midterm des

Midterm Southern Literature
You will need to answer the questions with a topic sentence, provide a quote from the text, and analyze
how the evidence supports your topic sentence. You will be graded on your topic sentence and analysis
of the evidence. You should have 4-5 sentences of analysis for each quote. Your answers should be
derived from my lecture notes.
1. Discuss how family dynamics or alienation affect Clytie’s mental stability and eventual suicide in
Clytie.
2. Discuss how isolation affects the characterization of Emily in Rose for Emily.
3. Discuss how Frank or Cee is haunted by their past in Home
4. Discuss how Frank was haunted by his war experience in Home.
5. Discuss how black women’s medical exploitation is depicted in the novel Home.
6. Discuss how O’Connor uses the Misfit to critique the criminal justice system. This is discussed in
my lecture notes.
7. Discuss how the grandmother’s epiphany at the end relates to the idea of grace. This is
discussed in my lecture notes

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Toni Morrison

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Toni Morrison (1

019) was one of the premier African American writers. Her books were about race, gender, and the history of America. Her best-known book Beloved, which she won the Novel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize. Toni Morrison was from Lorain, Ohio, so you may wonder why we are studying her in a Southern Gothic class. First, Morrison’s father was from Georgia. Secondly, the text qualifies as Southern Gothic because it is set in the South with Gothic characteristics which enables it to be considered Southern Gothic Literature.

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The following are themes of the story:

African American people in the 50’s

Eugenics Movement

Facing the Truth

Haunted by the past

Isolation

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Themes continued:

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Community

Being saved and saving oneself

Trauma

Violence

War and the veteran

These themes coincide with the Southern Gothic ideology.

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Morrison illustrates the problematic life of blacks in the Deep South from the very beginning of the book, which is set in Georgia in the fifties. She opens the book with a scene that shows Frank and Cee as children. This childhood incident will bookend the beginning and ending of the book. The children watch as a black man is buried by the community. The children do not know what is going on, but they do notice that the community is distressed by the incident.

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Then, the narrative shifts to the present and Frank, who is in a psychiatric ward. Frank was in the Korean War and is now being forced to be in the psychiatric ward of a hospital because of his “mental problems.” Confinement is a major Southern Gothic characteristic. This is clearly what is happening with Frank’s inability to leave the hospital. His connection to Cee makes him realize he must leave and return home even if he has to run away.

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Frank does not know why he is held captive. Captivity is a major symbol of Sothern Gothicism, especially by unnamed people. It helps one see the victim as a true victim. It also may make you distrust the narrator because the author already presents him as possibly having a mental defect. The reader does not know whether to trust him or not. An unreliable narrator is also a characteristic of Gothicism. Through Frank Morrison is dealing with the return of the black soldier.

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Morrison chooses a war that does not get as much attention, and that is the Korean War. Most people have heard about the veterans of the Vietnam War, but the Korean War was not dealt with as much. So, Morrison wants to deal with blacks in the fifties along with the returning veteran and his psychological issues.

The idea of home starts to come into focus with Frank. Frank does not have a home, which is analogous to blacks not having a home.

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Home

We find out from Frank’s childhood that he never had a real home as a child. His family was forced to move by a white mob into his grandparent’s home. Frank and his sister were psychologically abused by their grandmother. Frank and Cee had only each other and felt very unloved growing up. So, in many ways, they never had a home. The reader finds out that Frank was arrested for vagrancy and put in the psychiatric ward. We now know that his place in the ward was racially motivated.

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Many times, till the seventies, if black people were walking around and sitting on a bench, they could be arrested for vagrancy. This illustrates the racial victimization of blacks.

Frank manages to escape the ward and is given the address of a reverend who can help him. His escape is premeditated on trying to rescue his sister Cee, whom he feels is endangered. Cee is the only person who connects him to some sense of stability.

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He finds a resting place at the Reverend’s place. As he rests, his mind goes back to Lilly, an ex who constantly stays in his mind. This connects to many soldiers who constantly thought of real women in their lives or had posters of women in their barracks, and these women helped them get through the difficulty.

The other issue with Frank is that he feels something happened in the war that he cannot remember, but it affects him subconsciously.

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As we discuss Frank, we now move to Cee. Cee is even more adrift than Frank. Even though the military has had some issues, it did give Frank stability for a while. She is struggling financially and has been dumped by her no-good husband. She cannot bear to return home and back to the repression of her grandmother. She gets a clerical job with Dr. Bauregard. Cee feels like she can create a life for herself by working for the white doctor.

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Cee is surrounded by books in the doctor’s medical office, but these books are on Eugenics and race. Eugenics was a theory that came to be in the early twentieth century. It basically espoused that women who would give birth to children with undesirable traits should be sterilized. This could be birth defects, mental issues, and physical problems. Some even felt that the process should be used to keep down minority populations.

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Most people link eugenics with a racial superiority ideology, but there were well-known blacks who agreed with the theory, such as W. E. B. Dubois. Dubois did not believe in the racial aspect, but he did believe that certain traits, such as mental and physical disabilities, did bring down the potential of the black race. He did not believe in forced sterilization of black women but felt that if you knew that these issues ran in your family, you, on your own, would choose not to have children.

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Morrison is dealing with the racial aspects of the eugenics movement and its impact on black women. Even though it was not the law of the land, there were many times during this period, early to mid-twentieth century, that black women were sometimes sterilized without their knowledge. Morrison is looking at that aspect of the Eugenics movement in this book. Cee is very naïve because she depends on her brother and then her husband. She has no history of living independently and making her own decisions.

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Cee’s dependence on Frank was established when they were children. Frank was always there for his sister and ensured she had what she needed until he went to the military. Then she was left on her own. Cee never developed her own self-confidence and is just starting to have autonomy over her own life.

Morrison brings in the characters Lily and Lenore to help understand the characters of Frank and Cee.

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Lily is a woman with whom Frank was involved at one time. She and frank had problems in their relationship because he would rely on her to run the household. He seemed not to want to build a future with her. Lily wanted a stable job, a house, and a family life. Lily understood that the War haunted him, but his lack of enthusiasm for life was still getting to her, even though she loved him. Lily’s dressmaking business started to really pick up and she wanted her own shop. As her ambitions grew, she realized that Frank was lacking ambition.

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She felt he had a combination of need and lack of responsibility. End of notes for the first half of novel. Continue to the next half on the second PowerPoint.

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Rose for Emily

William FAulkner

Rose for Emily

William Faulkner lived from 1

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in Mississippi. Faulkner is considered one of the most prestigious Southern writers of the early twentieth century. Faulkner is also very controversial, especially in light of racial and gender issues. Some of Faulkner’s language has been negatively critiqued, but he has also been praised for dealing with racial issues of the South. He recognizes problems with the South and knows that the South cannot stay immersed in the past but must move forward to survive.

Rose for Emily

“Rose for Emily” was written in 19

0 and is considered a short story that discusses the theme of being trapped by nostalgia, not only with Emily but also with the South. Emily represents how gender stereotypes can trap women, and she is symbolic of the turmoil within the South in the early twentieth century. As Emily was trapped by the constraints of being a woman in the early twentieth century, so was the South. The tragedy of Emily is that she cannot move from her past.

Rose for Emily

The following are the major themes of the story:

Nostalgia

Gap between generations

Gap between the rich and the poor

Old maid

Tradition vs. Change

Rose for Emily

The power of death

Patriarchy

The story is told by a third-person narrator who is also supposed to speak for the town. Emily Grierson comes from a wealthy family in a small town. Emily lives on a vast estate, mostly seen as a curiosity rather than a natural person. The town considers her an eccentric old woman.

Rose for Emily

She is gossiped about by the town, and there may be a degree of jealousy among them. The story opens with Emily’s funeral, which the city’s residents have attended. She had lived in isolation; only her black servant, Tobe, had been in the house for over a decade. Emily’s house is decaying and has not been kept up. Emily lost her money after the war. The South, after the war, was devastated. They lost their slaves and their money, and the run-down plantation houses were symbols of the resounding defeat.

Rose for Emily

Emily’s house is representative of the decay of the South. For the town, she symbolizes the last vestiges of the Confederate era. Emily’s death was meant to be the last of their obligations to a bygone era. The town considered Emily a “heredity oblivion,” but now the town can move past a period that is holding them back. An example of this is the tax situation. The dead mayor of the city told Emily she did not have to pay taxes regarding her father’s death.

Rose for Emily

But the town tax officials confront her and tell her she has to pay taxes like everyone else. She refused and felt that she did not have to because of her position. She told them to take it up with the mayor. The mayor felt that since her father had lent the town money, Emily did not have to pay taxes, which was payment for what her father had done for the town. The town officials represent the modern world, and Emily reflects the old world.

Rose for Emily

Emily got rid of these town officials just as she had gotten rid of others. Emily had gotten rid of the officials who came to investigate the smell coming from her house. Grierson saw the men checking out her house and then the smell vanished. The smell came after Emily’s supposed male suitor left. She always got her way in terms of keeping people away from her house and life. The Grierson family was the richest in the town and the town felt that they saw themselves as better than anyone else.

Rose for Emily

Emily, as a young woman, was a very desired woman for marriage. But her father wanted control over his daughter and ensured no one dated her. At this time in the nation, women went from their father’s house to their husband’s house. Control from the father went to the husband. The daughter never had time to learn about herself. Emily’s father wanted to ensure he never lost control over his daughter. Faulkner never tells us why the father does not want any man near his daughter.

Rose for Emily

This story was written in 1930 and discussions about incest were not really discussed. There is no proof that this is the reason but more than likely if this had been written later that might would have been discussed. Normally a father irrational control over a daughter signals some kind of abuse if not sexual then at the very least emotional. So, Emily grew up in a house that became her prison, and her father was the only person in her life.

Rose for Emily

Emily was still single by the time she was thirty. At this time if a woman was not married by 30, she was seen as an old man. The town sympathized with her when her father died and left her broke with just the house. The average person loves to see the rich fall. They sympathy for Emily went to thinking she was mentally unbalanced. As women came to her house as is custom to see if she needed anything, she informed them that he was not dead.

Rose for Emily

Emily finally had to give up her father’s body. Faulkner, like O’Connor, is a writer of what is called the Southern Gothic, where the eerie and the realistic live side by side. They use these genres to discuss things that are uniquely Southern. As Faulkner once said, “In the South, the past is not dead; it is not even past.” What Faulkner meant is that the past lives with the present in the South and is never put to rest. Living with the past can prevent the South from moving forward and can also be where one can get strength.

Rose for Emily

Emily does not want to let her father go because he is all she has in her life. Emily is positioned as a tragic figure because of her life and inability to move from the present. Emily meets a construction worker later because of work at her house. She was seen taking buggy rides with Homer, a construction worker. The town started talking about Emily and her new beau. But the city suspected Homer was not what he appeared to be.

Rose for Emily

At this time, when Faulkner wrote this story in 1930, homosexuality was not discussed the way it is now. So, Faulkner hints at another life for Homer that Emily more than likely did not know. According to the text, the town said, “When had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said ‘She will marry him.’ Then we said, ‘she will persuade him yet,’ because Homer himself had remarked—-he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger in the Elks’ Club—-that he was not the marrying man” (2

Rose for Emily

This quote from the text illustrates that Emily will not have her ever after with Homer. Homer, to some degree, is playing with her. Going out on dates with Emily makes it clear that she sees a new life for herself. She cannot see that the town considers this man as living a double life. But Emily does at least figure out that he wants to leave her.

The story’s ending is truly tragic. Emily cannot face another man leaving her. Even if dead, in her mind, she is never alone.

Rose for Emily

Emily’s final decision to kill Homer and sleep with his dead body every night can be seen as a desperate cry for help. As a woman, Emily has been controlled by the patriarch to the point that it has driven her crazy.

If you see Emily as a symbol of the South, she represents a region that is living with its dead and in conflict with other Southern forces that want to move forward.

Rose for Emily

THANK YOU

Brita Tamm

502-555-0152

brita@firstupconsultants.com

www.firstupconsultants.com

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Home

Toni Morrison

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Lily was Frank’s way to find a home but, of course, it does not work.

The second woman instrumental in Frank’s backstory is his grandmother Lenore. When the children come live with her, they hope to find a home but instead find hostility. Morrison gives us a chance to see her Lenore’s backstory in this chapter.

Lenore’s first husband is shot and killed after a white man is jealous of the gas station that he owns. This happened quite a lot in this time period. Blacks would become successful as entrepreneurs and sometimes whites would get jealous and commit violent acts against them. Violence is another characteristic of the Southern Gothic.

Home

She does marry again but she is haunted by the death of the first husband. Also, her marriage is not legal because she does not have a birth certificate, so it prevents her from getting a marriage certificate. This happened to many black people born at the turn of the century because most births at that time were home births.

When the children move in, it is if her peace has been destroyed, and she has to deal with children again. When Cee ran off with a boyfriend that she disapproved her, the marriage ends just the way Lenore felt like it would. Both Frank and Cee leave Lenore to find a home but never truly having one. Morrison does give us the story of Lenore to illustrate how her backstory influenced who she is.

Home

Korea is a major part of Frank’s story. He left an emotional part of himself in Korea that he has to piece together. Korea is introduced as a brutal cold and unfeeling place. From the beginning of the narrative, he keeps remembering seeing a young Korean child coming up to soldier looking for food. The soldier shoots the young girl. For most of the narrative, he thinks it is an anonymous soldier. He also thinks the soldier was tempted from the young and that is why he shoots her.

He is also remembering the death of his friends. They have a violent death. What Morrison is illustrating is the horror of war on the soldier.

Home

Morrison illustrates how the soldier never can let go of what has happened.

In his journey home to get to Cee, he is constantly being bombarded with memories, but he is determined to get to Cee. Trauma is a major part of Frank’s story.

Home

Frank lives with the trauma he suffered during the war. He has blackouts and is haunted by awful memories. He does not just want to rescue Cee, but he hopes that he can heal himself through healing her. Frank has not done well in dealing with his trauma. He has used drink and repressed his memories and nightmares.

Home

Korea has a lot of the core trauma of the traumatized, but he has been traumatized since his family was forced to move by a white mob.

Cee has also been traumatized, and it comes to a head in the doctor’s office. We are not given a reason but the doctor plans on sterilizing Cee to solve a health problem,

Home

Again, this is connected to our discussion concerning eugenics. Many black women were forcibly sterilized. Cee is almost dead by the time Frank rescues her. He wrestles with himself about what would happen if he lost Cee. In some way, Frank needs to find redemption by rescuing Cee.

Home

Cee’s trauma is different than Frank’s because it is to the body and keeps her from permanently having children. Cee has the scars on her very body of her trauma. Cee begins to heal through the community of women.

Home

Frank’s trauma gets worse when he goes back to the memory of the Korean Girl. All of a sudden, he realizes very clearly the memory. During the Korean and Vietnam War many children were left looking around for food. Because they were exposed to all kinds of behavior, they would approach soldiers.

Home

This young girl was a toddler and went up to Frank and touched his private parts so Frank would give her food. This seems to have happened more than once. It is shocking to the reader first that the young girl has learned to sexualize herself and refer to his private parts as yum yum in order to survive.

Home

Secondly, a character we have connected to could have abused a young girl. Frank clearly was not in his right mind and maybe did not know what he was doing. When Frank finally gets to a sense of himself, he instantly shoots the young girl.

Frank realizes that he is the shooter.

Home

This presents a problem for the reader because now they do not know how to take the character of Frank. We have connected to him through the novel and now we know that he has done these horrible things. How are we suppose to process who he is after this news?

Home

Morrison could be using this to show about the dystopian world of war—that no one is in their right mind when they are in the thick of war. Is this enough to explain and understand Frank’s actions? Frank now must with his own demons and somehow find redemption.

Home

Cee finally recovers with the help of the women of the community. Morrison really wanted to illustrating the healing women of the black community.

At the end of the narrative the siblings learn about the man who they saw buried at the beginning.

Home

They find out that the man died when a group of white men forced the father and his son to fight each other until one died. The father told the son to kill him so he could live. The community helped the son get away and buried the father. The siblings decide to give the man a proper burial and through this Frank starts to find redemption.

Rose for Emily

William FAulkner

Rose for Emily

William Faulkner lived from 1

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Rose for Emily

“Rose for Emily” was written in 19

Rose for Emily

The following are the major themes of the story:

Nostalgia

Gap between generations

Gap between the rich and the poor

Old maid

Tradition vs. Change

Rose for Emily

The power of death

Patriarchy

Rose for Emily

The story’s ending is truly tragic. Emily cannot face another man leaving her. Even if dead, in her mind, she is never alone.

Rose for Emily

If you see Emily as a symbol of the South, she represents a region that is living with its dead and in conflict with other Southern forces that want to move forward.

Rose for Emily

THANK YOU

Brita Tamm

502-555-0152

brita@firstupconsultants.com

www.firstupconsultants.com

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Good Man is Hard to find

Flannery O’Connor

Good man is hard to find
Themes:
Sky and weather
Grace
Racism
Disgust with the world
Glorification of the past
Violence
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Pitch Deck
2

Good man is Hard to Find
The title of the story represents distrust of mankind. It comes from a conversation between the grandmother and Red Sammy and contradicts the Christianity of the grandmother. In the story’s beginning, the grandmother, her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren are all heading to Florida. The day before, the grandmother reads a newspaper article about an escaped criminal named Misfit. This is a foreshadowing of their future encounter with Misfit.
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Pitch Deck
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The good man is Hard to Find
On their way to Florida, the grandmother reminisces about her childhood. She desperately wants the family to find an old plantation she remembers. This area of the story connects to nostalgia and glorification of the past. She discusses with Sammy how things are not like they were in the past, and now she is trying to remember an old plantation. O’Connor clearly says that the past is never as good as it is in one’s mind. And, of course, the past includes blacks understanding their place in society.
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Pitch Deck
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He
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The Good Man is a Hard to Find
The grandmother notices a black man and judges him stereotypically. The grandmother is someone who is stuck in the past. The past impinging on the present is an important Southern Gothic trope.
The family is situating as extremely annoying. The children, June and Bailey, seem to have a disrespect for their elders. They are constantly making smart comments to their grandmother. Whether the reader likes the grandmother or not, there is a sense that the children owe her respect.

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Pitch Deck
5

A Good man is hard to find
There is a race to be more irritated with disrespect, loudness, and rudeness of the children or the casual racism of the grandmother.
The grandmother forces the family to go to a plantation she remembers in her youth. She also told the family of the stories involving the planation from her youth. This era of nostalgia is one of the things that O’Connor is critiquing. She illustrates that the reverence of the past can be a problem in moving forward in the future. There are good things about going back to the past
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Pitch Deck
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A Good man is hard to find
Many people lean toward the past to learn how to engage with the future. But O’Connor says you can become entrapped by it and not move on. The Grandmother wants to see the South in a particular way and blacks in a submissive position. She wants to remember the past when she felt at least her life was better. Additionally, going off the path to see the plantation ultimately leads to the family’s death.
They eventually go to a tavern; there, the grandmother speaks to Red Sammy, and they talk about the past and the misfit.

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Pitch Deck
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A good man is hard to find
The misfit is a murderer who is out on the loose. The grandchildren and the grandmother look at the paper and comment about his escape. The grandchildren feel if they come up against him, they will be tearing him down. O’Connor is foreshadowing what is to come within the story by bringing up the misfit before they start on their trip. The grandmother also uses the story about him to scare the grandchildren.
Moving back to the grandmother’s discussion with Red Sammy, we see that the discussion veers from nostalgia to the misfit.
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Pitch Deck
8

A good man is hard to find
Their discussion about the Misfit is in passing, but Red Sammy nods to the story’s title when he ends their discussion by saying a good man is hard to find. One aspect of this sentence is that they probably have met decent men, but their judges and prejudices have made it impossible for good men. This will become more ironic after the Grandmother’s fateful meeting with the misfit.
The diversion of seeing the lost plantation ultimately causes the family to drive into a ditch and get the car stuck. This fateful turn of events will lead them straight to the misfit.
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Pitch Deck
9

Good man is hard to find
The family starts to try to control the situation and get away from the Misfit, but this will begin the methodical killing of the family. The grandmother would hear the killing of her family in the woods. All she could do was try to save her own life. She sits with him and tells him that he is and can be a good man. But he constantly says that he is not a good man. Now, after the reader knows that he might be allowing the family to be killed one thinks well he is of course not good. But we find out that the label was given to him before he did anything or committed in crime.
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Pitch Deck
10

A good man is hard to find
When the Misfit and the men who were with him stop to try and help the family, the grandmother looks at the misfit as if trying to place him. The family is in this position because the grandmother lied about the plantation and had hidden a cat in the car. Now they were unknowingly face to face with a murderer. The grandmother will be bargaining for her life at this point in the story. The grandmother’s recognition is her fatal mistake. Not only her recognition but her speaking it out loud. O’Connor makes it seem like the misfit was trying to do a good deed until he was recognized as a criminal.
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Pitch Deck
11

Good Man is hard to find
The Misfit explained, “but I ain’t the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. ‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He’s going to be into everything!’ (O’Connor)” This quote is important because it gives a window into the misfit’s mind. Clearly, the misfit was an inquisitive and smart child, but his family did not welcome this and made him feel like an oddity.
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Pitch Deck
12

A good man is a hard to find
As the grandmother is trying to save her life, the misfit goes further and further back into his childhood. The grandmother asks the misfit if he prays. Misfit dismisses this idea and further tells his story. He talks about his time as a gospel singer. Then he ends up in jail but does not say how he got there. He claims he was not a bad boy, but somehow, he was put in jail. O’Connor gives the reader the idea that, more than likely, the punishment did not fit the crime and that no one came into the misfit’s life who really cared about him.
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Pitch Deck
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Good man is hard to find
The grandmother said to the misfit that is when he should have started to pray. The misfit said, “Turn to the right, it was a wall,” The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. “Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain’t recalled it to this day. Once in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come. (O’Connor). O’Connor is clearly illustrating with the passage from Misfit how jail can make criminality worse.
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Pitch Deck
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Good man is hard to find
Instead of rehabilitating, many come out with an even greater sense of not belonging and an extreme dislike of humanity. Because he did not know why he was in jail, the grandmother said maybe it was a mistake. He said no, it wasn’t because they had papers on him.
The grandmother says that he must have stolen something. He says he did not, but the doctor in the jail said he killed his daddy. But he knows that his father died from the epidemic of the flu, so he could not have killed his daddy.
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Pitch Deck
15

Good man is hard to find
O’Connor is clearly dealing with the idea of people unjustly going to jail. As the reader, we don’t know if he did anything or was railroaded. But O’Connor is clearly saying he did not kill his father and that the criminal justice system created a murderer. The grandmother keeps offering prayer as what he needs to help him in his distressing times. But the misfit again does not buy it.
The grandmother tells him that Jesus will help him, but the misfit says he is doing fine by himself.
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Pitch Deck
16

A good man is hard to find
The misfit responds, “Jesus shown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime, and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course,” he said, “they never shown me my papers. That’s why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a 12 signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you’ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you’ll have something to prove you ain’t been treated right. I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (O’Connor).
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Pitch Deck
17

Good man is hard to find
With this passage, O’Connor is making an analogy by comparing Jesus to the misfit. The misfit says that Jesus messed up justice because he allowed himself to be punished for a crime he did not commit. The misfit sees himself as a person who has also been wronged by the judicial system. He feels he was imprisoned because people created papers on him. The grandmother is getting to her breaking point. She tells him that she knows he has good blood and Jesus loves him. The misfit goes on to discuss his grievances with Jesus.
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Pitch Deck
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A good man is hard to find
The misfit said, “”Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can-by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness” (O’Connor). The misfit feels like Jesus put everything off balance because he gave humanity only two choices.
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Pitch Deck
19

Good man is a hard man to find
Either you give up everything and follow Jesus or you don’t and just continue your path to hell. Interestingly enough, the misfit is not a disbeliever; he wants to believe in God and Jesus but feels like they gave humanity a road that is very hard to stick to. He goes on to say he wasn’t there when Jesus was around, and he wishes he had because then he could be a firm believer which he wants to be.
At this moment, the grandmother looks at him and says he could have been her son. She says, “why you are one of my babies. One of my own children”(O’Connor).

20XX
Pitch Deck
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A good man is hard to fine
This is the heart of the story. She sees this man and begins to see humanity. We are all connected, and if society saw this, we could help those who are in trouble before they become a predator to society. Even though she will die, before she dies, she gets grace from God. O’Connor illustrates that grace from god is the act of seeing everyone as a child of God. She sees this finally.
Her death comes because she goes to touch the misfit. He cannot deal with someone extending any love or care for him.
20XX
Pitch Deck
21

A good man is hard to find
From the moment he touches, he cannot take and shoots her dead. The shooting seems to be just a reaction to a reaction he cannot take. The grandmother realizes that she is part of society and that society is responsible for who Misfit became.
O’Connor was catholic, and her strong Catholic faith influences her work.
20XX
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A Rosefor Emily

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was

novelist and short story writer. A writer whose work beautiful-

ly captures the complex social history of the American South,

Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as two

Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards. Manyof his works,

including The Sound and the Fury (1929), As | Lay Dying (1930),

and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), take place in the fictional Yokna-

patwapha County.“A Rosefor Emily,” originally published in 1930,

concerns Miss Emily Grierson, a reclusive resident of the county

whose once-stately homefalls into disrepair

— 3

—

A ROSE FOR EMILY 351

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to

her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection
for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity
to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old
man-servant—a combined gardener and cook—hadseen in
at least ten years.

It was a big, squarish frame housethat had once been white,

decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconiesin the
heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once
been our mostselect street. But garages and cotton gins had en-
croached and obliterated even the august namesofthat neigh-
borhood; only Miss Emilys house wasleft, lifting its stubborn

and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons andthegasoline
pumps—an eyesore amongeyesores. And now Miss Emily had
gone to join the representatives of those august names where
they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery amongthe ranked and
anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell
at the battle of Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care;

a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from
that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor—he who

fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the
streets without an apron—remitted her taxes, the dispensa-
tion dating from the death of herfather on into perpetuity. Not
that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris

invented an involvedtale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father
had loaned moneyto the town, which the town,as a matter of
business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a manof Colonel
Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and
only a woman could have believedit.

352 WILLIAM FAULKNER

Whenthe next generation, with its more modern ideas, be-

came mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some

little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a

tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote

her a formalletter, asking her to call at the sheriff’s office at her

convenience. A week later the mayor wroteher himself, offering

to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note

on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in

faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out atall. The

tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.

Theycalled a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A

deputation waited uponher, knockedat the door through which

no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting

lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the

old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into

still more shadow.It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank

smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in

heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the

blinds of one window, a faint dust rose sluggishly abouttheir

thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a

tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait

of Miss Emily’ father.

They rose when she entered—a small, fat woman in black,

with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing

into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold

head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why

what would have been merely plumpness in another was obe-

sity in her. She lookedbloated,like a body long submerged in

motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the

fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal

pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to

another while the visitors stated their errand.

A ROSE FOR EMILY 353

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and

listened quietly until the spokesman cameto a stumblinghalt.
Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of

the gold chain.

Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson.

Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps oneof you can gain
access to the city records andsatisfy yourselves.”

“But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t
you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?”

“I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he

considers himself the sheriff… 1 have no taxes in Jefferson.”

“But there is nothing on the booksto show that, you see. We

must go by the—”

“See Colonel Sartoris. 1 have no taxes in Jefferson.”

“But, Miss Emily—”

“See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead

almost ten years.)

“I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared.
“Show these gentlemen out.”

So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had van-

quished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That
was two years after her fathers death and a short time after

her sweetheart—the one we believed would marry her—had

deserted her. After her father’s death she went outverylittle;
after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw herat all.

A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not re-

ceived, and the only sign oflife about the place was the Negro

man—a young man then—going in and out with a market

basket.

354 WILLIAM FAULKNER

“Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly,”

the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell

developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming

world and the high and mighty Griersons.

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Ste-

vens, eighty years old.

“But what will you have me do about it, madam?”hesaid.

“Why, send her wordto stopit,” the womansaid. “Isn’t there

a law?”

“Pm sure that won’t be necessary,” Judge Stevens said. “It’s

probably just a snake or a rat that nigger ofhers killed in the

yard. I’ll speak to him aboutit.”

The next day he received two more complaints, one from

a man who camein diffident deprecation. “We really must do

something aboutit, Judge. Pd be the last one in the world to

bother Miss Emily, but we’ve got to do something.” That night

the Board of Aldermen met—three graybeards and one younger

man, a memberofthe rising generation.

“Its simple enough,” he said. “Send her word to have her

place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, andif she

dont…”

“Dammit,sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to

her face of smelling bad?”

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss

Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing

along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while

one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand

out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke openthe cel-

lar door and sprinkled limethere, andin all the outbuildings.

As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was

lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her

upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly

A ROSE FOR EMILY 3

across the lawn andinto the shadow ofthe locusts that lined the
street. After a week or two the smell went away.

That was when people had begunto feel really sorry for 25
her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her
great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the
Griersons held themselvesa little too high for what they really
were. Noneof the young men were quite good enough for Miss
Emily and such. We had long thoughtof them as a tableau, Miss
Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father
a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and
clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-
flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and wasstill
single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with
insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned downall of her
chances if they had really materialized.

Whenherfather died, it got about that the house wasall
that wasleft to her; and in a way, people wereglad. Atlast they
could pity Miss Emily. Beingleft alone, and a pauper, she had
become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill
and the old despair of a penny moreorless.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the
house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss

Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with notrace
of grief on her face. She told them thatherfather wasnot dead.
She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her,

and the doctors, trying to persuadeherto let them dispose of
the body. Just as they were aboutto resort to law andforce, she
broke down, and they buried her father quickly.
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to

do that. We remembered all the young menherfather had driv-
en away, and we knew that with nothingleft, she would have to

cling to that which had robbedher, as peoplewill.

356 WILLIAM FAULKNER

She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her

hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague

resemblance to those angels in colored church windows—sort

of tragic and serene.

The town hadjust let the contracts for paving the sidewalks,

and in the summerafter her father’s death they began the work.

The construction company came with riggers and mules and

machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee—a

big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyeslighter than his

face. Thelittle boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss

the riggers, and the riggers singing in timeto therise and fall

of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever

you heard a lot of laughing anywhere aboutthe square, Homer

Barron would bein the center of the group. Presently we began

to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoonsdriving in the

yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the

livery stable.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have aninter-

est, because the ladies all said, “Of course a Grierson would

not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.” But there

werestill others, older people, who said that even grief could

not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige—withoutcalling it

noblesse oblige. They just said, “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should

cometo her.” She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her

father had fallen out with them overtheestate of old lady Wyatt,

the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the

two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said, “Poor Emily,” the whis-

pering began. “Do you suppose its really so?” they said to one

another. “Ofcourseit is. What else could

. .” This behindtheir

hands; rustling of cranedsilk and satin behind jalousies closed

A ROSE FOR EMILY 357

upon the sun of Sunday afternoonas the thin, swift clop-clop-
clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”

She carried her head high enough—even when webelieved
that she wasfallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever
the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson: asif it had
wanted that touch of earthinessto reaffirm her imperviousness.
Like when she boughttherat poison,the arsenic. That was over
a year after they had begunto say “Poor Emily,” and while the
two female cousins werevisiting her.

“I want some poison,” she said to the druggist. She was over
thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual,

with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was
strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you
imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face oughtto look. “I want some
poison,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? Pd recom—”
“I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.”
The druggist namedseveral. “They’ll kill anything up to an

elephant. But what you want is—”
“Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one?”
“Is… arsenic? Yes, ma’am. But what you want—”
“IT want arsenic.”

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him,

erect, herface like a strainedflag. “Why, of course,” the druggist
said. “If that’s what you want. Butthe law requires you totell
what you are goingto useit for.”

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in or-

der to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went
and gotthe arsenic and wrappedit up. The Negro delivery boy
brought her the package;the druggist didn’t come back. When
she opened the package at home there was written on the box,
under the skull and bones: “For rats.”

358 WILLIAM FAULKNER

So the next day weall said, “She will kill herself”; and we said

it would bethe best thing. Whenshehad first begun to be seen

with HomerBarron,we hadsaid, “She will marry him.” Then we

said, “She will persuade him yet,” because Homer himself had

remarked—heliked men, and it was known that he drank with

the younger menin the Elks’ Club—that he was not a marrying

man. Later we said, “Poor Emily” behind the jalousies as they

passed on Sundayafternoonin theglittering buggy, Miss Emily

with her head high and HomerBarron with his hat cocked and

a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

Then someof the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace

to the town and a bad example to the young people. The

men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the

Baptist minister—Miss Emilys people were Episcopal—to call

upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that

interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday

they again drove about the streets, and the following day the

ministers wife wrote to Miss Emilyrelations in Alabama.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back

to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we

were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss

Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’toilet set

in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two dayslater we

learned that she had bought a completeoutfit of men’s clothing,

including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We

werereally glad. We were glad because the two female cousins

were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron—thestreets

had been finished some time since—was gone. We were a

little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but

we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily’s

A ROSE FOR EMILY 359

coming, or to give her a chanceto getrid of the cousins. (By
that time it was a cabal, and we wereall Miss Emily’s allies to

help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week
they departed. And,as we had expectedall along, within three
days HomerBarron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Ne-
gro man admit him atthe kitchen door at dusk one evening.

And that was the last we saw of HomerBarron. And of Miss

Emily for some time. The Negro man wentin and out with the
market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and
then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men

did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six

months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that

this was to be expected too; asif that quality of her father which
had thwarted her woman’slife so many times had beentoovir-
ulent and too furiousto die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her
hair was turning gray. During the nextfew years it grew grayer

and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-
gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at
seventy-fourit was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of
an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for

a period of six or seven years, when she was aboutforty, during
which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a stu-
dio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and

grand-daughters of Colonel Sartoris’ contemporaries were sent
to her with the same regularity and in the samespirit that they
were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five cent piece
for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the

spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up andfell away
and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and

360 WILLIAM FAULKNER

tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines.

The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed

for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily

alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her

door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and

more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each

December wesent her a tax notice, which would be returned by

the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then werwould

see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had evidently

shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an

idol in a niche, looking or not lookingat us, we could nevertell

which. Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear,

i le. impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

are ste died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and

shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We

did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up

trying to get any information from the Negro. Hetalked to no

one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown hars

and rusty,as if from disuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut

bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow

and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let

them in, with their hushed,sibilant voices and their quick, curi-

ous glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through

the house and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins cameat once. They held the funeral

on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily

beneath a mass of boughtflowers, with the crayon face of her

A ROSE FOR EMILY 36]

father musing profoundly abovethebier and theladies sibilant
and macabre; and the very old men—somein their brushed
Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of
Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believ-
ing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps,
confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old
do, to whom all the pastis not a diminishing road but, instead,

a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided
from them now bythe narrow bottle-neck of the most recent
decadeofyears.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region
above stairs which no one hadseenin forty years, and which
would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was
decently in the ground before they openedit.

The violence of breaking down the door seemedto fill this
room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb
seemedto lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished
as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color,
upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the
delicate array of crystal and the man’toilet things backed with
tarnishedsilver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was ob-
scured. Amongthemlaya collar andtie, as if they had just been
removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in

the dust. Upon a chair hungthesuit, carefully folded; beneath
it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the

profound andfleshless grin. The body had apparently oncelain
in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that out-
lasts love, that conquers even the grimaceof love, had cuckold-
ed him. What wasleft of him, rotted beneath what wasleft of

the nightshirt, had becomeinextricable from the bed in which

362 WILLIAM FAULKNER

he lay; and upon him and uponthepillow beside him lay that

even coating of the patient and biding dust.

Then wenoticed that in the second pillow was the indenta-

tion of a head. One of uslifted something from it, and leaning

forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nos-

trils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

NAVIGATING THE WATERS:Reading Closely

1. Why didn’t Miss Emily have to pay taxes?

2. Why wouldn’t the town confront Miss Emily about the smell

around her house?

3. What adjective would you use to describe Miss Emily?

Provide some examples from the story to support your claim

about her character.

4. How would you describe Miss Emily’s relationship with the

townin general andits people in particular?

EXPLORING THE DEPTHS: Rhetorical Strategies and Structures

1. How does Faulkner create suspense throughoutthis story?

2. This story is split into five parts. Give each of the parts

title

and explain whyit is an appropriate title for that section.

3. Whatis the implication of the strand of iron-gray hair on the

pillow (paragraph 60)? Why end with such a circumspect

observation? Why nottell the reader directly what had

happened?

4. Develop an argumentas to the meaning of the title and its

relationship to the story. Support your claim with examples

from the story and explain how these support your claim.

60 i

A ROSE FOR EMILY 363

SHARING THE DISCOVERIES:Discussion and Writing

Identify and discuss the clues and foreshadowing that Faulk-
ner places throughoutthe story aboutits ending.
How doesthe townfigure as a characterin this story?

. Write a missing chapter of this story that tells an anecdote
that matches with Miss Emily’s character as seenin the rest
of the story. |
Describe a curious or notorious character from your neigh-
borhood when you were growing up. What washe or she
like? What made him or her so interesting or scandalous?

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