This is the end….hold your breath and count to ten.. ;) (Adele)

      If you see this text, it means I managed to cope with all the numerous tasks I was recommended. I hope you won’t be too strict on me for expressing my views so blatantly and honestly. Nevertheless, I respect all the contradicting ideas and opinions, for they have the same right for existence as mine do.

     The most difficult task, to my opinion, was that of the singling out the stylistic devices and expressive means in the text. Though the story is short, it requires a lot of attention and focused work to find them. When my attention attracted syntactic peculiarities of the text, figures of replacement and co-occurrence mysteriously slipped out from my mind and attention. As I have already mentioned, it seems like this work should be done in stages: the first scrutiny of the text, then the second, and the third… (it seems cool to acknowledge that in the previous sentence I employed climax and aposiopesis; ) And then the work might have been more qualitative and effective than it is done at present. 

    P.S. I enjoy writing essays and expressing my thoughts on paper and I’m thinking to try something else but a translational professional niche … a journalistic one, perhaps. And, who knows, maybe one day all the material from the course would become of paramount importance to me and of a great use.

THANK YOU!

Stylistic means.

The narrator of the story is first-person (it rather encompasses a group of the inhabitants of the town), non-omniscient. To make the story more catching, expressing, interesting and lively the author resorted to the following stylistic devices:

Phonetic means

Direct onomatopoeia: “clop-clop-clop”. It is employed to make the story more realistic, to make the reader “hear” the sound of the buggy.

Lexical devices

1.Figures of replacement.

1.1. Figures of quality.

Metaphor: “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…” , “ …a fallen monument”, “ “the new generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town”. Metaphor make us to look with a “fresh view” on the traits and characteristics of a person/object, and that is why it makes the story more emotional and expressive. Personification: “a staircase mounted into still more shadow”, “that quality had been to virulent and too furious to die”. When features of the  living creatures are ascribed to inanimate objects, it makes everything seem more vivid and lively.

Metonymy: “That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.” “So she had blood-kin under her roof again…”  - this examples exemplifies 2 types of synecdoche. “Blood-kin” is the whole representing its part- the whole kinship represents 2 Emily’s cousins, and the “roof “ stands for the house, i.e. the part stands for the whole object (contrary to the first example) . “..a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate” In the given example a plate represents all the alms people take in the church. “Why, send her word to stop it”, To “send a word” means to send a letter (a case of synecdoche – a word is a part of a letter) “the old despair of a penny” (synecdoche - 1 penny represents money in general), “reins and whip in a yellow glove” ( a glove stands for the Barron’s arm). This stylistic device makes reader’s imagination work and thus captures his attention into the story.

   Periphrasis: “the thrill and the old despair of a penny” stands for the value of money, the whispering began” means people started to gossip, “We sat back to watch developments” – People didn’t literary sat back in their seats and watched some movie. It means that the society did not interfere with the course of events and simply waited what was going to happen next; “she was fallen” means that she was in despair and lost moral strength; “a touch of earthiness” – something practical, material; “She carried her head high” – she behaved with self-respect and dignity; Euphemisms about death: “to join the representatives”, “to go away”

Epithet: “stubborn and coquettish decay”, “Her voice was dry and cold”, “high and mighty Grierson”, “big voice”, “virulent and furious quality”, “…his voice had grown harsh and rusty”, “patient and biding dust”, “a thin, acrid pall…”, “pepper-and salt iron-gray colour”. Euphemisms make the story more descriptive and detailed, so that the reader may picture the events in his mind precisely and “in colour”.

Irony: “The two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily”. Irony is used for 2 purposes: to make the reader smile: 2) to point out to some vices or discrepancies.  

1.2 Figures of quantity

Hyperbole: “I’d be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily” –it is rather a trite hyperbole meaning that the speaker doesn’t really want to bother Emily Grierson.

2. Figures of co-occurrence

2.1. Figures of identity – simile. Simile may be implicit and explicit. Explicit simile is recognized by the formal marker “as if”, “as though”, “like”. The author makes extensive use of similes in the short novel, so that I won’t provide all the examples. Explicit ones:

“ “He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.”; “… talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs…”; “…her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl…”; “She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.”;  Implicit similes: “…her hair was cut short…with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows…”; “…haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look…”; “the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust”.

As simily is very similar to metaphor (it is considered to be “an explicit” metaphor), it’s functions are pretty similar. To make reader’s mind work, to make his imagination erect and vivid.

2.2. Figures of inequality

Climax: “Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket.” Gradation is used to give the story intensity, the provoke strong emotions.

Syntactical features

In the prosodic literature syntactic constructions are of great consequence for the author. As well as other stylistic means, they may provide the reader with the additional information, render evaluative connotations or express emotions. Enumeration: “Thus she passed from generation to generation-- dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse. “ This device makes the story more descriptive.

Ellipsis: “She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.” It is characteristic to colloquial speech, as well as for the literary. The author may resort to it when he/she tries to make the speech sound conversational or to make it more emotional and abrupt.

Incomplete sentences: “During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning.” Just the same functions as in the previously mentioned  “ellipsis”.

Inversion:  “On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.” It is characteristic to poetic literature and literary style in general. It makes the speech high-flown and lofted. It may also be employed to emphasize on the most important things/personalities/events in the text (actual division of the sentence)

Aposiopesis: "But, Miss Emily--" We must go by the--"; “Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . .”; " I'd recom--"; "But what you want is--"; "Is . . . arsenic? ". To my mind, this device is being used for 2 reasons:  1) to represent colloquial speech in action, which, as we all know, is full of pauses and interruptions; 2) to portray the uncertainty and fear of the town citizens in their conversations with Ms. Emily and her unwillingness and lack of desire to establish constructive communication with them.

Polysyndeton: “The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron…”; “And, as we had expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back in town. And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time.” “A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to 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's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded;” Polysyndeton creates an impression of enumeration and also emphasizes on the sentances it is employed in.

Repetition: Repetition is used to emphasize on the main ideas that shouldn’t be overlooked. “I have no taxes in Jefferson” (Emile represents herself as assertive and confident. It also shows her unwillingless to accept change, her living-in-the-past state of mind);  “ Poor Emily” (reiterate inhabitants of the town. It is a kind of irony, author makes it clear that they have no sympathy for her – pure curiosity. and, perhaps, the reader should rather feel pity for the society). Repetition of the sentence “we said”: “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." 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 men in the Elks' Club--that he was not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy”; It is used to show how gossiping is the society and how quickly changing are its opinions and ideas. “grew grayer and grayer” It is like a representation of the voice of “the mass” – changing its views and opinions constantly, judging but not helping. Anadiplosis or catch repetition: “…to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing…”; “backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished”  

Anaphora: «We were really glad. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.” Anaphora, as any peretition, foregrounds the pats which change, for they are always of novelty.

Parallelism:”Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.”; «When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray.” “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away…” Parallel constructions make the speech more homogenious, and also lay emphasis on the ideas presented.

Detachment: “ The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom.” ; “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” Used for the purpose of foregrounding.

Rhetoric question: "Will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?" Requires no answer. Makes the reader think about something author believes is important or inclines to realization of the absurdity of some facts or events.

Hyphonation: “yellow-wheeled”, “pepper-and-salt”, “iron-steel” – a peculiar way to make unique epithets, which an author considers to be necessary in the text.

My point of view on the main characters.

The main character of the story, its central is Ms. Emily Grierson.  To my mind, she is quite a controversial figure. Though the author blatantly strived to underline her high level of self-dignity and honor, I still feel rather a pity to her. She was an insane lunatic and in the contemporary society, a psychiatrist could have helped her. Emily 1) desperately refused to let go of her past; 2) she was a control –freak; 3) she was unable and unwilling to adjust to the society, to fit into its rules and follow its directions.

1)Emily couldn’t except that the Colonel Sartoris is not alive (when the new authorities come to ask her to pay taxes) and also refused to give the dead body of her father to burial.

       2)  Her father didn’t allow any of the man to marry her , i.e. he controlled her private life severely and thoroughly. When her father died, Emily tried to take controlled over the Homer Barron. She, obviously, wanted finally to marry somebody, and she liked the man – but he wasn’t really inclined to marriage. Moreover, I suppose that her company didn’t make him much delight, for Barron was cheerful and lively. I also suppose that their “time perception schemes” didn’t coincide. He was “a diminishing road” living in the moment, and she was a “huge meadow” immersed in the bygone days.

       3) To my opinion, she did her best to circumscribe herself from society – and that was her huge mistake. Everybody and women in particularly need socialization and communication.

Now about a few things I find attractive in the heroine. She had her own rules in life and had never violated them – Emily cared but little of what others said or thought. She was assertive to refuse to pay taxes, to refuse to state the reason for buying poison and to have numbers attached to her house. That is why the society cared for her – not in the traditional meaning of the word, but she just attracted their attention, she was out-of-the-cast, eccentric and grotesque. They never understood her, claimed to feel pity for her destiny, but, actually, never it was nothing more than curiosity and fear. The Baptist minister who had called upon her never ever divulged what happened in her house, but he would never ever visit her house again. And drug-man didn’t come out with the poison himself – he asked the negro to deliver it.

“Just as if a man - any man – could keep a kitchen properly”, the ladies said. – this quote from the text exemplifies that women condemned her, her way of life.

"Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less."  – People wanted Emily to be like them, to feel what they do, as they couldn’t understand her motives.

So the next day we all said “ She will kill herself” and we said it would be the best thing. – can we talk about any sympathetic attitude considering that people thought it OK for her to kill herself?

"Then some of the ladies began to say it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people." – Another example of condemnation and slander. She was just a theme to talk about in a little town, where inhabitants had no interests of their own not to intrude in other people’s lives.

She had dignity and did not show off her weaknesses, her steel hair reminds me of the idiom “the iron lady” – that is whom she was.

To sum it up, my verdict would severely contradict critics on the Internet and opinions of the colleges of mine. Emily is hardly a positive character and I failed to detect anything that could have served the reader as an example or an inspiration for his/her own life. Let’s face it – she was weak and feeble. Emily had all the opportunities to be happy, but didn’t endeavor to make them work out. OK, her father was strict and severe, but could you show me somebody who doesn’t encounter obstacles and face hardships in life? Shouldn’t they stiffen one’s will and temper one’s character? Positive attitude, optimism, work and a good deal of efforts make everything possible, isn’t it? 

Homer Barron is a foreman from the North, paving sidewalks and renovating the town. Contrary to Emily, he is “change”, “movement”, “facility”. Emily can be described as “stableness”, “weight”, “standing still”. Homer Barron possesses charm, good sense of humor and is always a center of attention. Nevertheless, people consider him not a good match for Emily, as he is socially of lover status.

Their Sunday drives become scandalous. The author tells us, that Homer is “not a marrying man”, i.e. he is hardly going to marry Emily – he is an eternal bachelor, fond of carouses with other men.  Anyway, he arouses in me more affection, than Ms. Emily does. She is rather apt to arouse sympathy and pity.

Plot.

Though the story is short, the author still divides it into 5 sections, as the actions take place not in the accepted, traditional way – non-linear.  

The first section starts with the description of Emily’s funeral to which came men (to look at the “fallen monument”) and women (mostly of curiosity). The author describes Emilly’s house which adds to the overall understanding of her character. Colonel Sartoris allowed Ms. Emily not to pay taxes (she wouldn’t have accepted such a privilege, as she had too much self-dignity to accept alms from anybody), so that when the new authorities came and tried to persuade her to do so, she completely refused.  

The second section tells us about Ms. Emily’s father – before he died he had used to turn off all the propositions from young men for his daughter’s heart. Consequently, Emily was still single in her 30^th. When her father died, she refused to give up his body for 3 days. There developed a disgusting odor which people couldn’t stand, so that they sneaked in her apartment and sprinkled lime. 

The 3d section describes the loneliness that a woman had to go through after her loss. The town is being renovated and Homer Barron gets the job. They start an affair that perturbs and shocks the folks of the town: the man isn’t of her social niche and denounces her family’s dignity. Another episode from the section is that of bying some poison in the drug store. Emily claims for arsenic, but refuses to give explanation as the reason of her intentional purchase (as is required by law) and, consequently she gets poison “for rats”.

In the 4^th section Emily buys silwerware and other things with homer’s initials, and everybody think that they are going to marry, though Homer is out of town/ He is believed to avoid her intrusive relatives or just preparing to move with Emily to the North. After the cousin’s departure Barron visits Emily and after that he’s never seen again. At the age of 40 Emily gives up her china painting lessons and the doors of her hose stay closed for decades, until her death at the age of 74. 

Section 5 describes what happened after the funeral^ the room in the Ms. Grierson’s house was opened (which had always been a mystery). The dead body of Homer Barron laid on the bad and a strand of grey hair was noticed on the pillow next to him.

Setting. Place

     The description of Emily’s house may characterize her to some extent. The details of Miss Emily's house closely relate to her and symbolize what she stands for. It is set on "what had once been the most select street." The narrator (which is the town in this case) describes the house as "stubborn and coquettish." Cotton gins and garages have long obliterated the neighborhood, but it is the only house left. With a further look at Miss Emily's life, we realize the importance of the setting in which the story takes place. The house in which she lives remains static and unchanged as the town progresses. Inside the walls of her abode, Miss Emily conquers time and progression.

“It smelled of dust and disuse…It was furnished in heavy, leather covered furniture…the leather was cracked…. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.”

      The description of Miss Emily's house is very haunting. There is no life or motion in this house, everything appears to be decaying. Everything is dusty, motionless, it seems like time stands still in her house, like it remained several centuries in the past – just like Emily’s thoughts and views – outdated and moldy. Everything appears heavy and leaden – just like main heroine’s body and soul.  

     But for Emily’s house, the author describes renovations and restructuration in the town – everything changes, everything, but Ms. Emily.  

Setting. Time.

       By avoiding the chronological order of events of Miss Emily's life, Faulkner first gives the reader a finished puzzle, and then allows the reader to examine this puzzle piece by piece, step by step. We learn about Emily’s life through a series of flashbacks. The story begins with a description of Emily’s funeral and then moves into the near-distant past. At the end of the story, we see that the funeral is a flashback as well, preceding the unsealing of the upstairs bedroom door. We see Emily as a young girl, attracting suitors whom her father chases off with a whip, and as an old woman, when she dies at seventy-four. By moving forward and backward in time,         Faulkner portrays the past and the present as coexisting and is able to examine how they influence each other. He creates a complex, layered, and multidimensional world.

        In the last chapter the author presents 2 visions on the time –“the diminishing road” and “the huge meadow that no winter ever quite touches”. As I understood the imagery, the first one is something constantly and continuously changing, it is forgetting the past leaving it behind and living in the present only. The second kind of time perception is living with the past just like it has never gone away (for “no winter ever quite touches” the memories and thoughts of the past), it is perpetual experiencing of the same emotions and feelings as a person had done in the past.  And that is the type which chose Emily and which author believes to be veracious. I may prove it by means of his quotations: “ The past is never dead. It’s not even past” or “There is no was”.

       As I already mentioned, I do not like the story very much and there are lots of things I would contradict and dispute with the author, though I respect his views and opinions. The second “model of time” seems to me destructive, dooming to privations and suffering and making things worth that they could have been. That is just what happened with Emily – she couldn’t let go of her past, couldn’t live in the moment and enjoy it, so that her life went so depredate and pitiful (to my opinion). 

Faulkner was born William Falkner (no "U") in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in and heavily influenced by that state, as well as the general ambience of the South. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of Blacks and Whites, his keen characterization of usual Southern characters and his timeless themes, one of them being that fiercely intelligent people dwelled behind the facade of good old boys and simpletons. An early editor misspelled Falkner's name as "Faulkner", and the author decided to keep the spelling.

Faulkner's most celebrated novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light In August (1932), The Unvanquished (1938), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), which are usually considered masterpieces. Faulkner was a prolific writer of short stories: his first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including "A Rose for Emily," "Red Leaves," "That Evening Sun," and "Dry September." During the 1930s, in an effort to make money, Faulkner crafted a sensationalist "pulp" novel entitled Sanctuary (first published in 1931). Its themes of evil and corruption (bearing Southern Gothic tones), resonate to this day. A sequel to the book, Requiem For a Nun, is the only play that he has published. It involves an introduction that is actually one sentence that spans for a couple pages. He received a Pulitzer Prize for A Fable, and won a National Book Award (posthumously) for his Collected Stories.

In his later years Faulkner moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter (producing scripts for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not--both directed by Howard Hawks). Faulkner started an affair with a secretary for Hawks, Meta Carpenter.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949. He drank shortly before he had to sail to Stockholm to receive the distinguished prize. Once there, he delivered one of the greatest speeches any literature recipient had ever given. In it, he remarked "I decline to accept the end of man...Man will not only endure, but prevail..." Both events were fully in character. Faulkner donated his Nobel winnings, "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers", eventually resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Faulkner served as Writer-In-Residence at the University of Virginia from 1957 until his death in 1962

For further information you can visit  http://www.biography.com/people/william-faulkner-9292252. Here you may find an interesting video (which I failed to download) and some more detailed information.