In A Rose For Emily, by William Faulkner Plot plays an important role in how the story is played out. Faulkner does not use chronological order in this short story. Instead, he uses an order that has many twists and turns. It appears to have no relevance while being read, but in turn, plays an important role in how the story is interpreted by the reader.
Every story must have a beining, the start or exposition of the story is where characters and setting are established. Also the main plot or conflict is also introduced. In Faulkner’s A Rose For Emily. It begins with Miss Emily’s funeral, then meanders through different periods of her life in no particular order before returning to her funeral and what the townspeople find when they enter Miss Emily’s house.
It seems as if Faulkner is all over the place when writing this story, or maybe the non chronological events reveal something more. So why does Faulkner present the plot of this story in this manner? He did so, to keep the reader on his/hers toes to make it impossible to predict what will happen next. For example, He starts his story with Emily’s death” When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral.”
A few sentences later he begins to talk about how Emily was remitted from paying taxes after her father died. Personally after reading this story, I didn’t think it was possible for Emily, such a reserved individual, to commit such a crime. Due to the brilliant set up of how the plot was introduced, the ending of the story was a huge shock to readers.
After reading this short story for my English class, there was a class discussion about the plot and we analysed the story with our instructor. To no surprise, almost everyone was very confused about how the plot played out. They talked about how when reading, it was very hard to understand due to events not being in chronological order.
Another question to ask is, how did Faulkner’s interpretation of the plot affect the reader? When reading A Rose for emily, you must pay very close attention to the events happening. Due to Faulkner’s brilliant writing style, he was able to keep the reader confused and unable to predict what would happen next. With so many twist throughout the story, one cannot afford to miss a single part. Faulkners expression of the plot and how he presented it, made the reader have to pay attention more to the story.
One of the things that makes A Rose for Emily such a classic short story is Faulkner’s use of a fractured timeline. However, one may ask how could anyone enjoy his writing if it’s difficult to understand? Due to the complex plot of the story, granted it doesn’t provide a clear story line. Faulkner wanted the story to be Mysterious and unpredictable.
When switching up the events, it made it difficult to interpret. However, due to this, it made the ending of the story incredibly surprising.The plot layout did this story it’s justice. If the plot was presented to the reader in chronological order, the story would be predictable and lose its entertaining twists.
Due to how the plot was presented, its role in the short story a rose for emily made an ironic turn of events which kept all of us on our toes. When the plot of a story takes the characters (and us readers) somewhere totally unexpected—in fact, the opposite of where you’d expect things to end up. It makes interpreting the story a little bit more challenging and fun.
‘A Rose For Emily’ contains quite the plot twist. Faulkner’s brilliant writing style made yet another one of his stories a classic twist.
