The classic work— A Rose for Emily written by American writer William Faulkner is a typical example of the combination. In the novel, Faulkner describes social and historical changes of the southern America and the persity caused by series of conflicts between people, people and society after the civil war with his exquisite writing skills. To him, the inner conflict of the human beings is an eternal and efforts-worth theme. The heroine of the novel—Emily Grierson reflects the southern America during the stream of historical changes. Bound to the decayed southern traditional concepts, Emily suffers all kind of mental pains. Her heart is oppressed; her love is nipped in the bud and her life is distorted. In the specific environment, she performs many abnormal behavior and mental distortion; she ends her life in the extreme loneliness and pains. As her modern companion, Faulkner expresses his sympathy, pity, understanding and other complex feelings in the story with Emily. Through the depiction of Emily tragic life, Faulkner condemns racism and slavery, uncovers and criticizes puritan disciplines and the patriarchy which restrains women’s right to be happy. When the social spirit of the whole southern part is distorted, the humanity will be oppressed and the women will suffer. Emily and her tragedy became a miserable elegy of the disappearing American slavery. Since many essays have studied the novel from different aspects such as the features of Emily’s character, the southern complex and the feminism, this thesis will make a stylistic analysis of the short story from different aspects as follows.

Chapter One The Plot Construction

1.1 The Multiple Time Shifts
One thing that makes A Rose of Emily a classic novel is Faulkner’s use of fractured time line. The story is written in five parts; each one gives certain details about the mysterious Emily Grierson. Faulkner set a trick to his readers; the arrangement of the event is not chronologically presented, making the reading an efforts-worth task.
Chronologically, in the first section, you are given the time 1894 when the government paid Emily’s taxes. In the second section, the discussion about the smell is 30 years before the new government comes to get Emily to pay the taxes. It is a short time after Homer’s disappearance and is two years after her father’s death. She is about thirty then. In the third section, after her father’s death, Homer Barron comes to the town, she goes out with him. Her cousin comes. She buys arsenic. In the fourth section, Homer disappears after entering Emily’s house. We learn that Emily dies at the age of 74. The last section mainly describes the dead body of Homer and the iron-grey hair. However, if the story is arranged in this order, it wouldn’t be a masterpiece in American literature. Faulkner rearranges the order of the whole events and reader’s efforts are needed to make the chronological order of the story clear. First, it begins with the funeral of Emily Grierson, the first section describes Emily’s old house which is incompatible with the surroundings even with the times and the disputation between her and the city council over the tax paying issues. She is at an old age in the section one. The discussion and elimination of the bad smell are given out by her house, which is in fact caused by the rotten corpse of Homer Barron—Emily’s lover and her attitudes towards her father’s death are depicted in the second section. In the third section, Homer Barron, a Yankee, appears in Emily’s life, she falls in love, regardless the rumors from all around. People differe in their attitudes toward her affair. At the same time, the purchase of the arsenic by Emily from the drug store is also mentioned in the section. She is at her middle age in these two chapters. Section four dramatizes Emily’s inconclusively ended marriage and Homer Barron’s disappearance. She is dead in this section at her seventies after many years’ seclusion. The last section describes again about her funeral and the surprising discovery of Homer’s rotten body on her bed. The story neither takes the chronological order to ensure the reader a nature order to understand the story nor takes the Flash back to add any suspense. It follows the writer’s psychological process to state the plots. 《献给爱米丽的一朵玫瑰花》文体解读(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_28515.html