A Rose for Emily Blog - 4.8.16

• Who is the "we" in "A Rose for Emily"? Is the narration reliable? Why or why not? [use evidence from the text]

In William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily the narrator is a questionable subject where we really are not sure who exactly it is. As the reader, I interpret the "we" to be a narrator from the New South that is just interpreting the character of Miss Emily and the daily life that surrounds her and every one else in the town of Jefferson. I believe this for many reasons. One reason is because throughout the story, it seems that the narrator(s) (if there are multiple narrators, we are unsure) continue to talk badly about her, and very rarely even praise her character. For example the narrator says, "So the next day we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, 'She will marry him.'" (Faulkner 4) This narration makes me think that the narrator is a female, however, I could be wrong. It may be a group of people just interpreting her life, meaning it may be a mixed group of genders. Also, I do believe that the narration is reliable, because from what it seems, the character of Miss Emily was interpreted correctly. They show that she had gone crazy (murder & necrophilia), which in my personal opinion sounds like a correct description of her character because she becomes a recluse after a whole bunch of stuff happens. Like the New South "paving" its way into Jefferson and her being a "fallen monument" after she dies.