What is the point of view in "A Rose for Emily"?

The point of view is that of the town itself, told from an unnamed narrator’s perspective but sharing the town’s feelings.

 The point of view of the story is first person, but not the typical first person.  There is not one named narrator whose mind we follow.  Instead, it is “our town.”  It is almost as if the town itself is telling the story, or one person is sharing multiple perspectives gleamed from rumors.  Small towns tend to have a collective consciousness.  It is this consciousness that narrates the story.

As the daughter of the town patron, Miss Emily kind of belongs to the town.  It is a bit like how we view celebrities today.  She is the object of scrutiny and curiosity.  Her father considered the town to belong to him, so she did as well.  As a result, she belonged to the town.

An example of this is the description of how Miss Emily stopped coming out of the house.

That was two years after her father's death and a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.

The use of “we believed” and “people hardly saw her at all” demonstrates this collective consciousness.  The town puts its information together, and the town is the narrator.

The result of this narrative style is that it creates suspense.  We do not quite know what is going to happen, because we never really get the entire picture.  Instead, it's like listening to a juicy rumor- you know it is going to end in an interesting way, but you are not sure how.

What is the point of view in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"?

The point-of-view in "A Rose for Emily" is provided by a third-person narrator.  In many works, a third-person narrator is considered objective because the narrator is not able to see into any character's mind, and so the narrator knows nothing about the thoughts or feelings of any character in the work and can only report what the narrator sees.  In the case of this narrator, however, the narrator becomes a character in the story, and as such, is cannot be objective because the narrator-as-character actually takes action in the story.

From the first sentence of the story, the narrator becomes a character:

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole  town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity . . .

In addition to being the narrator, however, the voice of the town becomes a character because the "whole town" renders a moral judgment on Miss Emily--it regards her as a "fallen monument," a concept that Faulkner explores throughout the story.

Throughout the story, the town-as-narrator recounts the confrontations between Miss Emily and the town-as-town: the town attempts to get Miss Emily to pay her taxes and fails; the town deals with the terrible smell coming from Miss Emily's property and fixes the problem without Miss Emily's knowledge; the town objects to Miss Emily's relationship with Homer Barron and first calls in the town's minister and, after Miss Emily deals with him, calls in her cousins from Alabama, all to no avail.  Every time Miss Emily and the town cross swords, Miss Emily "vanquished them, horse and foot."

Even when Homer Barron disappears--the last the town saw of him was when he went into her back door--the town is not suspicious of what might have happened because it has no knowledge of what is going on inside Miss Emily's mind or soul.  The town's point-of-view is restricted to what it observes; unlike an omniscient third-party narrator, which can understand and report what someone thinks and feels, the town is restricted to what it can observe.  The inner workings of Miss Emily are as much of a mystery to the town as they are to us.

In the end, the town, like us, cannot even render a moral judgment on Miss Emily because it has no knowledge of her mind or soul.  When, for example, the town breaks into Miss Emily's room and finds Homer Barron's moldering corpse and the iron-gray hair beside him on the pillow, the town's only reaction is that "we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair," the same reaction we would have if confronted with such a scene.  The town, like us, is too surprised to render a moral judgment on Miss Emily--it merely recounts what it sees.

What point of view is used in "A Rose for Emily" and what advantages does it offer?

First-person collective narrator is part of the genius of "A Rose for Emily." First-person perspective uses personal pronouns like "I" and "we." It is a useful perspective because it brings readers very close to the action through the presence of the narrator as a character. First-person can be challenging, though, in that the character who is narrator must be physically present for every part of the plot. To tell the story of a recluse like Ms. Emily, one would imagine third-person to be necessary, or that Emily would need to tell it, but Faulkner bypasses this hurdle by turning his first-person narrator into a collective "we," representing the whole town of Jefferson, Mississippi.

Individuals within the town are present to give different eyewitness accounts and to relay heard rumors about Emily. Their gossip is filtered through the narrator's voice, and so a person like Emily, who has no intimate relationships with people in the town (except perhaps Tobe), comes to be known by them collectively. At least, the reader can come to know who the town guesses Ms. Emily is and what she has done based on all the gossip.

In part 1, the Board of Aldermen contributes to the gossip, offering the narrator a description of the decaying house and Ms. Emily herself. The house is said to be dusty, and Ms. Emily is described as "a small, fat woman in black" with "a pallid hue" and "eyes lost in the ridges of her face." Through this eyewitness account, the reader gets a firsthand impression of Ms. Emily as an almost corpse-like monster living in her decaying, dirty lair. The gossip must spread about the house and how she looked, because men attend her funeral "out of respect for a fallen monument" and women "mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house." The women of Jefferson believe Tobe, a black man who works for Emily, is responsible for the bad state of the house: "Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly," they gossip in section 2.

Men and women alike have complained of the smell, and together these individuals of the town discuss what to do about it as they make conjectures about its cause. The women think the smell is caused by a dirty kitchen, probably thinking of rotting meat left too long on the countertop, and Judge Stevens thinks it is a snake or a rat that has been killed by Tobe and just left there. This scenario of conjecture and the town working together to interfere in Emily's life shows one stroke of brilliance in the narrative. Small details noticed by some individuals snowball through talk into a great mystery about Ms. Emily. But no one becomes well enough acquainted with her to reveal the answer to all the small mysteries about her, which is simply that she killed Homer and kept his body. Eventually, someone is sent to pour lime in her yard to cover the smell. In doing this, the town ironically helps bury Emily's darkest secret .

In listening to the narrator's varying views about Ms. Emily, the reader can join in the gossip and invent theories of their own about her as new information leaks. Perhaps it is her father's corpse that made the smell, the reader thinks when they find out later she was unwilling to give up the body. Perhaps she did kill rats with the arsenic, instead of killing herself, as the town conjectured. Later the reader begins contemplating Homer Barron's disappearance and is not disappointed at the end to discover their dark guesses about Emily were right.

The first-person collective narration creates mystery and throws the reader into Jefferson to experience the voyeuristic delight of unburying the "fallen monument's" true history.

What point of view is used in "A Rose for Emily" and what advantages does it offer?

The point of view for this story is different than most, representing Faulkner's unique style of telling a story. It is told in first person, meaning the narrator is a character in the story, but we never know the narrator's name. He speaks for the community, and in that sense, he can be considered the main character. He shows sympathy for Emily, but he's also clever and humorous as he tells his story. He puts the pieces of the story together and brings it to a shocking climax. He also shows sympathy for the town of Jefferson and feels the people of the town are unable to control their reactions.

The story is told by the narrator through a series of flashbacks that cover almost fifty years. He flashes back and forth through the events in Emily's life and the town of Jefferson. These events are related, but we don't get the clues in the order that the events occurred. What does this add to the story? The last scene in the story is powerful and shocking. By telling it in this way, the impact on the reader is great. Stop and think how the story would have affected you if it had been told in the usual beginning-to-end style. This type of narration is one reason why Faulkner's work is still read today.

What point of view is used in "A Rose for Emily" and what advantages does it offer?

"A Rose for Emily" is told in third person limited perspective.

Here is the definition of that point-of-view and its advantages:

Third person limited could be perceived as being told from the viewpoint character. It can be used very objectively, showing what is actually happening without the filter of the protagonist's personality, which can allow the author to reveal information that the protagonist doesn't know or realize. (*as in the case here, where the protagonist does not know until the end what the consequences of his, and the town's, actions have been)

However, some authors use an even narrower and more subjective perspective, as though the viewpoint character were narrating the story; this is dramatically very similar to the first person, allowing in-depth revelation of the protagonist's personality, but uses third-person grammar. Some writers will shift perspective from one viewpoint character to another.

How does the point of view in "A Rose for Emily" reveal the theme of reality vs. appearance?

The two answers here are pretty good, but some readers posit that the narrator is in fact the town itself, and not one individual towns person. This is intriguing in terms of your question because it points out the personality of a town and the force it can bear down upon individuals who act within the ideology of the town's structure and self-identification. Reality is created as a town grows, ages, or in this case clings to a past that is hyperbolically represented by Emily and her family. The town has an uneasy relationship with Emily as she represents its past and should on the one hand be venerated, but also physically embodies the psychosis inherent in recovering from a lost war replete with lost ideals and damaged social systems.

How does the point of view in "A Rose for Emily" reveal the theme of reality vs. appearance?

“A Rose for Emily” is told from the first person point of view. The narrator is an average citizen from the town of Jefferson, and he is relaying the events of Miss Emily's life. The reader learns information as the narrator gives it. This allows the reader to see the events as the citizens of Jefferson saw them. The townspeople viewed Miss Emily as an eccentric old woman. Not until after her death when the men open the locked room and find the corpse of Homer Barron, do the citizens and the reader realize Emily has gone insane. Therefore the theme of appearance is created because the reader doesn't have insight into what is happening to Emily. The reader makes assumptions just as the townspeople have. The first person point of view creates a false impression of Miss Emily.

How does the point of view in "A Rose for Emily" reveal the theme of reality vs. appearance?

The narrator in this story is a first-person participant.  The narrator is one of the townspeople, most likely a male, who is very objective in presenting the facts of the story.  The narrator tells us about what the townspeople think of Miss Emily at various points in the story, but he does not judge her.  He even lends an air of sympathy for Emily, really.  One can tell that the narrator does not want to judge her.  He is trying to present her situation as objectively as possible.  The narrator clearly presents a reality, not an illusion. Miss Emily is the one who is struggling with the concept of reality vs. illusion, etc.  She also is living one way while hiding a terrible secret (reality vs. appearance).

What elements define the point of view in "A Rose for Emily"?

The effectiveness of this point of view can be valued by imagining what the story would be if some of it, at least, were told from Emily's point of view, or maybe from that of Homer, Toby, or one of the town elders.  While the point of view is collective, it is the narrator who makes it so by the insistence on "we," making me wonder at times just how many people in that town would buy into the generous view that "we" offers.  I doubt if some of the ladies of the town would speak so sympathetically of Emily, for given the gender roles even in the traditions of the post-civil war south contemporary to the narrative voice, if a Jefferson lady saw that body in Emily's bed, the sight would forever color her attitude toward the rather uppity Miss Emily. 

What elements define the point of view in "A Rose for Emily"?

The point of view in “A Rose for Emily” is unique. The story is told by an unnamed narrator in the first-person collective. One might even argue that the narrator is the main character. There are hints as to the age, race, gender, and class of the narrator, but an identity is never actually revealed. Regardless of identity, the narrator proves to be a clever, humorous, and sympathetic storyteller. He is clever because of the way he pieces the story together to build to a shocking climax. His humor is evident in his almost whimsical tone throughout what most would consider to be a morbid tale. Finally, the narrator is sympathetic to both Emily and the town of Jefferson. This is demonstrated in his pity for Emily and in his understanding that the town’s reactions are driven by circumstances beyond its control (‘‘Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town’’).

What is the narrator's point of view in "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner?

In literary criticism, narrators are described by the grammatical person in which they refer to themselves, their relationships to the main characters in the story, and their relationship to the reader, inter alia. In the case of William Faulkner's short story, "A Rose for Emily", this can be determined by looking at a typical paragraph, such as the following one:

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

The narrator refers to himself throughout by the first person plural pronoun "we", and seems to take the point of view of a typical man (or the collective of the men) of the town. The narrator is not omniscient, but is able to shift points of view and is familiar with town gossip.