Intriguing Use of Plot in William Faulkners A Rose for Emily Essay

Intriguing Use of Plot in William Faulkners A Rose for Emily The plotline of well-worn narratives would most aptly be diagramed as a triangle, with the rising action on one side, the falling action on the other side, and the climax fool the angle at the apex. The diagram of the plotline of William Faulkners A Rose for Emily, however, would look like a simple line with a positive slope. The storys chronology is abandoned in esteem of a simpler and more effective geometry. Faulkner discards the method of unfolding events in the order of their occurrence. Instead, he raises tension in the reader and creates a climate of curiosity by dint of revealing events in ascending order of intrigue. The beginning of Faulkners story is the end for Miss Emily. Faulkner presents images of the townspeople dutifully attending the funeral of this fallen fixture. As soon as the reader becomes acclimated to this setting, however, Faulkner subtly takes the reader back in time Miss Emily had been a trad ition, a duty, and a care a sort of hereditary promise upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Satoris, the mayor, . . . remitted her taxes (Faulkner 75). Faulkner inserts exposition into the middle of what was a section of falling action. Rather than returning the reader to the scene of Miss Emilys funeral, Faulkner trudges forward from 1894, rescue the reader up to date on the issue of Miss Emilys taxes. While explaining the exemption from taxes in Jefferson that Miss Emily enjoyed, Faulkner craftily incorporates the fact that Miss Emily ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier (76). Miss Emily is now dead, having refused to pay her taxes and having retired from her china-painting t... ...horrifying truth of Miss Emilys murder of Homer Barron for the final section of the story, and introducing Emilys necrophilia in the storys closing sentence, speaks volumes about Faulkners abilities in his craft. He has successfully arranged the events of a disturbed womans life to present them in order of interest and excitement preferably than in traditional chronological order. This use of plot enables Faulkner to write a great ghost story, because a ghost story needs to end on this kind of high note. Faulkner creates a plot line that resembles the upper line of a crescendo, a graph of emotional tension that starts at the lowest of points and travels steady upward to the highest of human horrors. Works Cited Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Comp. Michael Meyer. Boston Bedford/St. Martins, 2002. 75-81.