Themes

By Nguyễn Thanh Tùng

Generation...?

• Mindful group

• Indifferent group
1. Clingy adherence vs. progression

• The Grierson family house

• The townspeople
• Emily
1.1. The Grierson family house

“the woman … to see the inside of her house, which no one save
(except) an old manservant … had seen in at least ten years.”

“… an eyesore among eyesores.”

“… garages and cotton gins had encroached … the neighborhood; only

Miss Emily’s house was left…”
1.1. The Grierson family house

Depicted as a symbol of unwanted tradition in Jefferson, contrary to the

appearance of new and modern infrastructure
1.2. The townspeople
a. Older generation

Colonel Sartoris:
“The mayor ... remitted her (Emily’s) taxes, the dispensation dating from the
death of her father...”
Þ Protect families’ legacies

“When the next generation ... became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement
created some little dissatisfaction”
1.2. The townspeople
a. Older generation

Context: The meeting

Young man: “It's simple enough ... Give her a certain time to do it (cleaning), and
if she don’t...”

Judge Steven: “Dammit, sir, will you accuse a lady ... of smelling bad?”
1.2. The townspeople
a. Older generation

Both Judge Steven and Colonel Sartoris all balk at the idea of causing hardship
to Emily and refuse more democratic solutions.
1.2. The townspeople

b. Neighbors

“... others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to
forget noblesse oblige”

Obligatory nobility

“At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest.”
1.2. The townspeople

b. Neighbors

“And as soon as the old people said, ‘Poor Emily,’ the whispering began.”

“As ... the matched team passed: "Poor Emily."

1.2. The townspeople

b. Neighbors

Instability to act either chivalrously or selfishly

1.3. Emily

“She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days…”
Þ “She would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.”

“When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them ...
attach a mailbox... She would not listen to them.

“What was left of him ... lay in the bed ...” & “we saw a long strand of iron-gray
hair.”
Þ Ultimate greed
1.3. Emily

Entrapped in ultimate conflict over progress or tradition

2. Patriarchal Authority

• The father of Emily

• Colonel Sartoris
• Emily
2.1. Mr. Grierson

“We had long thought of them (the Griersons) as a tableau; Miss Emily
a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled
silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a
horsewhip...”

The oppressive Grierson blocking anyone to come for his daughter

Þ “She got to be thirty and was still single”
2.1. Mr. Grierson

Exert full control over Emily’s life

A typical man characterizing old Southern culture
2.2. Colonel Sartoris

“The mayor ... remitted her (Emily’s) taxes, the dispensation dating
from the death of her father...”

Þ Assume women being fragile

2.3. Emily

“One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint
and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand
of irony-gray hair.”

Victims being offenders

3. Postbellum era

“When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her
funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a
fallen monument...”
3. Postbellum era

…and the very old men – some in their brushed Confederate uniforms
– on the porch and the lawn, talk[ed] of Miss Emily as if she had been
a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her
and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical
progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing
road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite
touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the
most recent decade of years.
3. Postbellum era

Ever admiring the glorified past