Miss Emily의 現實과 幻想 : 'A Rose for Emily' 硏究 A Study on 'A Rose for Emily' = Reality and Illusion of Miss Emily

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The first clues to meaning in a short story usually arise from a detection of the principal contrasts which an author sets up. The most common, perhaps, are contrasts of character, but when characters are contrasted there is usually also a resultant contrast in terms of action. Since action reflects a moral or ethical state, contrasting action points to a contrast in ideological perspectives and hence toward the theme. The principal contrast in William Faulkner's short story 'A rose for Emily' is between past time and present time : the past as represented in Emily herself, in Colonel Sartoris, in the old Negro servant, and in the Board of Aldermen who accepted the Colonel's attitude toward Emily and rescinded her taxes : the present is depicted through the unnamed narrator and is represented in the new Board of Aldermen, in Homer Barron(the representative of Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and through them toward the entire South), and in what is called "the next generation with its more modern idea." A rose for Emily' has the Gothic atmosphere of a typical ghost story-the decaying Victorian mansion, the mystery created by Miss Emily's seclusion, the finally the macabre revelation in the upstairs bedroom-but it is also a study of a strangely pathetic, perhaps even tragic, character. The townfolk, who had thought that the Griersons "held themselves a little too high for what they really were," felt smugly vindicated when Miss Emily seemed likely to remain a spinster : when her father died, word got around that "the house was all that was left to her : and in a way, prople were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left along, and a pauper, she had become humanized."