Abstract

A Rose for Emily is a famous short story written by William Faulkner, which has been massively studied from various perspectives, such as creation techniques, writing style, characterization. And there are also scholars exploring the reasons that lead to the tragic fate of Emily from the perspective of feminism, psychology, etc. But there is barely any study from the perspective of ethics. This thesis tries to make a systematic analysis on the reasons why Emily murdered Homer from the perspective of ethics. Chapter one mainly tells about the author and the work, ethics and its requirements, and the study background and significance. Chapter two is a brief introduction to the murder incident and its contribution to the theme construction of the novel. Chapter three demonstrated the ethical conflicts that prompted Emily to murder Homer from three dimensions: the relations between human-human, human-society and human-religion. By systematic and objective analyzing, the reason why Emily murdered Homer is concluded to ethical conflicts and to the old American southern traditions and values. And we can see that William Faulkner inherited the old American southern traditions in a critical way.

Keywords：literary ethics; murder; ethical literary criticism; reason

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 A brief introduction to William Faulkner and A Rose for Emily-1

1.2 Relationship between literature and ethics-2

1.2.1 Definition of ethics and requirements of ethical literary criticism-2

1.2.2 Research situation at home and abroad-3

1.2.3 The significance of the study-4

2. A brief introduction to the murder incident-5

2.1 The untold murder-5

2.2 The significance of the murder-5

3. The inevitability of the murder-7

3.1 Human-Human violation of ethics-7

3.1.1 The druggist-7

3.1.2 Colonel Sartoris-8

3.1.3 Emily’s relatives-8

3.1.4 The townspeople-8

3.1.5 The Baptist couples-9

3.2 Human-society violation of ethics-10

3.2.1 The smell-10

3.2.2 Emily’s resistance of the changes-10

3.2.3 Conflict between South and North-11

3.3 Human-religion violation of ethics-12

3.3.1 Emily and Faulkner-12

3.3.2 Emily and Homer-14

4. Conclusion-15

References-16