A Rose for Emily:Meaning of Time and Faulkner's Handling of Chronology

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The meaning of time and Faulkner's handling of chronology
William Faulkner is one of the most famous writers/authors of his time and one of the works that accorded him much of the recognition in the literature realm is one "A Rose for Emily". This piece is a short story and one of the most anthologized of his works. It has a grotesque element of flow and content that evokes terror, violence and gloom (American Studies, 378). In the piece, the author combines necrophilia, mystery, murder and mansion of decay and a corpse.
Most of all, it is the element of time in the story that is quite striking to the keen readers. Through out the story, there is a twist in the narrators are shifted, characters reappear and the story follows a rather non-chronological form of story telling technique (Burg, Boyle and Lang). From the very first statement of the story, the author starts off with the death of Emily and then builds up the story from different events and characters to the fruition of the story. In between the various paragraphs, there are statements that indicate the element of time in the story such as: ‘within three days’, ‘next night’, ‘thirty years before’ and several others. While the reader can identify all the pieces that relate to time in the story, it is not immediately applicable to saw them in place in the best fit.
The author relates the story in a rather twisted manner, such that there are parts of the past that are brought into the statements that are referring to the present and there are present parts weaved into the parts that are referring to the past.
In the first paragraph of the story, the author relates to the death of Emily and her funeral. According to the author, the entire town had attended the funeral. While the men came to show the affection and respect that they had for her, the women came to satisfy their curiosity to see the inside of her house, which only her servant had seen for the last eight years. In this statement, one can see that in the beginning the author is referring to the moment that Emily died and every one was preparing to attend her funeral, with the men and the women both having different agendas for their attendance (American Studies 386). The author further refers to the fact that the male servant was the only one that had seen the inside of Emily’s house. There is the element of time in the recent past when the burial was taking place and then further in to the past when referring to the inside of the house.
In the third paragraph the author talks of Emily as having been a tradition, care and duty. All of these had bee...