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Reading Questions

1. In George L. Dillon's "Styles of Reading" (p. 550 of the full Ninth Edition and p. 550 of the shorter Eight Edition), the numerous questions a first reading of "A Rose for Emily" generally produces are gathered:

Why weren't there suitable suitors for Emily? How does Emily respond to being denied suitors? Why does Emily take up with Homer Barron? What happened when he left? Did he abandon her? Why did he come back? Why did she kill him? Why did the smell disappear after only one week? What did Miss Emily think of the men scattering lime around her house? How did the hair come to be on the pillow? How much hair is a strand? What was her relationship to Tobe? Did she lie beside the corpse? How often, for what period of years? Why did she not leave the house for the last decade of her life? Did she not know Colonel Sartoris had been dead ten years when she faced down the Aldermen? How crazy was she (unable to distinguish fantasy from reality)? Why does she allow so much dust in her house?

Which of these questions occurred to you? What would you add to this list? 2. Reconstruct the time and place of the story. Although there are questions about the timeline (we only know that her taxes were remitted in 1894), Emily's youth is identified with the time and ideals of the prewar Confederate South. Consider also that the story takes place in Jefferson, a small town in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, which goes through a great deal of change in this time, leaving behind but still claiming to value the Old South. 3. Are there any passages or aspects of the story which leave you confused or which seem irrelevant to the plot? Are you reminded of any other stories you have read or seen on film or television? 4. At what points did you notice any foreshadowing of the ending? Did the story prepare you to expect something different from Miss Emily? 5. This story is told by "we": who do you imagine this narrator (or narrators) to be? Young or old? Male or female? Both? What is their attitude toward Emily? How is this represented by their calling her "Miss Emily"? What do they remember about her? How does this shape your attitude toward her? Do you find yourself sympathizing with her situation as the center of the town's attention (and gossip)? 6. Women of the Old South and of a "good family" were often put on pedestals as paragons of virtue and respectability and given special treatment as "ladies." How do you see these attitudes at work in this story? How have they shaped Miss Emily's life and how people view her? Why is she called a "fallen monument" in the first paragraph?

7. What does the title tell you about the story? Why is it not called "A Rose for Miss Emily"? Read Faulkner's interpretation of the story, stated many years after he wrote it. What other interpretations are possible about the story which are different from or even contradictory to Faulkner's interpretation? 8. Student Responses

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