WRITING SKILLS of A Rose for Emily

1. Story Structure

Part I: Emily's death; She pays no taxes. Part II: The strange smelling of Emily's house; Emily's father passed away

Part III:Love with Homer; Emily buy poison

Part IV: The Emily's old age; Emily's death

Part V: Emily's funeral; People found the corpse（尸体）

2. Figurative language

Simile（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 and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-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 ? What 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 for mice ？

? Symbol

It 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 .This is a symbol. I think the “rose” have severe symbols, e.g.

a) Love . Emily did not get Homer”s true love, but the author want to

give a “rose ” for her ,showing humanistic emotion .

b) Emily herself. As the present of the old society ,she is a rose full

of thorns.(带刺的玫瑰)

Emily is the symbol of south traditional civilization and Puritan

culture（清教文化）. Homer is the symbol of the capitalist class.

? 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 Homer disappeared .-----She bought arsenic(砒霜).----Death of 74-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 details

The 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, making her 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 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. 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 long strand 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 ideas more objective while first person gives more subjective opinions.

 

第二篇：a rose for Emily 写作技巧分析

A Rose for Emily

------Writing Technique

A Rose for Emily is one of the most famous works written by Faulkner. He is expert in time reversed.

The first time I went through this article, I thought the order of plots is out of logic because it wasn’t established in time of something. It seemed that the author wrote down the stories according to which story came into his mind first.

However, after reading the article again with the help of my teacher, I got a better understanding of why the author established it in that way. It was deliberate of the author to do so.

There are all the plots.

1. Miss Emily died and the whole town went to her funeral.

2. She didn’t want to pay the tax so she got into trouble with the new mayor.

3. Her house gave off a bad smell. The mayor had to send four men to sprinkle lime in the cellar. It was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart had deserted her. Later, we knew that the smell came from the dead body of……

4. She refused to bury her father’s dead body until three days

after his death.

5. She fell in love with Homer regardless of others’ discussion and criticism.

6. She bought poison in the drug store.

7. It seemed that she was going to marry the Yankee. However, he disappeared without any trace.

8. She gave lessons in china-painting for six or seven years when she was about forty. Save for that, she seldom showed up.

9. Since then, she never went out until she died silently in her seventy’s.

10. People found the skeleton of the missing Homer.

The story ended. I felt surprised and scared. However, I have to say that the ending is beyond expectation but reasonable, since the author did adequate foreshadowing for it.

So, the whole story was ordered according to people’s memories. Although it may be enological, it really left me a deep impression. I think it is exactly how this kind of writing technique works and what time reversed works for.

PS (something that is not about the writing skills):

In my opinion, it is wrong and stupid to keep those who don’t love us but we love around us forcefully. If I really love him, the only thing I want about him is to make sure that he is happy. I don’t

mind he loves me or not. Over-love can also be hurtful.