【正文】 Company. Laurence B. Holland.(1979). American Literature between the Wars19141945. In Jay Pariniet (Eds), The Norton Anthology of American Literary(pp17751777).Toronto: W. W. Norton amp。 thinking way and moral standard. Emily’s characteristic was deeply affected by her father’s strong control and the insecure society caused by the Civil War, so her characteristic became eccentric and abnormal, and she acted in mysterious and horrible way. Her desire for male was repressed by her father, and she didn’t know how to deal with the relationship with people, especially with males alone。s body, and “She told them that her father was not dead.” (William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily ) Ignoring the law, she refused to pay the taxes and repeated that “I have no taxes in Jefferson.” Moreover, she asked the officials to get explanation from Colonel Sartoris, who ever remitted her taxes. It seemed that she did not know Colonel Sartoris was dead before ten years. “It can be believed that her refusal to pay the taxes symbolizes the refusal to accept the changed society to some extent.”(Zhu Zhenwu,Study on Foreign Literature, 34). She took pain to keep her superior, dignity and the southern fair lady impression. “ Emily is a typical example of the decay system of the south. The failure of the Civil War brought corruption and decline to the South, which was very obvious in economy and politics.”(Zhang Kuiwu, A Survey of England and America, 74) However, it was imperceptible in moral and psychology. The South originally had their own unique economic form, cultural style, life way and moral standard, even their own language. All of these elements “easily stimula ted the southerner rise a feeling of the nostalgia, which had solidified for the failure of the South in the Civil War.”(Yu Jianhua, The Second Prosperous of American Literature , 460). Therefore, the war led to a strange contradictory phenomenon: the old South died as long as the failure of the war, but it more obstinately survive than any other times. The South died in society and economy, but it was still alive in the culture and mental. Pitiable Emily was solidified by time. She fell into the past glories and honors of the South, but could not be brave enough to face the real life. Faulkner vividly pictured the southerners39。s creativity. He adopts the flashback to add much profound meaning to the short story, which is superior to the normal narrative way of the general fictions. So at last, to people’s surprise, they found Emily was a cruel murderer, and people were shocked by the discovery. In addition, the choosing of the narrator also reflects the gothic characteristics. Mostly the suspense is told by the narrator who doesn’t participate in the events he recounts, he’s not a character in the story but is someone not even named, who stands at some distant from the action recording what the main characters say and do, recording also what they think, feel, or desire (X. J. Kennedy ＆ Dana Gioia, An Introduction to Fiction, 45). The narrator in A Rose for Emily is “ we” , the people in town, but not the character Emily. After Emily’s father was dead, she didn’t went out as before, so as observers, people in the town narrated her actions and guessed her life according to her and her black servant’s action. They narrated Homer’s returning to Emily’s house, and they guessed they might get married. When they smelled the disgusting smell from Emily’s house, they guessed that her killing rats or snakes. And when Emily bought the rats poison, they guessed the poison was used for killing rats. So the narrator’s guess makes the story bee more mysterious. The flashback form and the choosing of the narrator grasp people’s curiosity for the suspense, and make the suspense more mysterious, and also reflect the gothic characteristics successfully. In a short, the narrative way created a mysterious and terrified atmosphere, so the gothic characteristics exist in the narrative way of the story. The gothic characteristics in the Character Usually, the characters in the gothic literature are eccentric and mysterious. And most characters are not ghost but real people who have twisted characteristic caused by their life experiences, such as their childhood, their parents’ influence and their love story, and they act in abnormal way. Because of the character’s twisted or eccentric characteristics, the story or the suspense appears in gothic characteristics. Mark Madoff(1979) took Lewis’s The Monk an example and pointed out that in fact, the description of the violent behavior in the gothic literature was the description of character’s repressed s oul. The character of Emily in A Rose for Emily was a normal person, but the way she acted was very eccentric and mysterious, so people around her began to be curious about her life, and suspected her life. (1) Emily So besides the description of environment, the theme and the narrative way reflected the gothic characteristics, the character of Emily was also involved in “Gothic characteristics. She was stubborn, eccentric and mysterious. She had been isolated from the outside world for fortyyear since her father died and Homer39。 interest to read on. She once was beautiful and slim, but her father drove all the men who pursued her. Only after her father died, she could date with a Northerner. Unfortunately, she could not marry with him, which hurt her so deeply that she had to keep herself far from the world from then on. However, the ending is out of expectation. She was shrewd and unscrupulous. She secretly murdered her fianc233。 it is the traditional style of “gothic characteristics. Faulkner not only uses these characteristics in A Rose for Emily, but exaggerates several details such as murder, violence, e