Megan Sweeney Professor Parks ENG 102, Literary Analysis Paper # 1 October 8th, 2014 Statement: This is my own work Sympathy for Emily In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, we never hear the mention of a rose. The rose is a symbol of sympathy and pity that we feel towards her. Emily reflected the rose. She wanted to blossom and bloom but she was held down and lock up from the real world. Emily was the daughter of a rich man, a town hero. Her father, although he was looked up to by the town, was demanding and controlling. He turned down every man that he didn’t feel was worthy of his daughter. He set her up for a life that she could not escape. She became used to this lifestyle and it became who she was. When her father passed, …show more content…
He worked on construction and sidewalks. Everyone was appalled by the fact that she finally found love in a man of lower class than herself. The whole town knew the standard that her father held her too. They felt that her tautness was immature and naïve. She spent lots of unsupervised time with him and all of the town could see it. Every Sunday they would spend time together. All the time that they spent together, she grew fonder of him. She contracted feelings for a man for the first time in her life. Emily, a 30-something year old female, pursued her desire for love and sex. She found love in Homer. He started to pull away. He became more distant, but she was not having it. When she thinks Homer is about leave her, she does not want to be alone. She has felt the feeling of being alone when her father left her and that is a feeling she despises. In a zealous way, she plotted to kill him. She made her way to the drug store for poison. “I want arsenic,” she said. When she was asked what it was for she stated, “For rats (Faulkner)”. She believed Homer was a rat indeed. It is not told, but Hal Blythe advances that Homer may be a homosexual, and has drawn critical rebuttals for his theory. His view fuels further queries about what this untypical love affair may actually involve (Argiro). “Rat” is also used as a slang term for a man who cheat on his lover (Burduck). Emily did whatever was necessary to keep him by her side. She would not let him be with …show more content…
She could not handle it. The stress began to take a toll on her not only mentally but physically. “She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl with vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows, sort of tragic and serene (Faulkner).” This loneliness was changing her. “When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray (Faulkner).” She began changing even more as time passed on and the loneness grew stronger. We can only imagine the way she felt. Losing a father, then losing the only man she had ever loved. She held on tight to Homer even after he was gone. She held onto love even though it was gone. The townspeople pitied her when they found Homer’s body locked away in the room and when they saw the hair resting on the imprint of a head on the pillow beside him. She found love and compassion in a man that she had never found in her father. Everyone pitied Emily, but she never knew the feeling of truly being loved. Her dad showed a deep cruelty towards her no compassion or fatherly love. Her mother was never spoken of so we assume she was not around. Never once did we hear of a brother or sister, so no love of a sibling. She never once had a friend, a husband, or any kids. She never experienced any of the things that a woman strives for in life. Every woman should express sympathy for her in the most extreme way. [Faulkner himself sheds interesting
A Rose for Emily Life is fickle and most people will be a victim of circumstance and the times. Some people choose not to let circumstance rule them and, as they say, “time waits for no man”. Faulkner’s Emily did not have the individual confidence, or maybe self-esteem and self-worth, to believe that she could stand alone and succeed at life especially in the face of changing times. She had always been ruled by, and depended on, men to protect, defend and act for her. From her Father, through the manservant Tobe, to Homer Barron, all her life was dependent on men.
In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Miss Emily Grierson is a lonely old woman, living a life void of all love and affection; although the rose only directly appears in the title, the rose surfaces throughout the story as a symbol. In contemporary times, the rose also symbolizes emotions like love and friendship. The rose symbolizes dreams of romances and lovers. These dreams belong to women, who like Emily Grierson, have yet to experience true love for themselves.
Some readers might find the title of Faulkner’s story, “A Rose for Emily,” ironic. As a Symbol, the rose usually signifies romantic love. Assuming that Faulkner is well aware of a rose’s symbolic meanings, why does he wish to name his story about a doomed and perverse love affair? Faulkner causes the reader to believe this is a classic love story. Faulkner then overturns the reader’s expectations by offering an unconventional heroine. Generally love stories involve a young woman, pure and beautiful, worthy of receiving love. In this story, however, the heroine is old and decrepit. Emily is introduced first at her funeral where everyone from the town has come to pay respects. Emily then is described as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town”. (Faulkner 681) This meaning that the townspeople viewed her as more of a monument to the town that has been there for as long as they can remember and won’t be moved. Emily throughout the whole story is criticized for the way that she thinks she is more important than everyone else, but it takes a society to judge a person at the top in order for there to be any social ladder. When Emily meets Homer she again is criticized for being seen with someone who comes from a lower part of society, but she is also being criticized for thinking she is better than everyone else. The townspeople make her feel like an outcast, and that is why she isolates herself from the rest of society. Society criticizes her for what she does, but it is the society that makes her do it. When Emily buys the rat poi...
William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" is perhaps his most famous and most anthologized short story. From the moment it was first published in 1930, this story has been analyzed and criticized by both published critics and the causal reader. The well known Literary critic and author Harold Bloom suggest that the story is so captivating because of Faulkner’s use of literary techniques such as "sophisticated structure, with compelling characterization, and plot" (14). Through his creative ability to use such techniques he is able to weave an intriguing story full of symbolism, contrasts, and moral worth. The story is brief, yet it covers almost seventy five years in the life of a spinster named Emily Grierson. Faulkner develops the character Miss Emily and the events in her life to not only tell a rich and shocking story, but to also portray his view on the South’s plight after the Civil War. Miss Emily becomes the canvas in which he paints the customs and traditions of the Old South or antebellum era. The story “A Rose For Emily” becomes symbolic of the plight of the South as it struggles to face change with Miss Emily becoming the tragic heroin of the Old South.
Growing up Emily was an all-around vibrant girl. Over time, she becomes a secretive old woman. In a “A Rose for Emily, “she was described as shuttered, dusty, and dark just like the outside of her home. She inherited mental illness from her father side. “She exhibits the qualities of the stereotypical southern “eccentric”: unbalanced, excessively tragic, and subject of a bizarre behavior” (SparkNotes Editors 2007, pg 4). When her father passed away, she refused to give up his body. In all, Emily is a scared soul whose loneliness and co-dependent upbringing let her to remain socially unfit, and unable to make healthy human connections (Enotes, 2016 pg 1). Her upbringing slowly affected her ability to function like the rest of the townspeople. The townspeople never labeled her with a mental illness, but she was constantly talked about because of the relationship she had with Homer, and curiosity of the way Emily was living got the best of the
"A Rose for Emily" is a fictional short story written by 1949 Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about an aristocratic woman who lived a very secretive and unusual life. Miss Emily had always been very sheltered by her father. He was the only man in her life and after his death, her behavior became even more unnatural. However her father's death cannot be seen as the only cause of Miss Emily's insanity. Miss Emily's behavior was also influenced by her own expectations of herself, the townspeople's lack of authority over her, and her neighbor's infatuation with her.
...s obsessive with keeping homer by her side forever. Miss Emily becomes mentally unstable and poisons homer. I do believe that the fatalities and changes she goes through have a greater effect on her emotions and actions than the townspeople and readers see without analyzing the story. Argiro states that, “The story is an allegory of misreading signifying backwardness, mystification and psychopathology…” (par.50). Miss Emily is misunderstood by the townspeople and is resistant to the changes around her as well in her life.
When her father passed away, it was a devastating loss for Miss Emily. The lines from the story 'She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days,' (Charter 171) conveys the message that she tried to hold on to him, even after his death. Even though, this was a sad moment for Emily, but she was liberated from the control of her father. Instead of going on with her life, her life halted after death of her father. Miss Emily found love in a guy named Homer Barron, who came as a contractor for paving the sidewalks in town. Miss Emily was seen in buggy on Sunday afternoons with Homer Barron. The whole town thought they would get married. One could know this by the sentences in the story ?She will marry him,? ?She will persuade him yet,? (Charter 173).
Along with the passing of her father Emily is then allowed the freedom to finally think for herself and then comes Homer Barron, a man whose Emily’s father would have disapproved of if he was still alive. As Donald Akers stated that Emily dating a northerner as a, “reasonable, explanation for her relationship with Homer would be that is her way of rebelling against her dead father. During his lifetime, her father prevented her from having an “acceptable” suitor. Thus, she rebels by associating with a man her father would have considered a pariah: a Yankee day-laborer” (“A Rose for Emily”). That excerpt suggests since Homer was a Yankee, it was completely against the Griersons legacy to marry a northern man having the post Civil War mentality, so Homer would have never been the perfect suitor for Emily. Regardless to say Emily quickly fell in love with Homer and she couldn’t bare the humiliation of Homer leaving her since he was not the marrying type. Within all of the things happening around Emily and all of the mixed internal feelings Emily repressed throughout the years, especially not having many
As a child, Emily was unable make friends or even play outside because her father held his family to a much higher standard than other townspeople “The Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner 36). Emily’s father, selfishly held Emily back from living, loving, and freedom. She was unable to find a soul mate because her father believed that “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 36). Because of this, Emily stuck close to the only man she’s ever known like a newborn to its mother. Emily and her father had such a close bond that when he died, for days she refused to believe he was dead, and she also refused to let the townspeople dispose of the body. For the townspeople, Emily’s reaction to her father’s death was quite normal, but for readers it was our first glimpse at her necrophilia.
At the beginning of the story when her father died, it was mentioned that “[Emily] told [the ladies in town] that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (626). Faulkner reveals Emily’s dependency on her father through the death of her father. As shown in this part of the story, Emily was very attached to her father and was not able to accept that fact that he was no longer around. She couldn’t let go of the only man that loved her and had been with her for all those years. While this may seem like a normal reaction for any person who has ever lost a loved one, Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s dependence and attachment even further through Homer Barron. After her father’s death, Emily met a man name Homer, whom she fell in love with. While Homer showed interest in Emily at the beginning he became uninterested later on. “Homer himself had remarked—he liked men” (627) which had caused Emily to become devastated and desperate. In order to keep Homer by her side, Emily decided to poison Homer and keep him in a bedroom in her home. It was clear that she was overly attached to Homer and was not able to lose another man that she
Death – With the passing of Emily’s father, Homer, and herself, Faulkner shows the overpowering nature of death and the fact that no one can escape it. When Miss Emily passes, it restates this fact, because it shows that even someone who is a staple of the town will eventually wither and die.
Faulkner uses symbolism to help bring out the main points in the story itself and also uses this symbolism to show how Emily is an allegory for the changes in the South during the time of the Civil War. By using the symbols of the rose meaning love or silence, or the hair meaning that over time things change, or even the house, being set back in the old times of the Civil War, symbolism is shown many ways throughout this short story. William Faulkner wrote "A Rose for Emily," in a way where the reader is able to comprehend and interpret the main points in the story in a different way as to where they will be able to look deeper within the meaning of each part of the story rather than having a dull meaning behind everything.
The narrator is vague about the intricate details of her life, perhaps because he presents her story as a member of the town, which means he is only able to narrate it from an observational point of view as opposed to an interactive point of view. “‘A Rose for Emily’ is told from a community point of view, so that the narrative voice in the story is the voice of “our town” and “we,” a group .” (Skei, 150). Certain representations of social expectations can be gleaned from parts of the text. This is especially the case when it comes to gender relations and family. William Faulkner’s short story shows how the nineteenth century was set in certain limiting social expectations especially for women, especially
Through the use of setting, characterization and theme Faulkner was able to create quite a mysterious and memorable story. "A Rose for Emily" is more than just a story though; her death represents the passing of a more genteel way of life. That is much more saddening than the unforgettable scene of Homer's decaying body. The loss of respect and politeness is has a much greater impact on society than a construction worker who by trade is always trying to change things. Generation after generation Miss Emily happily escaped modernism by locking herself in her house the past.