Who Tells the Tale

Who Tells the Tale

An exploration into first person plural narrative form as used in “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner

Stories can do a wonderful thing, a transformative thing. They can enlarge us. Stories have the power, not only to entertain, but to increase our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. Stories can help us understand how people act and why they act The first line of the short story, “A Rose For Emily” begins “When miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral” (425) In order to understand this story, and in that understanding allow it to work the magic of great literature upon us, it is imperative that we know who “our” refers to. “Our,” the possessive form of we, is inclusive.

The line “Our whole town” immediately leads us to believe that the entire town is the narrator. The collective consciousness of the entire town somehow focused itself enough to relate this tale. But right away there is a problem. The narrator refers to reasons why the men of the town attended and then refers to the reasons why the women attended. If it were just this one instance we could ignore it and move on, but there are more. Later, the story refers to “People in our town” (428) This is an interesting thing then because the narrator makes clear that not every person in town is the narrator. There is a separation. If the “we” narrator had believed what the people believed, then the narrator would have simply used the pronoun “we” again, not “people.” In line 30, the narrator refers to “the town,” “The Town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks.” (428) If the narrative form were first person singular, this self reference would be akin to Bob Dole referring to