truth that villagers find after her death。
From my own perspective, this masterpiece reflects the decline of the southern society and reveals the conflicts between the two different value systems and two societies after the American Civil War。
a rose for Emily 分析
A Rose for Emily 的评析(2010-06-21 23:49:34)转载▼标签：文化威廉.福克纳和他的《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》摘要：福克纳把南方的历史和现实社会作为自己创作源泉而成为美国南方文学的代表。
《献给爱米丽的玫瑰》通过爱米丽的爱情悲剧揭示了新旧秩序的斗争及没落贵族阶级的守旧心态，福克纳运用神秘、暗语、象征、时序颠倒等写作手法来揭示这一主题。
关键词：威廉·福克纳；献给爱米丽的玫瑰；南方小说一、威廉·福克纳的南方情结威廉·福克纳(William Faulkner，1897-1962)是美国文学史上久负盛名的作家之一，生于密西西比州一个在内战中失去财富和地位的没落的南方种植园家庭。
福克纳的大多数作品都以美国南方为背景，强调南方主题和南方意识。
在他19部长篇小说和75篇短篇小说中，绝大多数小说的故事都发生在他虚构的美国的约克纳帕塔法县(Yoknapatawpha county）和杰弗生镇。
这些作品所展示的生活画卷和人物形象构成了福克纳笔下的“约克纳帕塔法世系”。
“约克纳帕塔法世系”是以该县家族的兴衰、变迁为主题，故事所跨越的时间上起自印地安人与早期殖民者交往的岁月，止于第二次世界大战后，长约二百年。
他的世系小说依南方家系人物的生活而展开，以南方浓郁的泥土气息伴随着因工业文明而带来的焦虑、惶惑、无奈，把一百多年来即从1800年到第二次世界大战之后社会发展过程中，南方人所独有的情感和心态通过独特的艺术方式展示出来，可谓一部“南方生活的史诗”。
在这部史诗的字里行间，留下了作家的血与泪之痕：割不断爱恋南方古老精神的一片深情，可又抵御不了现代文明进程的必然性。
正如福克纳所说：“我爱南方，也憎恨它。
这里有些东西我本不喜欢。
但是我生在这里，这是我的家。
因此，我愿意继续维护它，即便是怀着憎恨。
”这种矛盾恰好构成了福克纳情感意识及其小说世界的无穷魅力。
结果，约克纳帕塔法县成了旧南方的象征，而福克纳也借此成功地表现了整个南方社会的历史和意识。
A Rose for Emily主题分析
After the independence of United States, North and south developed along different paths. Since the 1820s, the industrial revolution developed in north and Central states, While in the south, was the black slavery. Since the 19th century, the contradictions between North and south had became increasingly fierce. Then, The American civil war broke out. As is known to all, victory belongs to the north,After the Civil war, slavery was eliminated, but the black still under various exploitation and discrimination. So that‟s the background of this story.
Novel titles：A Rose for Emily Chinese name：《献给艾米丽的一朵玫瑰花》
也译作《纪念艾米丽的一朵玫瑰花》
Published time：In April 1930 Author：William Faulkner
威廉· 福克纳 福克纳出生在美国南方一个没落贵 族家庭，这样的身世对福克纳的文学 创作影响深远。 威廉·福克纳的15部长篇与绝大多 数短篇的故事都发生在约克纳帕塔法 县，称为“约克纳帕塔法世系”。其 主要脉络是这个县杰弗生镇及其郊区 的属于不同社会阶层的若干个家族的 几代人的故事。
a-rose-for-emily----送给艾米丽的玫瑰PPT课件
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Plot review
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Section 1
ß Emily's funeral as a big event
ß the house and her distinguished family
ß tax incident&the visit by the deputation
an erotic object for characters within &the spectators without/ passive to the active gaze from the man/gazer vs. gazed
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ß Female gaze: women look at themselves through the eyes of men/male gaze as a manifestation of unequal power between gazer and gazed, or as an attempt to develop that inequality/ a woman who welcomes an objectifying gaze may be simply conforming to norms established to benefit men/to reduce a recipient to an object/Welcoming such objectification may be viewed as akin to exhibitionism(裸 露癖)
ß The silenced heroine: voice vs.silence
A_rose_for_Emily赏析
Ⅰ、Introduction“A Rose for Emily”is a classic story representing Faulkner’s favorite subject, theme and style、The story is set in the town of Jefferson in his imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, the “mythical kingdom”、The story begins with a funeral of the eponymous Miss Emily、It does not follow a particular order of chronological time、The narration flows backwards or forwards in a line of reality, revealing significant details of Emily’s life and the murder of the Homer Barron by Emily, which are suspended till the end of the story、The narrative is also divided into five parts, allowing for flexible shifts in time and displays of Emily’s image at various stages of her life、Through the story about Emily, the author tries to pinpoint an unavoidable fate of the aristocracy and various changes in the South America after the Civil War、In this story, Emily Grierson, the main character, is a victim、Dominated by her father and his rigid ideas of social status, she has been prevented from marrying during her lifetime、One year after her father’s death, she falls in love with a northerner、When she finds that her lover is not going to get married with her, she poisons him so that she can keep him with her forever、Though the plot of the story is not complicated, yet it can be considered as a minor program of his works、In it are examples of Faulkner’s artistic preoccupations and techniques: the exploration of psychological reality, the social structure and mores of a southern community, the nature of time, and the relation of the past to the present、This paper will approach the story from the following aspects: analysis of Emily’s character, the root causes of her characters and her destiny、Ⅱ、Analysis of Emily’s charactersEmily is the main character, the protagonist of the story、In this story, the author mainly focuses and reveals the main characte r—Emily、In order to analyze Emily’s character, some question s have at first to be answered: What type is this story or what kind of theme this story plans to reveal? When answering these questions, itbecomes much easier to analyze her character、Miss Emily is kind of quiet and perverse, proud and aloof, haughty, brave and tough, a representative of traditional convention and so forth、The followings are going to expatiate on them、2、1Miss Emily’s haughty characterAt the very first, Emily is easy to be regarded as a haughty woman、In the story, the writer not only reveals the abnormal phenomenon of Emily’s grotesque character and her ill-sexed psychology, but also lively portrays her as a strong figure of haughtiness、Miss Emily Grierson is the socialite of her town、Naturally with this status there is a certain reputation she has to withhold、She not only represented her family name but, in a sense the people of her town、Because she was such a dominant figure the townspeople had put her on a pedestal and were very attentive to her actions、During the time in which her father was alive Emily was seen as a figure to be admired but never touched、Many wooers she had but according to her father’s standard, none were suitable enough、2、2 Miss Emily’s isolated and eccentric characterBesides, Miss Emily is isolated and eccentric、From the whole story, there is no doubt that she was an isolated one from the beginning of the story to the surprising end、All her life is the town people’s topic after meals、They regard her as a monster、And because of her family, in particular, her father, she nearly get separated from her neighbors, which adds more pressure to her personal affairs to fall in love with the Yankee, Homer Barron, which, at last, creates the tragedy、On the other hand, she is eccentric at thesame time、When the men from the government want to tax her after her father’s death, but they are refused by Emily、The reason is quite simple, that is, when her father is alive, in Jefferson, they need not to pay taxes、She just tells the government that she has no taxes in Jefferson、What she said was the matter several years ago、And there was once a man called Colonel Sartoris explained it to her about her tax-free privilege、She does not respect the truth, that is, her so-called Colonel died ten years ago and new policy comes into practice、The narrator arranges the specific detail on her behavior of buying Arsenic、The druggist can not imagine her purpose in buying the poison and just thinks that she might use it for rat and such things、Miss Emily just stares at him, her head tilts back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looks away and goes and gets the arsenic and wraps it up for her、How strange and eccentric she is、She does not allow anyone to ask about her matter, even though it is a dangerous affair which is forbidden by law、2、3 Miss Emily’s necrophiliaMiss Emily is a necrophilia, too、Greatly surprised at the sight of the last paragraph of Faulkner’s short-story “A Rose for Emily”, the town people find that Miss Emily is not only a murderer, but also sleeps with Homer Barron after she kills him、Then it is noticed that in the second pillow is the indentation of a head、One of the townspeople lifts something from it, and leans forward, finding the faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, and a long strand of iron-gray hair、Horribly, she kills her lover and sleeps next to him for a long time until being found out、As for the whole passage, the narrator refuses to dismiss Emily as simply mad or to treat her life as merely a grotesque, sensational horror story、Instead, his narrative method brought us into her life before we hastily rejectedher, and doing so offered us a complex imaginative treatment of fiercedetermination and strength coupled with illusions and shocking eccentricities、4 2、4 Miss Emily’s braveness and toughnessShe is brave and tough as well、As a woman, Emily is normal、She just tries her best to pursue her happiness、In this story, the most attractive part for a great number of people is Emily’s brave pursuit of love、Only after her father’s death, she begins to have the right to love、“In the summer after her father’s death, she has her hair cut short and looks like a little girl、Soon she falls in love with Homer, who is a Yankee, a northerner and a day labor as well、” She holds her head high in her dignity as she is the last Grierson of her family though the townspeople think she has fallen because she is with a man who is different from her、However, Emily’s love affair is not affected by the townspeople and her two female cousins’ interference、What’s more,Ⅲ、Intrinsic and extrinsic Reasons3、1 Intrinsic reasons3.1.1 FamilyIt is her family, especially her father that influences her so much、Emily, the heroine in the story, is a victim、Dominated by her father and his rigid ideas of social status, she has been prevented from marrying during his life time and therefore afterhis death, she is left alone and penniless、Her dependence on her father continues even after he dies; she refuses to bury him and keep his portrait in a prominent place in her living room、Emily not only clings to her father’s memory, she also begins to assume his domineering traits、She does not accept the passage of time and changes or the inevitable loss that accompanies it、It is not just pathetic attempts to cling to the past, it develops into obsession and finally, homicidal mania、Rather than lose Homer as she lost her father, she kills him in order to keep him、She lives many years as a recluse、Abnormal characters are easy to form when under such strong pressure、It is Emily’s family that ruins her life and then Homer’s、3.1.2 PhysiologyEmily’s typical characters are cause by another important reason, namely, the physiological one、From Freud Sigmund’s narration, there are three conceptions which are connected to the analysis needed to understand, that is, Id, Ego, and Super-ego、They are the three parts of the fictive “psychic apparatus” defined in Freud’s so-called structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described、According to this model, the uncoordinated instinctual trends are the “id”; the organized realistic part of the psyche is the “ego”, and the critical and moralizing function the “super-ego”、The Id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives、The Id is unconscious by definition、6Id is human’s first reaction when human physiological needs happen, which is also an unorganized phenomenon、Miss Emily just tries her best to chase her happiness as other normal women do、From this angle, Miss Emily has the right to fall in love with Homer and to have their own family、What she has done is within the common practice、However, a lot of elements result in the tragic sequel、It is she that can not grasp the physiological element and causes her unhappy or even miserable destiny、3.1.3 Pathology and psychologyThere is another important intrinsic reason, that is pathological and psychological one、From her behavior to her father Mr、Drieson, she is complete Elctra Comlex(恋父情结)、She lived with her father when Mr、Grieson was alive, without communicating with others、Mr、Grieson controlled her whole life completely, which is the root that causes Miss Emily’s tragedy and Homer’s、What is more, Emily’s father drove away all the young men who were going to chase his daughter for the reason that he just wanted to hold Emily for himself、In Emily’s sub-consciousness, her father is her lover、It is this kind of abnormal psychology that influences the formation of Emily’s abnormal characters、In Emily’s eyesight, losing her father amounts to losing her lover、And that means she will be alone from that time on、Therefore, she refuses to bury her father even though he has been dead for several days、And at last she kills her own lover just in order to keep him with her、3、2 Extrinsic reasonsWhen referred to intrinsic reasons, it is easy to think of extrinsic reasons causing Miss Emily’s characters and her destiny、What is more, the extrinsic reasons play a crucial role on her which worth of researching here、3.2.1 Cultural traditionCultural tradition makes great impact on Emily’s characters and the tragedy、Fa ulkner was aware of the Southerners’ association with the South tradition,not only physical,but spiritual as well; so he took pains to picture a group of Southerners who desperately submitted to the old way of life.But as an artist of the twentieth century,he observed the gradual changes of the South: the old veterans were dying of, and the old loyalties were adjusted to conform to new conditions.In “A Rose for Emily”,Faulkner described the conflicts between the old tradition and the new order, and the doomed defeat of the old tradition.Emily lived in her big and squarish frame house, which Grierson family thought the great choice、But her house was on its way to “coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps、And the once most select street which was filled with houses decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily l ightsome style of the seveties” was then encroached and obliterated by garages and cotton gins、Faulkner admired somewhat the merits of the South tradition—the compassion and humanity men like Colonel Sartoris and his peer s–inherited forced them to tell a kind lie to Emily so as to look after the single lady without insulting her dignity.But only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it、The moral values of the South tradition were lost.The new generation of public officials may be more efficient and businessman-like、They were more practical; the next generation,with its more modern ideas,produced some little dissatisfaction with the hereditary obligation upon the town、but the old generation like Judge Stevens totally objected to the idea for it was shameful to let others know that such noble lady had smell on her faces、The conflicts between the old generation and the new one indicated the decline of the Southern tradition.Faulkner believed that it was the moral values—courage,honor,pride,compassion,liberty and justice that produced the glorious Southern kingdom,but the new generation lost the virtues,thus losing its faith and force.The loss of the South tradition and the appearance of the North industrialization caused not only the devastation of the Southern plantation system, but also the macabre disillusionment to the Southern descendants、They were reared in the ways of the traditional South, vividly taught the beliefs and the loyalties of the tradition as the South knew them.Whereas,they saw that world changing into another kind and they were themselves of that new changed world,yet apart from it.Faulkner revealed with intensity the rootless of the Southern descendants.They witnessed that the Northern industrialization penetrated the South, but their inherited Southernaristocracy forbade their acceptance of the new order of life.They stubbornly objected to the invasion of the northern way of life, but in vain.So the Southern descendants had to suffer from the loneliness and bitterness of separating from the new world.The disillusionment of the Southerners was wel1 revealed in the portrayal of Emily, which is a symbol that Emily’s characters form ed and caused her tragic end、For Miss Emily, she holds a firm conception that the Southern tradition or her family system is some sort of superiority、Therefore, when another new system－the Northern one comes into being, she just can not accept the truth and does some deeds to resist it and protect her “perfect one”、It is such behaviors and traditions that makes her abnormal characters、3.2.2 Social elementAnother extremely crucial factor for Emily’s characters to form is the social element、Here it mainly refers to the environment—the Jefferson community around her、For the townspeople, Grieson family never choose a northerner, a day labor、They think even though Emily is sad, she can not forget that she is a noble、They seem to be Emily’s new father after her father died、They try to control Emily on her love affair、When Emily and Homer appear together, they talk about them with scornful expression、However, the community’s opposition does not influence Emily’s persistent love with Homer、If the townspeople give up at this moment, the result of Emily may be much better、But, instead the opposition becomes further intensified、A priest gets in and fails、Then come Emily’s two far-distance cousins、From the writer’s viewpoint in the story, Miss Emily has been much better when she fall love in Homer、But the social environment pushes her to the edge of an abnormal woman again and again、Ⅳ、DestinyShe refused to release her father’s body for burial,and kept his portrait in a prominent place in her living room: She refused to cooperate with modernization inthe tax-paying service, answering the tax notice “on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink…”Her clinging to the past developed into such obsession and homicidal mania that she killed Homer Barron when she knew he would not marry her、So she killed him and kept the body, From Emily’s tragic end and Faulkner’s other characters, we can see the portentous disillusionment of the Southern descendants in the transitional period.“They isolated themselves from the actual society, so what they could do was only to miss the past desperately until at last they died with deep agony、”9Consequently, Miss Emily suffered great pressure from the society, her family tradition, her relatives and community’s nonchalance etc、on her personal affair which finally caused her to die、Nonetheless, nobody paid much attention to whether she was alive or dead、Poor Emily is a character of misery、She is the sacrificial lamb of her time、Ⅴ、ConclusionEmily was respected as a monument by townspeople、Emily’s resistance is heroic、Her tragic flaw is the conventional pride: she undertook to regulate the natural time- universe、She acted as though death did not exist, as though she could retain her unfaithful love by poisoning her lover and holding his physical body in a world which had all of the appearances of reality except that most necessary of all things- life、Because Homer died, he couldn’t marry Miss Emily, then the monument continued to exist in the south people、In fact, the two generations ignored the real Emily, and create and maintain the myth of Emily as an example of southern womanhood from a last age、The writer uses the comic technique to disclose the conflict between south and north、This conflict cannot easily be solved at that time、Instead, it does great harm to Emily doomed destiny、In the above passage, Miss Emily’s characters are analyzed from different dimensions、At first, her behavior shows that she is a haughty, isolated and eccentric, necrophilia but brave and tough woman、Her characters are complex and to someextent ambivalent、From the intrinsic and extrinsic reasons above, it is known that Emily tragic destiny is doomed to happen at last、An analysis of "A Rose for Emily"William Faulkner regarded the past as a repository of great images of human effort and integrity, but also as the source of a dynamic evil、He was aware of the romantic pull of the past and realized that submission to this romance of the past was a form of death (Warren, 269)、In "A Rose forEmily", Faulkner contrasted the past with the present era、The past was represented in Emily herself, in Colonel Sartoris, in the old Negro servant, and in the Board of Alderman who accepted the Colonel's attitude toward Emily and rescinded her taxes、The present was expressed chiefly through the words of the unnamed narrator、The new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron (the representative of Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and thus toward the entire South), and in what is called "the next generation with its more modern ideas" all represented the present time period、Miss Emily was referred to as a"fallen monument" in the story、She was a "monument" of Southern gentility, an ideal of past values but fallen because she had shown herself susceptible to death (and decay)、The description of her house "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores" represented a juxtaposition of the past and present and was an emblematic presentation of Emily herself (Norton Anthology, 2044)、The house smells of dust and disuse and has a closed, dank smell、A description of Emily in the following paragraph discloses her similarity to the house、"She looked bloated like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that palled hue"、But she had not always had that appearance、In the picture of a young Emily with her father, she was frail and apparently hungering to participate in the life of the era、After her father's death, she looked like a girl "with a vague resemblance to thoseangels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene"、This suggests that she had already begun her entrance into the nether-world、By the time the representatives of the new, progressive Board of Aldermen waited on her concerning her delinquent taxes, she had already completely retreated to her world of the past、She declared that she had no taxes in Jefferson, basing her belief on a verbal agreement made with Colonel Sartoris, who had been dead for ten years、Just as Emily refused to acknowledge the death of her father, she now refused to recognize the death of Colonel Sartoris、He had given his word and according to the traditional view, his word knew no death、It is the past pitted against the present--the past with its social decorum, the present with everything set down in "the books、"We can further see this distinction in the attitude of Judge Stevens, who was over eighty years old, and the young man (a member of the rising generation) who came to the judge regarding the smell at Emily's house、For the young man, it was easy to point out the health regulations that were on the books、But for the judge dealing with the situation it was not sosimple、"Dammit, sir、、、will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?" (Norton Anthology, 2045)、If Homer had triumphed in seducing Emily and deserting her, Emily would have become susceptible to the town's pity, therefore becoming human、Emily's world, however, was already in the past、When she was threatened with desertion and disgrace, she not only took refuge in that world but also took Homer with her in the only manner possible--death、Miss Emily's position in regard to the specific problem of time was suggested in the scene where the old soldiers appear at her funeral、There are two perspectives of time held by the characters、The first perspective(the world of the present) views time as a "mechanical progression" in which the past is a "diminishing road" (Norton Anthology, 2049)、The second perspective (the world of tradition and the past) views the past as "a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years" (Norton Anthology, 2049)、The first perspective was that of Homer and the moderngeneration、The second was that of the older members of the Board ofAldermen and of the confederate soldiers、Emily held the second view as well, except that for her there was no bottleneck dividing her from the meadow of the past、Emily's room above the stairs was that timeless meadow、In it, the living Emily and the dead Homer remained together as though not even death could separate them、In the simplest sense, the story says that death conquers all、But what is death? On one level, death is the past, tradition, whatever is opposite of the present (Hoffman, 265)、In the setting of this story, it is the past of the South in which the retrospective survivors of the Civil War deny changing the customs and the passage of time、Homer Barron, the Yankee, lived in the present, ready to take his pleasure and depart, apparently unwilling to consider the possibility of defeat neither by tradition (the Griersons) nor by time itself (death)、In a sense, Emily conquered time, but only briefly and by retreating into her "rose-tinted" world of the past、This was a world in which death was denied at the sametime that it was shown to have existed、Such retreat, the story implies, is hopeless since everyone, even Emily, was finally subject to death and to the invasion of his or her world by the clamorous and curious inhabitants of the world of the present、"When Miss Emily died, [the] whole town went toher funeral、、、the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of herhouse, which no one save an old manservant、、、had seen in at least ten years" (Norton Anthology, 2044)、艾米丽小姐大多数时候隐藏在情节里。
A Rose for Emily&Winter Dreams-英文原文
“A Rose for Emily”by William Faulkner (1930)IWHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: themen through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, thewomen mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which noone save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seenin at least ten years.It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decoratedwith cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street.But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even theaugust names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left,lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons andthe gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily hadgone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay inthe cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous gravesof Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputationwaited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor hadpassed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten yearsearlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnishedin heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds ofone window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when theysat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning withslow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before thefireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thingold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves.""But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?""I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson.""But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--""See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.""But, Miss Emily--""See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.)"I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show thesegentlemen out."IISo SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquishedtheir fathers thirty years before about the smell.That was two years after her father's death and a short time after hersweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her.After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity tocall, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place wasthe Negro man--a young man then--going in and out with a marketbasket."Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladiessaid; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was anotherlink between the gross, teeming world and the high and mightyGriersons.A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eightyyears old."But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said."Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? ""I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably just asnake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him aboutit."The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man whocame in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it,Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've gotto do something." That night the Board of Aldermen met--threegraybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation."It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleanedup. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. ..""Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face ofsmelling bad?"So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn andslunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of thebrickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed aregular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from hisshoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn, a window that hadbeen dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, andher upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly acrossthe lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After aweek or two the smell went away.That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People inour town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gonecompletely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves alittle too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. 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. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. 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.IIISHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cutshort, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to thoseangels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in thesummer after her father's death they began the work. The constructioncompany came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foremannamed Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voiceand eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise andfall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you hearda lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be inthe center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily onSunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matchedteam of bays from the livery stable.At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because theladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of aNortherner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Herkinsfolk should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama; but yearsago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt,the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the twofamilies. They had not even been represented at the funeral.And as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began."Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her."I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty blackeyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said."Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--""I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--""Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?""Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--""I want arsenic."The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."IVSo THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." 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. Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. Thenext Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day theminister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama.So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watchdevelopments. At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler'sand ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on eachpiece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit ofmen's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are married."We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins wereeven more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had beenfinished some time since--was gone. We were a little disappointed thatthere was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, 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.And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.Then the newer generation became the backbone and the 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 the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. 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.Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the NegroHe talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.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 moldy with age and lack of sunlight.VTHE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men --some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow whichno winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrowbottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairswhich no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before theyopened it.The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room withpervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhereupon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valancecurtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon thedressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toiletthings backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that themonogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.The man himself lay in the bed.For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.“Hills Like White Elephants”By Ernest Hemingway (1927)The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this siodethere was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines ofrails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warmshadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads,hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. Itwas very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in fortyminutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.'What should we drink?' the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and putit on the table.'It's pretty hot,' the man said.'Let's drink beer.''Dos cervezas,' the man said into the curtain.'Big ones?' a woman asked from the doorway.'Yes. Two big ones.'The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put thefelt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and thegirl. The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in thesun and the country was brown and dry.'They look like white elephants,' she said.'I've never seen one,' the man drank his beer.'No, you wouldn't have.''I might have,' the man said. 'Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn'tprove anything.'The girl looked at the bead curtain. 'They've painted something on it,' shesaid. 'What does it say?''Anis del Toro. It's a drink.''Could we try it?'The man called 'Listen' through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.'Four reales.' 'We want two Anis del Toro.''With water?''Do you want it with water?''I don't know,' the girl said. 'Is it good with water?''It's all right.''You want them with water?' asked the woman.'Yes, with water.''It tastes like liquorice,' the girl said and put the glass down.'That's the way with everything.''Yes,' said the girl. 'Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you've waited so long for, like absinthe.''Oh, cut it out.''You started it,' the girl said. 'I was being amused. I was having a fine time.''Well, let's try and have a fine time.''Alright. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn't that bright?''That was bright.''I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it - look at things and try new drinks?''I guess so.'The girl looked across at the hills.'They're lovely hills,' she said. 'They don't really look like white elephants.I just meant the colouring of their skin through the trees.''Should we have another drink?''All right.'The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.'The beer's nice and cool,' the man said.'It's lovely,' the girl said.'It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig,' the man said. 'It's not really an operation at all.'The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.'I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let the air in.'The girl did not say anything.'I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it's all perfectly natural.''Then what will we do afterwards?''We'll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.''What makes you think so?''That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us unhappy.'The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads.'And you think then we'll be all right and be happy.''I know we will. Yon don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that have done it.''So have I,' said the girl. 'And afterwards they were all so happy.''Well,' the man said, 'if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple.''And you really want to?''I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you don't really want to.''And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?''I love you now. You know I love you.''I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you'll like it?''I'll love it. I love it now but I just can't think about it. You know how I get when I worry.''If I do it you won't ever worry?''I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple.''Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me.''What do you mean?''I don't care about me.''Well, I care about you.''Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be fine.''I don't want you to do it if you feel that way.'The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.'And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.''What did you say?''I said we could have everything.''No, we can't.''We can have the whole world.''No, we can't.''We can go everywhere.''No, we can't. It isn't ours any more.''It's ours.''No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.''But they haven't taken it away.''We'll wait and see.''Come on back in the shade,' he said. 'You mustn't feel that way.''I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.''I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do -''Nor that isn't good for me,' she said. 'I know. Could we have another beer?''All right. But you've got to realize - ''I realize,' the girl said. 'Can't we maybe stop talking?'They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.'You've got to realize,' he said, ' that I don't want you to do it if you don't want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to you.''Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along.''Of course it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want anyone else. And I know it's perfectly simple.''Yes, you know it's perfectly simple.'。
A-Rose-for-Emily主题分析
A Rose for Emily represents Faulkner‘s greatest achievements in the writing of short stories. Modernist writing techniques are skillfully used by Faulkner to tell the tragic life of Emily to show the incompatible inner spiritual world of American South in a specific period which is aimed at exploring the eternal theme of conflicts in human heart. Profoundly reflects southern aristocratic(贵 族的 [ə,rɪstə'krætɪk]) decline and decay, and the friction and conflict between the emerging capitalism（资本主义）and the old forces , and the contradiction between old and new values in the period of social change .
Novel titles：A Rose for Emily Chinese name：《献给艾米丽的一朵玫瑰花》
也译作《纪念艾米丽的一朵玫瑰花》
Published time：In pril 1930 Author：William Faulkner 威廉·福克纳
Birthplace: Mississippi in the United States