Faulkner and the South Essay Example for Free

Faulkner and the South EssayThere are several key issues which arose in the mid-nineteenth light speed which led to the breakdown of the American Union and eventually to the Civil War. One of the main underlying issues was the parting caused by the opposing feelings about the issue of slavery hitherto it was the manner in which the Northern politicians oblige the eradication of slavery. This division will be explored through Faulkners work A Rose for Emily and wide Hot Summer.The Civil War was about division and afterwards the war had ended, although some major points of reunification abounded in America, there was still a great sentiment of this division, which was felt especially strong in the South, as Glatthaar states Yet like Southerners, Northern whites had powerful prejudices against vaguesIt was one thing, most Northerners reasoned, to regard the enslavement of the black race as cruel and inhumane it was a nonher to ask Northerners to regard blacks as their equals o r delightful them as neighbors and friends (11-12). In Faulkners work A Rose for Emily, he explores these sentiments through the characters.Emily is ostracized from the community, all of them presume she is too grand, too august for her contemporaries, and that she lives (or lived) her current life in the past, stuck to the ideals of her father. This same statement could be a representation of America during this time frame of the Post-Civil War in which the patriarchy of the American government did not allow for certain southern ideals, mores, and traditions to survive the end of the war (Bordewich 12).The list of characters whom Faulkner chooses to portray in A Rose for Emily still hold onto these traditions, although the story also represents the confusion during this time period. The American South was, after the Civil War a place of top executived conglomeration just as is seen in Faulkners story in the subtle inclusion of the description of the graveyard where escape Emily was to be buried, And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous sculpture of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson (Faulkner) thus leaving the sides of the war forced unitedly through death and anonymity.The Civil War was a battle for rights for racism to cease, or at to the lowest degree slavery. In the ideals of the south, slavery, unfortunately had become a tradition and it is difficult for someone, especially for a culture to miscellanea their normality. This change that the Civil War brought upon the south is exercised quite stunningly through Faulkners character Colonel Sartoris in that he refuses to change his mode of thinking for the purpose of a smooth transition of south set to northern norms (Glatthaar 45), and thus gives the reader an august manner of racism,Colonel Sartoris, the mayorhe who fathered the edict that no Negro w oman should turn up on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would view accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an gnarly tale to the effect that Miss Emilys father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this expressive style of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it. (Faulkner).Here is seen the tradition of the south in the fact that Sartoris would not allow Negro women to appear in public without an apron, which is a truly racism and sexist law to permit to be enacted. The south however during this time period was a place in which the older generation wanted to hold dissipated to their beliefs in a type of call for integrity, no matter the ridiculous nature of this integrity.Miss Emily was the substitution class of Southern values in this s tory she harkened the town back to the old ways in her manner, in her presence and thus whenever another character in the story approached her they were forced to reckon with her set of mores kinda of the present situation. This can be clearly seen in the manner in which she dealt with her taxes when the sheriff and the town committee attempt to force her to pay her taxes and can especially be seen in the manner in which the town attempt to get rid of the opinion permeating from her house.The town did not approach her in a civilise manner because they did not want to tell a lady (a lady) that she stank, so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link mingled with the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons (Faulkner). It is Emilys character which is the snap of the story her clandestine ways pitted against the townspeople as Watkins states,The contrast between Emily and the townspeople and between her home and its surroundings is carrie d out by the invasion of her home by the adherents of the new order in the town. Each visit by her antagonists is a movement in the overall plot, a contributing subdivision to the excellent suspense in the story, and a crisis in its own particular division of the story (Watkins 509).It seems that with the near of the war there were certain sentiments of pity which arose for the south in that they needed aid to rebuild their washed-up towns, and this aid came from the North. Tied into these emotive states of Post-Civil War America was proud, the South was proud and sometimes too proud to accept this aid when necessary this same sentiment is seen in Miss Emily as well as her father, as Faulkner writes, When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her and in a way, people were glad.At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would roll in the hay the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less. thus the town wanted vindication of sorts through pity, the ability to pity her made her less of a force just as is the case between the North and South states.