Their cover of "I Fought The Law" made it their song. "Clash City Rockers" brought out their clarion call lead guitar. As we discussed before their exponential expansion, in the beginning, was enough to leave singles as seeds for future growth. The Clash was always a band poised to break through. Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg. Later as Quentin uses his version to illustrate just what the South is like to his Harvard roommate, changes and alterations are quickly made reflecting not only Rosa's primary view, but Quentin and Faulkner's appraisal of the South and its longstanding traditions of family, morality, and honor - as well as just who truly holds the power. Strangely, Rosa's caustic storytelling prevents you from becoming too sympathetic to her, thus keeping the real story in Faulkner's hands. For example, the spinster Aunt, who is her caretaker, elopes abandoning Rosa with her family. In his eyes, she sees everything but remains largely unseen. Rosa's story is the basis of his storytelling. "Absalom! Absalom!" is Faulkner's framework for the history of the South. As a survivor of a "destroyed" family, her once ghostly existence is over because of the story and what she endured. The tragedies of her life only lend implied credence to her knowing "tragedy" when she sees it. In fact, given the bad luck of all the people in her closest circle, their no one to challenge her. As the tale is told in 1909, Rosa is bitter but also, like Emily Grierson, becomes somewhat of an "institution." Her importance is as the possessor of this story. The second question is "Does Rosa actually possess the facts?" As the primary source of this story, Rosa is again taking "power" from her role in it. If Sutpen ruined her life and her family, perhaps her continued existence insures that the bitter reality is there to hear and learn from. While Rosa is not taking "power" in the same macabre ways as Emily Grierson, her "power" is functioning as the true possessor of the story of Thomas Sutpen and the, as Rosa dubbed it, "suitably demonic" haunted house that was once his dream. This is not just her struggle, but that of all women in the South. Rosa only has her history as a point of connection to gather sympathy and understanding. The question is "Should Rosa be the narrator?" Emily Grierson led a solitary apparition-like existence between the walls of her house. Without Ellen or her father (or her mother for that matter who died while giving birth to Rosa) she is like Emily Grierson a permanent outsider. While there are many who think that Rosa has tempered her retelling with spite and vitriol due to her loss and invisibility, Rosa and the scholar Quentin Compson find Ellen is "disappearing" with each yearly visit to Sutpen's Hundred. The Coldfield/Sutpen story is actually told from three different perspectives. Coldfield kills himself in protest of the war, leaving Rosa in the care of the same spinster aunt who advised Sutpen to demand a large wedding. Ironically, Ellen will die giving birth and Mr. While Sutpen wins out, only 10 people show up while Sutpen and his new bride are covered in dirt and compost after their nuptials. Ellen's father wanted a small ceremony, and Sutpen wanted 100 people there for a grand affair. He and Ellen's father tussled over their wedding. Sutpen is portrayed as "savage" in Rosa's retelling. Sutpen married Rosa's older sister Ellen to find his "happiness." While she lives in the shadow of Sutpen, Ellen is allowed to play "the part written for herself." Miss Rosa Coldfield (her name, again serving as highly influential in her description) tells the story of how Thomas Sutpen settled in the thicket-rich, muddy land of Yoknapatawpha County to build his own version of paradise, Sutpen's Hundred. Six years later in what he deemed his greatest work ever, "Absalom! Absalom!" actually writes of "Nothusband" and "undefeat." By co-opting these words as his own, Faulkner is making what was in the past modern. While far more macabre events follow, Emily is not just an eccentric Southern spinster, she is emblematic of women everywhere who were cloistered in the past and without power. Still, Emily refused to let go of her father - leading her own ghostly existence outside of giving a few art lessons until she was 40. In addition, the number of men in Jefferson dwindled as well. She was not allowed to marry by her father, who passed away when Emily was 30. His protagonist Emily Grierson has weathered several changes since the war's end. In the 1930's short story "A Rose For Emily," William Faulkner obtained his first national publication from a tale that is largely tragedy. Then the War came and made our ladies into ghosts." "Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies.
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