Month: October 2019

I know what you’re thinking.

“I’m not even halfway done with the Sparknotes version of As I Lay Dying. Why should I pick up another William Faulkner story?” 

I can assure you, A Rose for Emily is a compelling twist on Faulkner’s Southern Gothic style you won’t want to put down.

It’s also far more than just a short story. It’s analysis of the prevailing themes of post-Civil War Reconstruction — the tension and conflict between North and South, old and new. It’s a psychological case study of a young woman’s Father Complex, her inability to accept change, and a society’s unwillingness to tolerate differences. A Rose for Emily provides another view through the lens of Faulkner and a deeper look into the social issues pervading America media at the time. It’s a perfect complement to the abstract concepts detailed in As I Lay Dying, the frosting on a metaphorical layer cake that encompasses the works of this Nobel Prize winning author. (Here’s a link to the story if you want a taste.)

Where As I Lay Dying juggles the menagerie of intertwining perspectives of numerous characters, A Rose for Emily follows the life and death of a singular Emily Grierson, albeit in a nonlinear, narrated fashion. 

Where As I Lay Dying dissects the complex relationships between an apathetic mother and her family, A Rose for Emily gives an intriguing account of a father-daughter relationship that ultimately materializes as an extreme (and deadly) case of daddy issues. 

And yes, where As I Lay Dying might seem like a mind warping struggle to read, A Rose for Emily is a much more understandable way to ease into Faulkner.

The story begins at Emily Grierson’s funeral, which happens to be the first public appearance she’s made in years. Yet, the entire town attends her funeral: men who come out of obligation, and women who were more interested in seeing the inside of her house than paying their respects. Her home thus becomes the centerpiece of this story, the vehicle for her transition from vibrant Southern Belle to elderly recluse. 

As a young woman, Emily’s father confines her to the house, turning away every suitor at the door. Emily’s romantic deprivation leads her to become dependent and overly attached to her father. So, when her father dies, her downfall begins. She begins to court a northern man named Homer Baron, much to the disapproval of the townspeople. However, as their brief relationship falls through and the two appear to part ways, Emily’s separation anxiety takes a far more sinister turn.

On the surface, the story appears to be a tragedy: Emily, the victim of her father and the judgement of the town. She’s described as, “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.” (Faulkner 2.12)

It’s an image that parallels many other works of literature and art in the early 1900s, most notably, American Gothic, painted in 1930 by Grant Wood. 

In the painting, a farmer and his daughter pose in front of their home. The father, positioned in front of his daughter, wields a pitchfork. It’s menacing. He glares at you through the painting, asserting his authority, making it clear that his daughter is off limits. The daughter can only obey. Her expression is stern. She looks at her father as in a subordinate manner. According to Mia Fineman, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the painting is widely considered, “a satire about the rigidity of American rural or small-town life, lampooning the people H. L. Mencken called the “booboisie*” of the “Bible Belt.”” (Fineman) Thus A Rose for Emily may have an alternative interpretation as a satire, criticizing the conservative rural values that confined women to homes and rejected individuality.

The painting also perfectly encapsulates the meaning of A Rose for Emily. Emily, depicted quite literally as a background character, is overshadowed first by an oppressive relationship with her father, and then by a town that chooses to regard her with pity, rather than acceptance. 

According to Renee Curry, a professor at California State University Monterey Bay, “The stylistics of Faulkner’s language thus serves to subordinate Emily, ostensibly the subject of the tale, and to elevate the town as the truer subject.” (Curry) Emily’s story is not the focal point of Faulkner’s piece. Instead, he uses it to convey a broader theme: how a person’s fate is often dictated by the society that surrounds them. Herein lies the intricacies of A Rose for Emily.

The entire story is told through the perspective of an anonymous narrator who appears to be an omniscient towns-person. In her youth, the town views Emily with jealousy, manifested in the form of reverence. After her breakup with Homer, she is “left alone, and a pauper[.] [S]he had become humanized.” (Faulkner) 

The town discards Emily. They cast her aside. Her only role becomes being the topic of village gossip. It’s a cynical message: society doesn’t mind when people fail, but they hate to see people succeed. It satirizes the rural community attitude of conformity, of weeding out differences, of oppressing those who are different and expecting their compliance.

Emily’s fate was sealed at the death of her father. When her aristocratic standing was terminated, she was left to the mercy of the town, which chose to treat her as an outcast and play it off as her own choice. 

It’s dark, but what Southern Gothic story isn’t? It casts a pessimistic light on society, but many may argue it’s in fact realism. A Rose for Emily, though, will surely make you think: how does our society reject people who don’t fit our standards of normal? How have we allowed the collective to shape our perception of individuality?

So while you can, leave Sparknotes alone and pick up A Rose for Emily instead. Sparknotes is a site that presents the mainstream meaning of a novel. It assigns a book a certain fate: how a group of people decided it should be interpreted. Embrace your own ideas, no matter how rough or thorny they may be. Don’t take a rose for what it’s worth. Peel back the petals and look inside. I guarantee you’ll find something you didn’t expect.

 

* “booboisie” is a derogatory term coined by Mencken in 1922 for people who are uneducated and uncultured. It comes from the combination of “boob” (careless) and “bourgeoise”.

---

Works Cited:

Curry, Renee R. “Gender And Authorial Limitation In Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily.” (Special Issue: William Faulkner).” The Mississippi Quarterly 47.3 (1994): 391. Web. 18 Oct. 2019.

Fineman, M. (2019). The Most Famous Farm Couple in the World. [online] Slate. Available at: https://slate.com/culture/2005/06/the-most-famous-farm-couple-in-the-world.html [Accessed 18 Oct. 2019].

Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. 1930.

---

Additional Information:

Link to story: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html

Vox video:

 

The best time to try something new is in the dead of summer when all your friends are away at camp or vacation and the egg-frying properties of the sidewalk make outdoor activity impossible. 

This year, my annual attempt to “make the most out of my summer” came around early July. At the time, I was pretty content working two part time jobs and watching Daily Dose of Internet on Youtube but I couldn’t help but feel unfulfilled. I hadn’t satisfied my creative instincts just yet.

One muggy evening, I finished dinner and walked outside to go on my daily solitary bike ride around the neighborhood, which usually involved a lot of internal monologue and using the curbs as a very toned-down half-pipe course. As I slipped on my Crocs, I noticed a piece of wood had fallen in the corner of my garage. I walked over and picked it up. It was a long stick of maple. As I rested it again in the corner where it had sat for the last 10 years with the other various wood scraps my grandpa gathered over the years, I wondered if perhaps there was something more I could do with this wood.

My younger sister was currently in the midst of remodeling her room, and I had just helped her replace the tarnished brass door knobs on her closet doors with more contemporary steel ones. The next step was to find a place to put her 20+ medals that were currently dangling precariously off a corner of her mirror.

So I set to work making her a medal rack. I sanded the wood to remove the paint and reveal the beautiful grain, sawed it down to size, then used the gas burners in my kitchen to give it a distressed antique look. I hammered in some nails, mounted it on her wall, and the project was complete.

After that, I decided that I was a woodworker.

There was something addictive about the woodworking process. It’s a somewhat oxymoronic feeling; dynamic monotony, so to speak: performing repetitive motions in a way that compounds to form something greater. My workshop may seem like a boring place at first glance, but even the most mundane work, such as sanding a piece before painting, becomes exciting once you have an end result in sight. As corny as it may sound, when I enter my workshop, I lose track of time. I become absorbed in the details, the cuts made down to the millimeter, the corners measured to be perfectly perpendicular. When I can see the finished product start to take shape, my enthusiasm only increases. It’s a chain of events — a positive feedback loop — that feeds my passion for woodworking.

My next project involved making a jewelry rack for my girlfriend, whose necklaces always got tangled up. I researched woodworking techniques and learned about rabbet joinery, proper table saw usage, and painting methods. This project was a bit more complex. I spent hours sawing, drilling, and sanding in my garage, which was not much cooler than the surrounding atmosphere, leaving me dripping with sweat and covered in sawdust. The jewelry rack project was a milestone for me because I was able to combine the skills I developed from other classes and activities. For instance, I created a 3D model of the rack on Sketchup before I made my first cut. I also had to resolve a lot of geometric issues, such as making sure the bracelet holder on the rack would accommodate the average diameter of her bracelets. During this project, I also developed my own methods of fabrication. In one case, I needed to cut brass tubes to serve as ring holders, but was unable to make a clean cut. To resolve this, I locked the brass tube in my drill, then used a hacksaw to score the metal as the tube spun beneath it. Ultimately, my efforts were well worth it, as the jewelry rack came out beautifully and still hangs in her room to this day.

My woodworking journey continued that summer as I found new ways to use the scrap wood laying around my house and neighborhood. I created a welcome sign using two planks I salvaged from my neighbor’s remodeling project and personalized wood signs (currently on sale on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/NEDAWoodSigns?ref=shop_sugg) using the leftover wood used to build our deck many years ago.

When school started, I decided to join the woods club. When I walked through the door, I realized I discovered an entirely new corner of the school. Before me lay an expanse of miter saws, planers, table saws, laser cutters, band saws, and a CNC mill! It was basically woodworking heaven. 

The wood shop is now probably my new favorite place at school. Last week, I used the laser cutter to cut out balsa wood frames for an event I’m doing in Science Olympiad. The week before that I used the band saw and planer to make a jig for a different event. My experience in woodworking has heightened all aspects of my engineering interests. Not only did it improve my knack for design and construction, it inspired me to embrace my creative side, prompting me to undertake a capstone project where I am attempting to 3D print high quality saxophone mouthpieces (will be discussed more in a later post).

Wood is an amazing material. It’s strong, lightweight, flexible, and beautiful. When given the right tools and a solid plan, a few pieces of wood can become almost anything. I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what woodworking has in store for me, and I couldn’t be more excited to see what’s ahead. 

To me, woodworking isn’t just something I picked up as a way to get through the dog days of summer. It’s the culmination of years of artistic and engineering experience. It’s the ultimate expression of my creative abilities.