What foreshadowings of the discovery of the body of Homer Barron arewe given earlier in the story? Share your experience in reading “A Rose for Emily”: did the foreshadowings give away the ending for you? Did they heighten your interest?
What will be an ideal response?
- Students will want to make sure of exactly what happens in the story. Just as Emily Grierson had clung to her conviction that her father and Colonel Sartoris were still alive, she had come to believe that Homer Barron had faithfully married her, and she successfully ignored for forty years all the testimony of her senses. The conclusion of the story is foreshadowed by Emily’s refusal to allow her father to be buried, by her purchase of rat poison, by the disappearance of Homer Barron, and by the pervasive smell of decay.
In fact, these foreshadowings are so evident it is a wonder that, for those reading the story for the first time, the ending is so surprising. Much of the surprise seems due to the narrator’s back-and-forth, non-chronological method of telling the events of the story. We aren’t told in proper sequence that (1) Emily buys poison, (2) Homer disappears, and (3) there is a mysterious odor—a chain of events that might immediately rouse our suspicions. Instead, we hear about odor, poison, and disappearance, in that order. By this arrangement, any connection between these events is made to seem a little less obvious, adding to the story’s Gothic tone.
Faulkner’s mysterious story also resembles a riddle, argues Charles Clay Doyle of the University of Georgia. The resemblance exists not so much in the story’s structure or rhetoric,
as in the tricky way it presents clues, clues that tell the truth but at the same time mislead or fail to enlighten. The pleasure of discovery experienced by readers of the story resembles the pleasure we take in learning the answer to a riddle: we are astonished that the solution, which now seems so obvious, so inevitable, could have eluded us. (“Mute Witnesses: Faulkner’s Use of a Popular Riddle,” Mississippi Folklore Register 24 [1990]: 53–55)
Furthermore, Doyle identifies an allusion to a well-known riddle in Faulkner’s final description of Emily’s chamber: Homer’s “two mute shoes and the discarded socks.” The riddle is, “What has a tongue but can’t speak?” (Answer: a shoe.) Taking the phrase “mute shoes” to echo the riddle, Doyle thinks the shoes are a pair of silent witnesses who, in their way, resemble the narrator himself, who shows us the truth but does not state it outright
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Céline is talking about her friends’ lives when they were in high school. Complete what she says with the indicated verbs in the imparfait.
1. Quand tu _______________________________ (avoir) 16 ans, Héloïse, tu _______________________________ (aimer) beaucoup l’école. 2. Michèle aussi, mais elle _______________________________ (préférer) faire du sport qu’aller en cours. Elle _______________________________ (jouer) au tennis tous les jours. 3. Au lycée, les cours _______________________________ (commencer) à 7h30 du matin. Les jours de la semaine, les élèves _______________________________ (ne pas pouvoir) rester au lit. 4. Nous _______________________________ (être) souvent fatigués parce que nous _______________________________ (ne pas dormir) assez. 5. Et moi, je _______________________________ (ne jamais partir) de la maison à l’heure, alors je _______________________________ (prendre) rarement mon petit déjeuner. Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).
Read each sentence carefully. If the sentence is correct, write C in the space provided. If the sentence contains a misplaced modifier, write MM and correct the sentence. If the sentence contains a dangling modifier, write DM and correct the sentence. Lawyers are crooked who chase ambulances
What will be an ideal response?
Suddenly becoming rich and famous, the house was purchased by twenty-two-year-old Elvis in 1957.
The sentence form a paragraph. Proofread them for run-ons, comma splices, semicolon errors, relative pronoun errors, and -ING modifier errors. Identify the type of each error in each sentence, or select “correct” if the sentence is free of errors. A) correct B) run-on C) comma splice D) semicolon error E) relative pronoun error F) -ING modifier error
Why would you want to develop procedures?
A. to help employees individualize activities B. to coordinate practices so everyone does something the same way C. to ensure operating strategies that stay stable regardless of legislative changes D. to help a new employee learn how to do something