A Narrative Analysis On A Rose For Emily With Booth's Rhetoric Theory

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. He has left large amounts of works behind him and set most of his works in the Yoknapatawpha County, which is an imaginary place he creates in American South. Because of his unfailing obsession with the Southern stories, he is considered one of the most important Southern writers. Besides, Faulkner is one of the most innovative writers of experiment in the 20th century, who has been innovating boldly with various narrative techniques in his works. In 1949, he received Nobel Prize for Literature for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.A Rose for Emily is one of Faulkner's most successful short fictions for his "Yaknaptawpha saga", and is a concentrated reflection of Faulkner's fascinating narrative skills and complicated feelings towards the South.This thesis, by applying Wayne C. Booth's rhetoric theory, is intended to explore the narrative strategy employed in the short story written by William Faulkner and further probe into Faulkner's complicated feelings about Emily and the South and the themes of the story in general, mainly from the aspects of multiple points of view, unreliable narrator, and implied author.