Ôn thi tốt nghiệp Cử nhân Anh văn môn Văn Học Mỹ

position what she really is. So it makes her too proud of her rank. Even after her father’s death, she has been a thirty-year woman, she has not got married. She just stays at her house and goes out very little. Every one hardly sees her later. His death leaves an enormous gap in her life. That loosing is too huge for her to accept it. She can not believe that her father died so she can not allow people to bury her father’s body until more three days after. It improves again that her father affects her so much. It is the way he loves his daughter that makes her be isolated from her society. The second man is the Mayor Colonel Sartoris. He is a powerful man in the town. He edicts many statements and official orders in society at that time. One of them is that he has made a decision to free Miss Emily’s duties since the day of her father’s death, “Remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity.” It means that she has to pay for any tax no longer. And it also means that one more time, she is again dispossessed the right to take part in social activities and have relationships with people around her. Mr. Sartoris is duty free for her because he wants her not to be worried about it after her father’s death. But intentionally, his action prevents her from having relationships with people. She does not pay her taxes so she does not also have any reason to go out or talk with the others. She only stays at her house and does not have to care everything happening outsides because everything has had other people to do for her. The last man is an old man-servant-a combined gardener and cook, a Negro. He lives with her at least ten years. He does everything in her house from a gardener to cook and a house-keeper. He takes care of her head over heels when she is alive as well as when she dies. So she does not have to reach her hands into any thing. She is not worried about anything from the smallest like buying her daily clothes or separate things to bigger things like keeping all a big house, dealing with difficult things outsides or unexpected visitors who come her house with any reasons. And she lives as a noblewoman with its true meaning even at that time her family is not like before and society changes and modernizes more. But she does not care; it is no meaning in her life. She makes acquainted with the way of living like that. It seems an undivided part of her life. His love makes her habits live on others. She has never thought that she must work everything by herself or live more independently not depend on the others so much. In short, Miss Emily is a poor character. She lives a quite and alone life in her house and is isolated from society almost. She just goes around in her cold house. She often sits lonely in dark. Her life will not be too unfortunate and sad if three men in her life do not love and take care of her so close like that. It is the way they love her to make the habits living on others for her. She always thinks that everything has others do as well as they must do it for her like their duties with her life. Her thoughts are unreasonable and it is not her mistakes because she has been forced to believe it. These thoughts are built and brought into her blood when a child. She has no chance to choose. So it is! THE MEANING OF THE TITLE “A ROSE FOR EMILY” Dang Xuan Thai Ngan The victory of the American Civil War ends glory days of the South. Many southern people refused to accept the changed situation and had kept cherishing their precious memories. They showed a strong attachment to old values and traditions of the faded past. Miss Emily, who is the main character in the story “A Rose for Emily”, is typical of those Southerners. Throughout the story, the word “rose” rarely appears, but trying to interpret it helps readers have a deep understanding about the story. “A Rose for Emily” is Faulkner’s white rose to Emily, his way of expressing condolences to Emily’s death. He sympathizes with her loneliness and her imagination about her status. People in the town respect her but they are one of the main reasons that make her have too good opinion of herself. They do not dare to force her to pay taxes, they do not dare to question her when she buys poison, they are more embarrassed of making remarks about the smell and do not dare to find out the truth about this terrible smell. I have the feeling that they consider her as “holy” idol. They treat her as if she was beyond the law.. If only they forced her to obey the law, she would be more conscious about her real status and integrated into a new era. The rose is also a comparison to Emily’s life. She grows up in a comfortable environment and has everything a child wants. This caused Emily to be very self – centered and thinks of herself as superior to everyone else in the town even when her father dies. Like the most beautiful rose in a garden, she is too proud of herself to leave a normal life as other people and deny her high status which only exists in her thinking. She refuses to pay taxes, ignores town gossip that she is a fallen woman. In my opinion, she is a victim of the circumstance because she suffers from a lack of genuine love and care, and her stubbornness is caused by her father’s overprotective treatment when she is young. Rose symbolizes love. In her life, she lacks love and desires to have one. Emily wants to be loved, and she is determined that Homer is her true love to rescue her from her fear of being alone. I think Emily sincerely loves Homer, but his feelings about the relationship are different because he does not like marriage. The only true love she has ever known now leaves her. Her deepest feelings and hidden longings for love result in her murdering of Homer Baron. She does not realize that he is not a deserving man but desperately clings to that blind love. A “rose” is what her searches for in her life but till the day she die, she never has one. The rose is Miss Emily herself. In her heyday she was a high – rank beautiful girl, however when she grows up, she has a lot of “thorns” that can cut and wound. Her personality prevents everyone from getting close, even to those who are attracted by the fragrance or beauty of the rose. She frames herself in her house like a rose in a protected garden far from the reach of outsiders. Emily’s rose only bloomed for Homer in a short time and then it faded and died as she does. The rose here refers to the colour of Emily’ life in her viewpoint. Miss Emily herself, I believe, is completely incapable of realizing what happens outside her closed front door. She prefers living in her isolated and protected world inside her house and believes it is a rosy world. She acts like a innocent child because she loses the concept of time. She is both indifferent and unconscious of the crime she committed. She even does not bother to conceal her crime. Instead of taking the reality as it is objectively, she keeps thinking of the past and imprisons herself in her imaginative rosy world. Sadly, it is the people in the town that make her misperceive the real world around her and pride too much on her isolation and independence. For example, when she shows no grief at her father’s death, they interpret her action as an example of pride and strength, why don’t they talk to her, comfort and sympathize with her true feeling? . They also make up a romantic story about her relationship with Homer Barron. When he disappears, they assume that he has left her with a broken heart, and this gives them another reason to pity the poor lady. However, when they see her walking with even straighter back and keeping her head even higher with dignity, they seem to admire her even more. She is a strong woman with a great sense of tradition but at the same time she is the victim of misperception of the world. The way the town admire her “heroic characteristics” never rescues her from the imaginative rosy world. As a result, her misperception about herself and her real world around continue till the end of her life. “A Rose for Emily” is a commentary on love in her life. The author tells us about her father’s love and her true love. Her father loves her so much, he protects her and cares for her, but drives all the men in her life away. Homer, the man she sincerely loves, does not return the love she gives him. The 2 men she loves most leave her but her pride keeps her from socializing with other people in the town and reinforces her loneliness. Her desire for love and companionship never satisfied. In the story “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner chooses to use town people’s point of view as a narrator because it gives the readers a positive and objective view on Miss Emily’s life. While recalling past events taking place in the town, the narrator gives the reader insights into Miss Emily’s problems, which in turn helps the readers form their own different but suitable interpretations about the title of the story. traihoang 21-11-2009, 03:03 PM EMILY KILLED HER SWEETHEART Hoang Ngoc Trang The papers have written so much about lovers who killed one another. People kill their lovers for such a number of reasons: their lovers cheat them, their lovers have another man/woman and so fourth. Killing is already a terrible thing. Yet, when the murderer and the victim are lovers, the action of killing is often more violent and frightening. Only after Emily died, the townspeople discovered a horrible fact that she had killed her sweetheart – Homer Barron. It was frightening as well as surprising to her neighborhood because they used to think that Emily and Homer would get married. I was at first surprised by her murder too, but later I understood why she did so. When Emily was young - when she experienced the most wonderful time in a woman’s life, she like any other woman hoped for an interesting boyfriend, a real love, and then a happy family. However successful a woman was, a good husband – a family was always their most wanted thing. That was not a difficult-to-come-true wish for Emily because she lived in a rich family and she was young. She had enough confidence to believe that a good man would come to her. In fact, many men wanted to call upon her and Miss Emily might be very happy. Nevertheless, his father drove them away because “None of young men were quite good enough for Emily and such.” Day by day, Emily missed a lot of chances and “when she got to be thirty … [she] was still single …” The woman wasted her youth so that she lived lonely with her continually increasing age. Now, the old father was the only one she loved and the only one loving her. She totally depended on him. Sadly, her only support broke down. The father died and she was now left alone, no more love, no more money. Emily was deeply sunk in depression, loneliness, and regret at a last youth. When this woman seemed to fall down entirely, the God sent a man to her. “Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group.” What a man with a sense of humor. It was understandable that she would rely on him, that she would put all of her expectations on her only man. However, everything shattered when Homer himself remarked that “he liked men” and “that he was not a marrying man.” He made her expect too much and later he made her too disappointed. Love could make Emily or anyone happy but it also turned her into madness. Any woman in this situation would get crazy and it was merely the God who knew what they dared to do. Miss Emily chose to kill her beloved. A normal girl would never do that but she was Emily who lost so many things, her youth, her father, her wealthy life, and also her final and only happiness – her sweetheart. The society was another cause of Emily’s murder. Right when people saw her and Homer driving together on Sunday afternoons, they felt sorry for her. They considered her love a pity because such a noble woman got married to a Yankee, a black and day laborer. The whole neighborhood gossiped about their relationships as if her love was something eccentric, terrible, and against the code and modes of the society. She was sympathized by the kind neighborhood that was very glad to see her cousins come to prevent her marriage. They said “Two female cousins were even more Grierson then Miss Emily had ever been,” and they were very happy about that. When she went with such a day laborer, she refused her high status and she was no longer among respected upper class. Miss Emily with her love suffered not only the criticisms of surrounded people but also the condemnation of her relatives. How could a noble woman married a low-classed man? How could a South woman married a Northerner? The standards of the society were a big barrier for her love that she and her sweetheart seemed to be unable to overcome. He would go to escape from the society’s prejudice. He would go to make Emily stay in her noble status. He would go because he could not bear the public’s judgments. If she had no way to keep him by her side, if she had to lose him, she would sooner kill him than let him go. Again, love and prejudice tormented a vulnerable woman to madness. Her killing of her sweetheart was resulted from a love bounded and suppressed by the old standards of the society. When analyzing a murder, we often seek for wrong things the victim does, which cause his/her death. Then we blame on the situation, the context, and the society, which created a cause for the crime. However, it is very important to look at the murder, to look at his/her inside to see another aspect of the fact. She grew up in the protection and preservation of her father. He – “the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” and he made her daughter think the same. Emily considered her higher than people surround. She separated herself from the world outside to be earthless and noble. Many times people thought that she must have felt down but she always “carried her head high … it was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson.” Then it was Colonel Sartoris who gave her a right not to pay the tax. “Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it … When the next generation, with its more modern ideas … this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction.” This separated her more from the society and gave her a special right over other people. And then a loyal Negro servant kept silent before her deed, kept protecting her, and kept covering up her superior thought and her monstrous actions. For those reasons, Emily developed a view that she could live above the others, she didn’t need their care or sympathy, and she would vanquished all of them. With this characteristic, Emily made everyone believe that she and Homer would get married although he might be a gay man or he didn’t want to marry her. She chose to kill him rather than let people know that she was a loser. She could vanquish everyone including the man who did not respond to her love. She could make him hers for good. He laid there and could never go away. Also in term of her characteristics, I would like to stress that Emily was a traditional woman. She lived an old monument, an old ideology which were no longer accepted by the new generation. The world around had changed much but she was still in her shell. Nobody wanted to learn painting from her; it was a symbolism for her severe traditional viewpoint. The society prevented her love or it was herself who couldn’t accept a marriage with a black laborer. The idea of “noblesse oblige” might ingrain in her mind so that she killed her sweetheart rather than bravely got married to him. She represented something of the past which the community was proud of. She was the last Grierson, a noble class that the whole community looked at and admired. So, she was the person who was most afraid of the public’ judgments and actually she could never accept the society’s ordinary judgments and values. She could never bear the ladies’ idea that “it was [her relationship] a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people.” The pride and the dignity of an upper class were so important to her that she could not go out of the community’s opinions to get her happiness. Being wavering between love – (she was over thirty) and dignity, Miss Traditionally Noble Emily decided to kill his lovers to keep him by her side and she didn’t have to lose her own gracious image. A disappointing lover, a gossiping neighborhood, the community’s values, her pride, her conscious aristocracy, her refusal to mix with normal standards of the society, her superior views, and her intentional disconnection from the real world all contributed a complex, monstrous, and mad psychology in Emily. This psychology certainly led to an abnormal action, and it was a gruesome crime. The story did not simply to describe a horror; it was not simply a horror story. The killing was not an action which frightened the audience, but it said many things about the society and a person’s awareness of herself and of the world outside. What are the important roles of the four men in Emily’s life? Tran Thi Kim Chau In William Faulkner’s 1930 short story “A Rose for Emily,” the protagonist, Miss Emily Grierson is a desperately lonely woman. Miss Emily finds herself completely isolated from other people her entire life, yet somehow she manages to continue on with her head holds high. What makes her life become a series of sadness and solitude? It is not herself but, in my viewpoint, the four men including her father, the mayor, the Negro, and Homer Barron that are to blame. They play an important role in Emily’s life in terms of her separation. While the mayor and the Negro man keep Emily from dealing with social life through duty and activity, her father and Homer Barron dispossess her of loving and being loved. These are the two aspects I would like to bring into discussion. The first aspect to be mentioned is the role of the mayor and the Negro man over Emily’s life. About the mayor, he remitted her taxes for she is of noble descent. He must make up a story to legalize this issue without knowing that he unintentionally separates Emily from the outside world. As you know, paying tax is a duty to society and to community as well. It helps a citizen prove his existence in the community and the society where she is living. Here in the story, that Emily does not have to care about the tax means she is remote from the people. About the Negro man, he also puts his hand in the separation of Emily. He has been such a good servant that he cares nothing except for being obedient to his master. He lives silently as he goes in and out with a market basket and takes care of Emily. Even when she is sick, he does not reveal any information about that. Besides, he is considered the only sign of life about Emily’s house but he keeps saying nothing about what happens inside the house. In my opinion, Emily would be more involved in the daily life if the Negro man did not exist. Without him, she must go out for food and other needs. Without him, she must do everything on her own. Moreover, if he was not a cold person, he might share her feelings and help her feel relieved. He also might reveal what has happened to Emily so that the people around could help her out of bad condition. The second aspect that strongly influences Emily’s life is the role of her father and Homer Barron. Talking about Emily’s father, I feel like he is the most to blame for her daughter’s sorrow. When young, she is loved by many men of the town. But her deceased father used to force away all the young men that were in love with her. That is why during the time in which her father is alive, Emily is seen as a figure to be contemplated but never touched. As a result, she does not have love in her life. Also, the time he passes is the period she is weakest. Never being able to develop any real relationship with anyone else, it seems to me that her world completely crumbles around her. She is lost and tries to hold on to the corpse because he is all she ever knew. However, it is said that there is a beginning after an ending. Although the death of her father is a sad moment, she feels a sense of liberation. She cuts off her hair as a sign of releasing herself from her father’s control. Then with the new found freedom, she sets out to fulfill her desires of finding love and living her own life. The time when she at last finds love in Homer Barron is the time she becomes strongest. Unfortunately, she is not loved. Admittedly, there is nothing more painful than loving without being loved. To Emily, the pain is greater because she has reached the old age and she really desire love. This brings her to the last limit of endurance. She is severely depressed and finally poisons Homer Barron in order to not be jilted. To this point, the role of her father and Homer Barron towards Emily’s separation has been clear. It is her father that keeps her away from having a normal relationship with a