Wednesday, 4 August 2010

From what point of view is "A Rose for Emily" told?

The point of view is that of
the town itself, told from an unnamed narrators perspective but sharing the towns
feelings.

 The point of view of
the story is first person, but not the typical first person.  There is not one named narrator
whose mind we follow.  Instead, it is our town.  It is almost as if the town itself is telling
the story, or one person is sharing multiple perspectives gleamed from rumors.  Small towns tend
to have a collective consciousness.  It is this consciousness that narrates the story.


As the daughter of the town patron, Misskind of belongs to the town.  It is a bit like
how we view celebrities today.  She is the object of scrutiny and curiosity.  Her father
considered the town to belong to him, so she did as well.  As a result, she belonged to the
town.

An example of this is the description of how Miss Emily stopped coming
out of the house.

That was two years after her father's
death and a short time after her sweetheart--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.

The use of we believed and
people hardly saw her at all demonstrates this collective consciousness.  The town puts its
information together, and the town is the narrator.

The result of this
narrative style is that it creates suspense.  We do not quite know what is going to happen,
because we never really get the entire picture.  Instead, it's like listening to a juicy rumor-
you know it is going to end in an interesting way, but you are not sure
how.

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