Is This Bad?

[Anastasia13]

I missed the grussome end of this story when I gave it to the kids to read. How bad is this story for a 6th grader?

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Light and Truth' timestamp='1303518410' post='2231268']
I missed the grussome end of this story when I gave it to the kids to read. How bad is this story for a 6th grader?
[/quote]

It's fine.

~Sternhauser

[sistersintigo]

I agree with Sternhauser. Here is one justification.

In this very absorbing short story, William Faulkner uses some fairly sophisticated literary techniques in which to frame his narrative.
Consider the passages, scattered throughout the story, saying "....as is our custom."
I may be mistaken here, but I understand this first-person plural, of the narrator's voice, to refer to the women-folk of Emily's native town. Rather like the classical Greek chorus in ancient tragedy.
Thus, even when events take place behind closed doors, events which are private and in one instance clearly criminal,
these events are not observed until the doors are thrown open wide and the women-folk, the collective narrators of the short story, enter the room and observe the details which they will report to the town at large.
This is how that riveting final scene is represented in "A Rose for Emily" : how an act, an event, from many years past, is exposed to the light of day.
We don't actually see the dying and the initial death of the poisoned man; we don't go through that concealed agony. We don't actually see his survivor, Emily, with his mortal remains. We only see what the women-folk see in the broad light of day when they enter the room themselves.

The narration by the collective narrators detaches and distances us from the private actions of these individuals, and the tragic consequences of these actions.

So the shocking denouement is viewed within the context of the community's collective morality and conscience, which contain even evil developments within human society.

[BG45]

SisterStingo said it best lol. But I agree with she and Stern, as someone who read this in middle school also.

[Anastasia13]

So basically this will be a little challenging in a literary sense, but is not to dark or gruesome?

[BG45]

I think it's a good choice; no one in my class was scandalized from what I recall.

[Anastasia13]

[quote name='BG45' timestamp='1303582133' post='2231427']
I think it's a good choice; no one in my class was scandalized from what I recall.
[/quote]
Whew! Spring break is this coming week. I wanted to leave then with something to at least try reading.

[BG45]

I think it's a good choice. Maybe I'm biased though, our middle school lit teachers liked stuff like it and the Monkey's Paw. I think middle school was the first time I read Masque of the Red Death also.