

Foreshadowing in a Rose for Emily

Question: what foreshadowing of the discovery of the body of Homer Barron are we given earlier in the story? Share your experience in reading “A Rose for Emily”: did the foreshadowing give away the ending for you? Did they heighten your interest? In the short story A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner, the narrator talks about the life and death of a woman named Emily. In the story there is a theme of death. This can be seen by the way the story begins by talking about the death of Emily.

As the story goes on it talks about the life of Emily from the towns’ prospective. The story ends with the discovery of Mr. Barron’s body in a bed in Ms. Emily’s house. One cannot help but wonder if the death of Mr. Barron was foreshadowed. The discovery of Homer Barron’s body can be foreshadowed on many occasions. One of these occasions would be when the narrator talked about when Ms. Emily vanquished the men that came to her door to complain about the smell.

It stated that she “vanquished them just as she did their fathers’ years ago when the came to complain about the smell”. This can be seen as foreshadowing because it makes you think about the reason they are there, and the smell coming from the house. This statement is also strengthened by the fact that the smell started coming from the house a short time after Mr. Barron went missing. Many thought that he had abandoned her, but no one knew for sure. They had stopped seeing him around the neighborhood, and assumed that he left.

The narrator states, “So, she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart—the one we believed would marry her—had deserted her. ” One cannot help but consider the similarities between the two occasions. Foreshadowing can also be seen when the narrator started to describe the way in which Ms. Emily started aging. He talked about the way her physical features changed, paying particular attention to her hair.

The narrator stated that her hair had changed and it was now iron gray. This is the same color as the hair that was found on the pillow. The foreshadowing did not give away the ending for me. It was after the ending that I was able to see how all the pieces fit together. One can say that the foreshadowing made the story interesting. It made one wonder what was happening, and how did everything tie together. Overall the foreshadowing made the reader thinking, and give the story a good climax.

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