Essay --

William Faulkner began what would be an extensive exploration of his southern reality of what he named Yoknapatawpha County (really the area of New Albany, Mississippi) with the short fable A rosaceous for Emily in 1930. At this point, Faulkner was 33 years old, having grown up in the smothering and genteel small town atmosphere he uses as the setting for this work. On one level, this is the tragedy of one person who was suppressed and pushed to a monstrous crime, while on a larger scale, the story is a metaphor for the way in which the Old South refused to make out to terms with the 20th century and the new demands of American society. The Civil state of war looms large over Jefferson, from the pride that the community takes in the battle that raged near to the graveyard full of honored dead and the very elderly manpower who still wear Confederate uniforms to funerals. The towns mayor uses the surname Colonel Sartoris all his life, and it seems as if the war was a breaking point bygone which families like those of the Griersons just couldnt get past, as if they were frozen in time. The experience ...