V The Negro met
V 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 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 sibi lant 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. Already, we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs 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. 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 valance curtains of faded rose colour. 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 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 leaving forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair.
6
“A Rose for Emily” – William Faulkner Questions 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 buying poison and the odour? 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. Does your view of the narrator affect your reception of the story? Why does Faulkner use
this particular narrator? What do you know about him? Can you list his “values,” and if so, are they shared by the town? Is this narrator reliable? Does the fact he is male matter?
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, to what is she a monument?
8. Notice references to the Civil War in this story. Where do they occur? How does that war
play a role in the story?
