In order for a story to take shape, one of the main ingredients is the plot. An author must figure out where the story is going to take the reader. In “ A Rose For Emily,” William Faulkner uses in medias res, flashback, and foreshadowing to tell the story of a heartbroken and disenchanted woman.
In medias res (or in the midst of things) the author can start the story in any place the he or she wants. In this case, Faulkner starts the story at the death of Ms. Emily. “ When Miss Emily Grierson died, the whole town went to the funeral” (87).
Throughout the story Faulkner uses in medias res; for the second example of this the author jumps from the last years of her life to when Ms. Emily was a young lady buying arsenic from the town’s druggist. “Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one…I want some arsenic”(91).
These examples show how Faulkner uses in medias res.
Another technique William Faulkner uses was flashbacks. After starting at the end of Miss Emily’s life, Faulkner uses flashbacks throughout the story. He takes the reader back to when Miss Emily was a young beautiful lady with her father. “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clothing horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back flung front door”(90).
Her father controlled Emily when she was younger and controlled her love life. Her father chased away all suitors who came to ask for her. After her father’s death, Miss Emily finds love at last in a young foreman by the name of Homer Baron. This is when the Faulkner flashes back again in the story to show the courtship of Homer and Emily. “Presently we would begin to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable”(91).
The Essay on Foreshadowing In "A Rose For Emily" By William Faulkner
... outcome and the personality of Miss Emily because of the fact that Faulkner uses random fragments throughout the story. The strand of hair represents ... grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead (Faulkner 252”). She was unable to accept the fact ... down and quickly buried him. “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing ...
To the surprise of the town, Emily and Homer never married but Homer Baron’s spirit and cold lifeless body did end up staying in her bed for his afterlife.
William Faulkner sets up the story with not only flashbacks, but also with foreshadowing. Faulkner flashes back throughout the story to tell why Miss Emily dies alone. But during some of those flashbacks, he foreshadows events to come. When Miss Emily’s father passes away, she never really lets go and faces the fact that the only man she ever loved to that point of her life, is dead. “She told the town that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body”(90).
This event was a major foreshadow in the answer why Homer Baron left and was never seen again in the later parts of the story. Homer Baron broke Miss Emily’s heart by not marrying her, so Miss Emily with the only way she knew how to keep the second man she loved in her life, was to kill him. “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him”(94).
So for forty some odd years, Miss Emily kept a hold of her lover but was never loved back by Homer’s corpse.
Miss Emily dies alone and with a broken heart, Faulkner uses these plot techniques to tell a story and to allow the reader to get inside of his characters’ thoughts and why certain events occurred and what became of the characters.
