MLA Research Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

MLA Research Paper - Essay Example ut the story, the readers do not expect that the Jefferson town people will locate Homer’s body lying in bed where it has been for the last forty years. Faulkner poses questions to the readers; â€Å" How would you judge Emily; as a murderer, or as a sufferer?† Townspeople, though characterizes Miss Emily as a very mean and stubborn, but always maintains a curiosity around her. The same is with the readers; liking or disliking Miss Emily is a matter of choice of individual readers; however, no one would be apathetic to this personage. From another perspective William Faulkner uses intrigue and irony to describe the South as he saw during the post-Reconstruction age. Thus, from a societal viewpoint, â€Å"A rose for Emily† describes the dark corner of the southern society. It reveals to the audience how south is rotting from inside out. The same is observed by Michael Bolin (1) in his analysis â€Å"The decay of the south: Duality and containment in â€Å"A rose for Emily†. Any literary analysis of â€Å"A Rose for Emily† will be incomplete without analyzing the protagonist of the story – Miss Emily Grierson; her physical and mental images. Changes of Emily’s mental and physical image present the allegory of the story; decay of the old south culture. Xie Qun (66-69), the associate professor of the School of Foreign Languages of the Zhongnan University of China in his work analyzes Emily’s internal and external changes through the change of her physical appearance. Faulkner describes her physical image through sarcastic comparison. He writes, â€Å"She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough (Faulkner 1).† It is perhaps Faulkner’s ironic way of describing physical transformation of a slender woman from a young age to an older age. Miss Emily’s mental image is an ironic contribution of her father’s influence over her. Xie