A Rose For Emily

In "A Rose for Emily," the point of view comes from a first-person narration, although, it is unclear who the the narrator of the story is. The narration of the story comes from a nonparticipant narrator because he or she writes in third person. William Faulkner writes, "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral" (33). Faulkner states, "She looked bloated like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal...."(35). The reader is left to their own devices to come to a conclusion of who the narrator is. The point of view is clearly not coming from Miss Emily herself, or is it? After all, I was left under the impression that Miss Emily is not all there. She is projected as a crazy person, as she depicted as someone is acted in a bizarre manner, and in the end, someone who gets into bed and sleeps with a corpse. The narrator of the story could be Emily herself; this would be unusual and obscured because then it would just reaffirm my beliefs of her being crazed. There is another possibility of who the narrator might be; the townspeople can possibly, and most likely, be the narrators. The way the narration starts begins and develops makes me believe that the point of view can perhaps be from the townspeople themselves. Faulkner writes, "We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background...". Presently, we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable" (36-37). The use of the word "we" and the single fact that whoever the narrator might be, he, she, or they know their way around the town and everyone and everything that comes in and out of it. If this is were to be the case, then it is unusual because it could be presented as if the townspeople came to an agreement to recount their perception and the life of  Emily Grierson.
      Faulkner might have selected this type of point of view to create mystery and peculiarness. The selection Faulkner creates conveys to the story itself because the narration is unclear and mysterious, and so are the actions that Miss Emily takes until her death. Even then, we are left wondering if she is in fact crazy or if her life was just a tragic one that unfolded and escalated for her to commit murder. The same goes towards the narration of the story. Why is it that the point of view is left to be interpreted by the reader? The point of view fits the theme of the story; that is the answer for why the narration is unclear. From beginning to end, the story is mysterious and one is left to ponder with the questions: why? how? when? and what? Faulkner states, "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hear" (41). Faulkner's narration of this line suggests to me that there is a unified voice (possibly the entirety of townspeople) that deliver a sense of dismay and unclearity.