Symbolism in A Rose for Emily.doc

献给爱米丽的玫瑰中象征手法的分析Symbolism in A Rose for EmilyContentsAbstract.1Key words.1I. Introduction.21. About the author.22. The story and its background.21) The story.22) Its background.3II. Literature Review.31. Symbolism.32. Complex time and structure.43. Changing portraits in A Rose for Emily.5III. Symbolic Subjects.61. Rose .62. The decaying house.63. Miss Emily.74. Homer Barron.75. The Negro man .86. The present and the past.87. The new board of alderman108. Miss Emily and her house.11IV. Conclusion11References.12Abstract: William Faulkner is one of the greatest writers that America has produced. Since he was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature, his reputation and influence have spread to every part of the world. His brilliantly intensive fiction drew admiration from a growing number of writers and critics in America and France. In his short story A Rose for Emily, symbolism is used very frequently. In many different ways, symbolism has a very deep and penetrating insight to the short story of A Rose for Emily. And what is symbolism? Developed in the late 19th century, symbolism is an art movement characterized by the representation of the inner life of people through spiritual or mystical symbols and ideas. It began as a rejection of the purely visual realism of the Impressionists, and the rationality of the Industrial Age. The term, symbolism covers a great variety of apparently dissimilar modes of behavior. There are many different symbolic subjects such as Emily herself, her old house and the old servant. By exploring these symbolic subjects we can understand this short story better.Key words: symbolism; A Rose for Emily; symbolic subjects摘要：威廉福克纳是美国最伟大的作家之一。自从获得1950年的诺贝尔文学奖以后，他的声誉和影响传遍了世界各地。在美国和法国，越来越多的作家和评论家被福克纳出色的小说所折服。在他的短篇小说献给爱米丽的玫瑰花中，许多地方运用了象征主义。从很多方面来看，象征主义帮助我们更加深入地理解这篇小说。那么什么是象征主义呢？象征主义是一次起源于19世纪末期的文艺运动。它的特点主要是通过精神或者神秘的象征体和思想来表现人类的内心世界。它最初的目的是反对印象主义者纯粹的视觉化的现实主义以及工业时代的理性主义。象征主义这个术语包含了很多不同种类的行为方式。在这篇小说中有很多象征体比如爱米丽，她的老房子和老仆人。通过分析这些象征体我们就能更好的理解这篇小说。关键词：象征主义；献给爱米丽的玫瑰花；象征体I. Introduction Throughout the whole history of human beings, literature plays a great and irreplaceable role. Literature is a crystallization of the wisdom of mankind. Literature is the human spirit food. Without literature, there is no civilization. Therefore we, college students, should read literary works extensively. It provides us a more colorful world and a broader vision. According to my interest and reading experience, I choose the great American writer William Faulkner and his representative story A Rose for Emily. It is necessary to learn something about William Faulkner and this short story.1. About the authorWilliam Faulkner was born in new Albanny, Mississippi. When he was four or five years old, his family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he lived for the rest of his life. Oxford had some fictional characteristics, a prototype of Jefferson Town, the setting of A Rose for Emily and one of Yoknapatawpha series. Faulkner's mythical Yoknapatawpha County serves as the locale for many of his stories and is so well known both in print and in motion pictures as to deserve a real place on the map. Myth or not, it will always survive on the literary map of the United States because of Faulkner's technical brilliance and gift for storytelling. After reading Faulkner and experiencing the rush of life so vividly depicted in his stories and in his novels, a visitor to Yoknapatawpha might agree with Lena's assessment of her experiences in Faulkner's A Light in August: "My, my. A body does get around. Here we have not been coming from Alabama but two months, and now it's already Tennessee." (Faulkner, William. Novels 1930-1935. New York: Library of America, 1985.) His central theme, however, was not Oxford or Mississippi or even America. It was, as William Faulkner put it, the universal theme of the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself. William Faulkner is considered by many to be the greatest writer of fiction that the United States yet produced. His A Rose for Emily was originally published in the April 30, 1930, Issue of Forum. It was his first short story published in a major magazine. A slightly revised version was published in two collections of his short fiction. It has been published in dozens of anthologies as well.2. The story and its background1) The storyA Rose for Emily is the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator gives us details of the strange circumstances of Emilys life and her odd relationships with her father, her lover and persons of Jefferson town. The narrator also tells us the horrible secret Emily hides at the end of the story. The storys subtle complexities continue to inspire critics while casual readers find it one of Faulkners most accessible works. The popularity of the story is due in no small part to its gruesome ending. Faulkner often used short stories to “flesh out” the fictional kingdom of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, for his novels. In fact, he revised some of his short fiction to be used as chapters in those novels. A Rose for Emily takes place in Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is a critical setting in much of Faulkners fiction. The character of Colonel Sartoris plays a role in the story; he is also an important character in the history of Yoknapatawpha. However, A Rose for Emily is a story that stands by itself. Faulkner himself modestly referred to it as a “ghost story,” but many critics recognize it as an extraordinarily versatile work. As Frank A. Littler writes in Notes on Mississippi Writers, A Rose for Emily has been read variously as a Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between North and South, a meditation on the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine. So it is fairly difficult to define what kind of story A Rose for Emily belongs to.2) Its backgroundThe time of this story is during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that time, the south was learning to live with their own loss in the Civil War of 18611865. After the Civil War, many new inventions were brought to the south from the north, while the features of the south were vanishing. However the end of slavery did not end the social dominance of the prominent white families, either. These prominent white families owned the largest plantations and the largest numbers of slaves. They lived in old fashioned, well-decorated houses and lived with old ways of life even in their unaccustomed poverty. Women from such families had a serious and embarrassing problem in finding a suitable marriage partner, because there were so few outside the family were deemed worthy to join it. Emily Grierson has such a problem. II. Literature Review 1. SymbolismDeveloped in the late 19th century, symbolism is an art movement characterized by the representation of the inner life of people through spiritual or mystical symbols and ideas. It began as a rejection of the purely visual realism of the Impressionists, and the rationality of the Industrial Age. The term, symbolism covers a great variety of apparently dissimilar modes of behavior. In its original senses it was restricted to objects or marks intended to recall or to direct special attention to some person, object, idea, event or projected activity associated only vaguely or not at all with the symbol in any natural sense. By gradual extensions of meaning the terms symbol and symbolism have come to include not merely such trivial objects and marks as black balls, to indicate a negative attitude in voting, and stars and daggers, to remind the reader that supplementary information is to be found at the bottom of the page, but also more elaborate objects and devices, such as flags and signal lights, which are not ordinarily regarded as important in themselves but which point to ideas and actions of great consequence to society. Such complex systems of reference as speech, writing and mathematical notation should also be included under the term symbolism, for the sounds and marks used therein obviously have no meaning in themselves but can have significance only for those who know how to interpret them in terms of that to which they refer. In personal relations there is much behavior that may be called symbolic, as when a ceremonious bow is directed not so much to an actual person as to a status that person happens to fill. The psychoanalysts have come to apply the term symbolic to almost any emotionally charged pattern of behavior that has the function of unconscious fulfillment of a repressed tendency. As for the types of symbolism, there are two. The first of these, which may be called referential symbolism, embraces such forms as oral speech, writing, the telegraph code, national flags, flag signaling and other organizations of symbols which are agreed upon as economical devices for purposes of reference The second type of symbolism is equally economical and may be termed condensation symbolism, for it is a highly condensed form of substitutive behavior for direct expression, allowing for the ready release of emotional tension in conscious or unconscious form. Telegraphic ticking is virtually a pure example of referential symbolism; the apparently meaningless washing ritual of an obsessive neurotic, as interpreted by the psychoanalysts, would be a pure example of condensation symbolism. In actual behavior both types are generally blended.2. Complex time and structureThe reading of A Rose for Emily is usually a first step into the world of William Faulkner for literature learners. Intrigued as they are initially by the story's ending, these unsophisticated readers often remain perplexed by this complex, challenging Faulknerian world where the town of Jefferson is much more than simply the setting:  this town is a character with a voice and values. And this town, understood as setting, character, and narrative voice, controls A Rose for Emily from opening through closing sentence. However we can see that through his great novels of the 1930s and into his 1957 Snopes trilogy novel, The Town, Faulkner expanded the force of the community. But here in A Rose for Emily we can begin their understanding of the import of the town as setting, antagonist, and voice. Its voice weaves its associations, accumulated in memory over generations, into omnipresent images and scenes. We can understand these images, frozen in memory, which capture and stop time, when we are pondering this phenomenon in our own memory bank. In this same reflective pattern we can obtain partial insight into Emily from bits of information. The natural manipulation of time by the narrative voice enhances the mystery as the reader becomes a detective adding the chronological table to the story line for clues. Then we may understand the life of Emily Grierson as an early Faulknerian portrait of a woman denied life's chances, a victim of the repression and destruction enacted by the community. Her fight for survival and attempt to stop time distort her, but we might view her not so much as crazy or grotesque but as pitiable and, perhaps, admirable.3. Changing portraits in A Rose for Emily Janice A. Powell said, “A Rose for Emily is a perfect introduction to close reading, for this rich text provides not only innumerable details but also a complex structure.” The imagery of changing portraits in A Rose for Emily allows us to explore and to find meaning. In addition to the literal portrait of Emily's father, Faulkner creates numerous figurative portraits of Emily herself by framing her in doorways or windows. The chronological organization of Emily's portraits visually imprints the changes occurring throughout her life. Like an impressionist painting that changes as the viewer moves to different positions, however, the structural organization provides clues to the "whole picture" or to the motivations behind her transformations. Throughout the whole story, the chronological portraits mirror the frozen images of Emily that linger in the minds of the townspeople, the collective narrator. The structural placement of these pictures within the story, however, reveals her motivation. Throughout this story, Faulkner, the master artist, verbally paints the portraits of a tragic woman.  Through his images, the reader watches Emily transform from a virginal victim to a "manly" murderess to a corpulent corpse. More than a portraitist, however, Faulkner unveils interior complexity through external appearance, using both imagery and structure. Just as the impressionist painter Seurat places colors next to one another for the viewer to mix and interpret the hues, Faulkner juxtaposes and scatters images and information throughout the story for the reader to mix and interpret the various colors of Emily's character. At the end, the artist contrasts the pictorialization of a genteel Emily resting peacefully on her funeral bier with a simple image of love and loss, a strand of iron gray hair resting on the yellowed pillow of an impotent bridal bed. This haunting image is the final pen stroke whispering the eulogy of her wasted life.III. Symbolic Subjects1. Rose As we all know, roses stand for love. But in A Rose for Emily by offering a rose for Emily, the author is paying his sympathy and respects to Emily. As William Faulkner put it, Emily is an unfortunate woman. When she was young and beautiful, she lived in a tower built by her dominating, stubborn father. It wasted her most beautiful age as a woman. After her fathers death, with the collapse of the powerful tower, Emily did not know what to do and how to live on, so she refused to admit her fathers death. We can see this point from the original edition: the day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. 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, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them to dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke