Monday, November 1, 2010

A Rose for Emily

4. Contrast the order of events as they happen in the story with the order in which they are told. How does this plotting create interest and suspense?

- This story starts out by putting the scene of Emily's funeral at the beginning of the story. It also starts with the description of the house that Emily lived in. The details from these two scenes urge the reader to find out how everything led up to this. The author creates suspense by putting the ending scenes at the beginning of the short story. After these ending scenes, the story goes back into time about 10 or so years to when Miss Emily lost her father. From here on out, the story is in chronological order until the reasoning for her death is explained.

If Faulkner were to have started the story with the death of Emily's father, I think it would have been less interesting to read and harder to follow. It would have just seemed like another boring story about an old woman's death. Also, by writing the story this way, Faulkner kind of made it into a mystery story with all of the nasty smells and by the way that nobody ever saw anyone really enter or leave the house.

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