American writer William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi in 1897.

Much of his
early work was poetry, but he became famous for his novels set in the American South,
frequently in his fabricated Yoknapatawpha County, with works that included The Sound and the
Fury, As I Lay Dyingand Absalom, Absalom! His controversial 1931 novel Sanctuary was turned
into two films, 1933's The Story of Temple Drake as well as a later 1961 project. Faulkner was
awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and ultimately won two Pulitzers and two National
Book Awards as well. He died on July 6, 1962.
A Southern writer through and through, William Cuthbert Falkner (the original spelling of his
last name) was born in the small town of New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897. His
parents, Murry Falkner and Maud Butler Faulkner, named him after his paternal greatgrandfather, William Clark Falkner, an adventurous and shrewd man who seven years prior was
shot dead in the town square of Ripley, Mississippi. Throughout his life, William Clark Falkner
worked as a railroad financier, politician, soldier, farmer, businessman, lawyer andin his
twilight yearsbest-selling author (The White Rose of Memphis).
The grandeur of the "Old Colonel," as almost everyone called him, loomed large in the minds of
William Clark Falkner's children and grandchildren. The Old Colonels son, John Wesley
Thompson, opened the First National Bank of Oxford in 1910. Instead of later bequeathing the
railroad business to his son, Murry, however, Thompson sold it. Murry worked as the business
manager for the University of Mississippi. Murrys son, author William Falkner, held tightly to
his great-grandfathers legacy, writing about him in his earliest novels set in the American South.
As much as the older men in Faulkner's family made an impression on him, so did the women.
Faulkner's mother, Maud, and grandmother, Lelia Butler, were voracious readers, as well as fine
painters and photographers. They taught him the beauty of line and color. Faulkners "mammy,"
as he called her, was a black woman named Caroline Barr. She raised him from birth until the
day he left home and was fundamental to his development. At her wake, Faulkner told the
mourning crowd that it was a privilege to see her out, that she had taught him right from wrong
and was loyal to his family despite having borne none of them. In later documents, Faulkner
points to Barr as the impetus for his fascination with the politics of sexuality and race.
As a teenager, Faulkner was taken by drawing. He also greatly enjoyed reading and writing
poetry. In fact, by the age of 12, he began intentionally mimicking Scottish romantics,
specifically Robert Burns, and English romantics, A.E. Housman and A.C. Swinburne. Despite
his remarkable intelligence, or perhaps because of it, school bored him. He never earned a high
school diploma. After dropping out, he worked in carpentry and sporadically as a clerk at his
grandfathers bank.

During this time, Faulkner met Estelle Oldham. At the time of their meeting, she was both
popular and exceedingly effervescent. She immediately stole his heart. The two dated for a
while, but another man named Cornell Franklin proposed to her before Faulker did. Estelle took
the proposal lightheartedly, partly because Franklin had just been commissioned as a major in the
Hawaiian Territorial Forces and was leaving soon to report for duty. Estelle hoped it would
dissolve naturally, but several months later, he mailed her an engagement ring. Estelles parents
bid her to accept the offer, as Franklin was a law graduate of the University of Mississippi and
came from a family of high repute.
Afflicted by Estelles engagement, Faulkner turned to a new mentor Phil Stone, a local attorney
who was impressed by the his poetry. Stone invited Faulkner to move and live with him in New
Haven, Connecticut. There, Stone nurtured Faulkner's passion for writing. While delving into
prose, Faulkner worked at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, a distinguished rifle
manufacturer. Lured by the war in Europe, he joined the British Royale Flying Corps in 1918 and
trained as a pilot in the first Royal Canadian Air Force. He had earlier tried to enlist the U.S.
Forces, but they wouldn't admit him due to his height (he was a little under 5' 6"). To enlist in the
Royal Air Force, he lied about several facts, changing his birthplace and surnamefrom Falkner
to Faulknerto appear more British.
Faulkner trained on British and Canadian bases, and finished his time in Toronto just before the
war ended, never putting him in harm's way. A man of skilled exaggeration, Faulkner told
embellished military stories, and sometimes completely fabricated war stories, to his friends back
home. He even donned the uniform of a lieutenant to bolster his reputation and wore it at home
in Mississippi.
In 1918, after the U.S. Army rejected him for being underweight and too short (5 feet 5
inches), Faulkner enlisted in the Canadian Air Force. During his brief service in World
War I (191418; a war that involved most countries in Europe as well as many other
nations in the world, and in which the United States participated from 191718), he
suffered a leg injury in a plane accident. In 1918 he left the air force and returned home
to Oxford.
In 1919 Faulkner enrolled at the University of Mississippi as a special student, but left
the next year for New York City. After several odd jobs in New York he left and again
returned to Mississippi, where he became postmaster at the Mississippi University
Station. He was fired in 1924 for reading on the job. In 1925 he and a friend made a
walking tour of Europe, returning home in 1926.

During the years 1926 to 1930 Faulkner published a series of novels, none commercially
successful. But in 1931 the success of Sanctuary freed him of financial worries. He went
to Hollywood for a year as a scriptwriter and an adviser.
It was not until after World War II (193945; a war in which France, Great Britain, the
United States, the Soviet Union, and China fought against Germany, Italy, and Japan)
that Faulkner received critical acclaim. The turning point for Faulkner's reputation came
in 1946, when Malcolm Cowley published the influential The Portable Faulkner (at this
time all of Faulkner's books were out of print). The rapid and widespread praise for
Faulkner's work was recognized in a 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Faulkner had married Estelle Oldham, his childhood sweetheart, in 1929, and they lived
together in Oxford until his death. He was a quiet, dashing, courteous man, mustachioed
and sharp-eyed. He constantly refused the role of celebrity: he permitted no prying into
his private life and rarely granted interviews. William Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, in a
hospital in Byhalia, Mississippi. He was sixty-four years of age.

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Du-Fi/FaulknerWilliam.html#ixzz3VBrSvuXR

Theme of "a Rose for Emily"

Summary: Examines the theme of the short story "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner. Provides a plot
summary. Analyzes the character of Emily.

The theme of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is that people should let go of the past, moving on
with the present so that they can prepare to welcome their future. Emily was the proof of a person who
always lived on the shadow of the past; she clung into it and was afraid of changing. The first evident that
shows to the readers right on the description of Grierson's house "it was a big, squarish frame house that
had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome
style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street." The society was changing
every minutes but still, Emily's house was still remained like a symbol of seventieth century.

The theme of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is that people
should let go of the past, moving on with the present so that they
can prepare to welcome their future. Emily was the proof of a person
who always lived on the shadow of the past; she clung into it and
was afraid of changing. The first evident that shows to the readers

right on the description of Grierson's house "it was a big, squarish

frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and
spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the
seventies, set on what had once been our most select street." The
society was changing every minutes but still, Emily's house was still
remained like a symbol of seventieth century. The second evident
show in the first flashback of the story, the event that Miss
Emily declined to pay taxes. In her mind, her family was a powerful
family and they didn't have to pay any taxes in the town of
Jefferson. She even didn't believe the sheriff in front of her is the
"real" sheriff, so that she talked to him as talk to the Colonel who
has died for almost ten years "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes
in Jefferson." Third evident was the fact that Miss Emily had kept her
father's death body inside the house and didn't allow burying him.
She has lived under his control for so long, now all of sudden he left
her, she was left all by herself, she felt lost and alone, so that she
wants to keep him with her in order to think he's still living with her
and continued controlling her life. The fourth evident and also the
most interesting of this story, the discovery of Homer
Barron's skeleton in the secret room. The arrangement inside the
room showing obviously that Miss Emily has slept with the death
body day by day, until all remained later was just a skeleton, she's
still sleeping with it, clutching on it every night. The action of killing
Homer Barron can be understood that Miss Emily was afraid that he
would leave her, afraid of letting him go, so she decided to kill him,
so that she doesn't have to afraid of losing him, of changing, Homer
Barron would still stay with her forever. It was not wrong if Miss
Emily was looked at like a mad woman, she's mad because of
scaring the changing; she resisted to move on with the changing in
Jefferson town after many decades. The town people also have the
role in making Emily crazier. They looked at her like a "fallen
monument", still accept her immense effect, no one come to take
her out of the shadow of the past that isolated her from the society.

In "A Rose for Emily," what is the connection between the title of the story and
the content of the story?
The title of a story is never accidental. The author usually connects the title in some way to one of the
literary elements, such as theme, setting, or symbolism. In this story, the rose is the biggest symbol of
the story.
A rose stands for life, beauty, love, passion, and even death. Miss Emily lived a life that involved
much death and denial, but she didn't have much love or passion. The rose is a tribute to her life and
her death, also serving to symbolize Homer Barron's death. In the end, Homer was found all dried out
and had been kept in Emily's room in the attic for her to cherish. The irony is that Emily's life wasn't
beautiful at all, but a rose is one of nature's most beautiful creations.
This symbolism is shown in Miss Emily's loneliness and her inability to let go of the past. She
needed to keep the past alive in order to feel less lonely. Not willing to let her father's body be taken
shows this need because if she lets go of him, she is all alone. When she met Homer, she paraded him
in public, and "she carried her head high enough even when we believed she had fallen." Emily's sad
life is also shown by the death smells coming from her house, but the last scene tells it all. It is a
tomb of her eternal loneliness. "A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this
room decked and furnished as for a bride."
The rose is a symbol of love exchanged at weddings. I think Faulkner's use of the rose in the title refers to
the strange marriage between Emily and Homer. It's like calling it "Emily's marriage" but in a more poetic
way.
Also, the rose is native to the Southern United States. The rose is often used as a symbol of the South.
This story shows the resistance of the insane Emily in the judgmental Southern society. In this sense,
calling it A Rose for Emily is like saying "This is what the South did to Emily."
Another thought: roses are placed on a casket at a funeral. A Rose for Emily is a story about death. The
ultimate purpose of it is to describe Emily's life, like at a funeral. After the story is through, the narrator(s)
would be able to thus place a rose on Emily's casket.
All ideas probably apply, but Faulkner wrote with a level of depth that I don't think any of us will ever fully
understand.
Source(s):I got some ideas about how different people have interpreted A Rose for Emily from
Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rose_for_...
And with a pretty good knowledge of roses and the South, I came up with this idea on my own.

Based on Miss Emily's actions throughout the story, a psychological analysis would conclude, among
other things, that Miss Emily was psychologically detached from the present and that repression of
normal human aspirations led to Miss Emily's murderous and abnormal behavior.
When the town aldermen visit Miss Emily in order to get her to pay her taxes, for example, Miss
Emily insists
See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson. . . . See Colonel Sartoris (Colonel Sartoris had
been dead almost ten years.)
Miss Emily, in part because she lived as a recluse in her home with no contact with the outside
world--her servant, Tobe, took care of tasks that required leaving the home--lived in a world in which
time had stopped at some point in the past. While the world moved on outside her house and outside
Emily's consciousness, she remained in what can only be described as a timeless world where past
and present intermingled.
In another episode, after Miss Emily's father has died, the townspeople call on her to express their
condolences, and this is her reaction:
Miss Emily met them at the door dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told
them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days. . . .
Miss Emily continued to deny her father's death until the town was ready to use force, and the she
finally relented and allowed his burial. Again, this is a sign of someone detached from reality even
when faced with a concrete reminder of that reality (her father's death).
The last and most important episode depicting Miss Emily's abnormal psychological state is her
murder of Homer Barron and then keeping his decomposing body beside her as she slept. Faulkner
himself describes this as the result of a woman's normal aspirations for a husband, a home, a family
being crushed by a repressive father (he rejected all of her suitors). Faulkner believed, and we see
this play out in the story, that those crushed aspirations are going to come out in some fashion, often
in a way that's surprising and horrible.
Miss Emily undoubtedly suffered from repression at a crucial point in her life, and she withdrew,
mentally and physically, from the world and the present. She created within her house a timeless
world in which death and life became one continuum that ended only in her own death.