Looking From a Changed Perspective
“A Rose for Emily” is a short story written by William Faulkner that is originally written in a first person point of view, that being the point of view of the towns people. Faulkner’s story is about this woman, Emily Grierson, as the townspeople gather for her funeral and recollect on her life. Emily became very isolated after the passing of her father and her “sweetheart” left her. Eventually she gets close with Homer Barron, Homer was uninterested in marriage so they ended up in a courtship together. A year into their courtship Emily goes and buys rat poisoning but says nothing about why. Eventually Homer disappears and no one knows where he went or had any ideas of what may have happened and just thought he had left town. When the story comes back to the present day, the townspeople want to see what is in her house finally after years of wondering, upon entering they find the skeleton of a man and believed it to be Homer Barron.
“A Rose for Emily” would have been very different had Faulkner chosen to write it in her perspective rather than the townspeople’s point of view. Readers would have gained insight into Emily’s strange behaviors but readers would not have gotten the outside view from the townspeople.
Had it been in Emily’s perspective, the reader would have come to learn what was going on in the three days following her father’s death and why she wouldn’t hand over his body. Readers would also have gotten insight into exactly how Emily felt towards Homer and would have learned why and exactly how she chose to kill Homer with the rat poisoning. The reader would have learned what thoughts were going thro...
