Faulkner had meticulously established Emily as a woman to feel sorry for, and in a sick and twisted ending, he forces his readers to revolt any previous feelings they had developed about her. He plays a sort of emotional game with his readers by influencing them into a certain train of thought and then, by element of surprise, completely rejecting that train of thought. Readers as a result, upon the demented discovery, are completely thrown aback. They are forced to mentally go back and change the way they view Emily in almost every aspect of the story. Faulkner practically forces his readers to go back and re-read the story after the truth about Emily is revealed. Every thought and feeling we have developed for Emily is then completely and drastically changed. The change we see in Emily is obviously for the worse. The innocent and pitiful Emily is no more once exposed in an all-new light. Emily is immediately transformed from a lonely old woman who died with little or nothing in life but room for sorrow, to a murderous psychopath, hermit that wasted her life lying next to her boyfriends rotting remains.

With nearly all the facts surrounding the life and death of Emily in place the reader has been given a script of what to feel for her. As the narrator continues to remember and reflect on Emily’s life and how she lived out the rest of her days behind closed doors with a single servant as her only contact to the outside world, our opinion of her is somewhat solidified. As readers, we have followed Faulkner’s cues and have developed an opinion of Emily homogenous with that of the narrator and townspeople. We see her as having suffered through a tragic and lonely existence. Her life was filled with potential but was steered off course by uncontrollable, unavoidable, and unfortunate events that left her in a deep state of loneliness and depression. Throughout the story the narrator added every little tragic piece until they all fit into their part of the sincerely sad story of Miss Emily Grierson. Each new fact that was revealed made it that much easier to feel sorry for her, especially at the time of her death. The author used nearly the entire story to influence its’ readers to feel truly bad for Emily. Her life of solitude was not a reflection of some personal flaw; rather, it was the direct result of truly trying circumstances beyond her control. So, for this she deserved pity.

In this story Faulkner plays with his audience’s emotions in a very clever way. He includes his readers directly in this story by using an unnamed narrator. He influences them to think a certain way about Emily from the very beginning of the story. His exposure of Emily’s extremely dark secret then acts as a wake up to all the readers. I’m

Some topics in this essay:
Emily Grierson, Homer Baron, Grierson Instead, Miss Emily, I’m Faulkner, William Faulkner, opinion emily, main character, Change Throughout, miss emily, feel sorry, emily grierson, roller coaster, change eyes readers, story readers, readers dead, readers emily, opinions emily,