Traditional southern gothic writing uses grotesque and disturbing events to create a specific tone and atmosphere within the writing. “A Rose for Emily” is a short story written by William Faulkner. Faulkner’s story is told by an entire community within a town and narrates the development of a mentally-ill woman named Emily Grierson. The reader is shown the downfall of this woman and eventually the dark secrets that she bears inside the house that her father left her after his death. This writing is a prime example of a traditional southern gothic short-story. Faulkner uses various key things and events within the story to create a dark atmosphere and further move the plot along. The first thing that Faulkner does is use dark imagery to describe the house that Emily Grierson lived in before her death. He wanted to tell how the once great house belonging to the once great family had fallen to years of age and decay. He goes to great efforts to ensure the reader understands the current state of the house “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 99). Faulkner also gives brief description of the inside of the home “It smelled of dust and disuse – a close, dank smell… When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs” (99). The purpose of Faulkner describing the house as such is to paint a picture within the reader’s head of a home that is dead and lonely. Faulkner’s description of the house also comes into play later in the story when it is revealed that Emily murdered her lover, and left his body to rot in an upstairs bed. The final few paragraphs of the story reveal the horrors that Emily Grierson was hiding within her home. A group of towns-people enter her home after her death and decide to open an upstairs door that “no one had seen in forty ears, and which would have to be forced” (104). Once they enter the room they find a number of men’s clothes that was thought to have been bought for her lover Homer Barron whom they initially thought had abandoned her. They look onto the bed inside the room and make the gruesome discovery that Emily had murdered Homer and left his body inside the room to rot. The group of people describes his body as “once lain in the attitude of an embrace… What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the night shirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay”
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The decrepit house and the mental instability of Ms. Grierson compose the ideal drama for a southern gothic story. Faulkner utilizes gothic elements to guide the plot further and to create a tone and atmosphere suitable for the story. The reader is carried along throughout the story and is given details in a manner that provide a shock at the end that is not found in many other gothic stories of its time. The story that Faulkner created remained one of the most notorious southern gothic stories to date that successfully portrays southern tradition clashing with gothic
The decrepit house and the mental instability of Ms. Grierson compose the ideal drama for a southern gothic story. Faulkner utilizes gothic elements to guide the plot further and to create a tone and atmosphere suitable for the story. The reader is carried along throughout the story and is given details in a manner that provide a shock at the end that is not found in many other gothic stories of its time. The story that Faulkner created remained one of the most notorious southern gothic stories to date that successfully portrays southern tradition clashing with gothic