A Rose For Emily Letter To Her Father

636 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: William Faulkner A Rose for Emily significance

Often times people will have a hard time letting go of that which has hurt them the most. William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” depicts how Emily Grierson clings to her father, her love for Homer Barron, and her superior status which all lead to her grotesque mental and physical decline. To begin, Miss Emily finds it hard to part with her father even though he deterred any possible suitors from her. As a result, she is isolated from others, leaving her father as her only companion. For this reason, Emily struggles to let go of her father both physically and emotionally. When her father died in 1894, she held his body for three days, denying that he was actually dead. Although time moved on, Miss Emily did not. She began to resemble her father with her “tarnished gold cane” and “invisible gold watch” that expresses how time had stood still for her. Furthermore, she continues to dress in black as …show more content…

She has the “quality of her father” inside her that fosters her arrogance. Consequently, the townspeople begin to say “poor Emily” as she “[becomes] humanized” and loses her place in society. Although she is dwindling, she continues to hold her “head high” around the town so the public wouldn’t view her differently; however, people notice and are glad that “at last they [can] pity” her. Besides the pity of the town, many people fears Miss Emily, allowing her to do as she pleased such as getting the arsenic without mentioning what it would be used for as the law requires. As a result of the conflicting feelings of the town, Emily is isolated from many of them as well as her cousins, causing her to stay home and collect dust like the rest of her home with its “stubborn and coquettish decay.” Not only is the house Emily’s barrier from the outside world, but it is also where her past was hoarded and manifested from her emotional attachment to the

Show More
Related

  • Free College Essays - Fear in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    909 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • A Rose For Emily Grierson

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Miss Emily’s mother is not discussed in the story, so it is difficult to make any relative assumptions. Her father had turned away any potential suitors, so when her father dies Miss Emily is left alone except for a Negro manservant that hardly speaks. The narrator describes Miss Emily as physically “slender” while her father is living (302). She does not deal

    Read More

  • William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily : Her Father is to Blame

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    As time went on pieces from Emily started to drift away and also the home that she confined herself to. The town grew a great deal of sympathy towards Emily, although she never hears it. She was slightly aware of the faint whispers that began when her presence was near. Gossip and whispers may have been the cause of her hideous behavior. The town couldn’t wait to pity Ms. Emily because of the way she looked down on people because she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and she never thought she would be alone the way her father left her.

    Read More

  • A Rose for Emily, by William Faulkner

    1182 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his short story, “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner gives us a picture of female identity from a male point of view, showing compassion and forgiveness for his central character. Intriguingly, the writer uses the word “rose” in the title even though a rose does not exist in any part of his story; it has highly symbolic implications. Usually, the rose symbolizes love but in this case, it expresses a sympathetic attitude of society towards Emily. In reference to this story, Faulkner, in his interviews never admitted that the roses symbolized love. The story also focuses on the psychological exploration of the interior female world. Faulkner depicts the alienation of one repressed and isolated female in the South of the United States after the Civil War. Many themes might be explored in this short story, but a special interest is the focus on struggling to find love and the social interaction of a repressed female. The repression and isolation in the old Southern society causes degradation and dehumanization of Emily’s personality.

    Read More

  • Alienation and Isolation in William Falukners "A Rose For Emily"

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    Emily’s isolation is evident because after the men that cared about her deserted her, either by death or simply leaving her, she hid from society and didn’t allow anyone to get close to her. Miss Emily is afraid to confront reality. She seems to live in a sort of fantasy world where death has no meaning. Emily refuses to accept or recognize the death of her father, and the fact that the world around her is changing.

    Read More

  • A Rose for Emily

    1351 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Faulkner begins his short story, “A Rose for Emily” with the funeral of the main character, Emily Grierson (30). Emily is a quiet woman. It is said that nobody has been in her house for ten years, excluding her servant (30). Supposedly, her house used to be the best one around. The town also has a different connection with Miss Grierson. She is the only person in the town who is not forced to pay taxes. For years the town neither makes her pay, nor harasses her with tax notification letters to pay her taxes, until now. The younger generations who work hard and remain loyal taxpayers are not thrilled by this and decide to visit Emily in an attempt to get her to pay her debt. They try to get her to believe the old plan will not work anymore, yet she blatantly refuses this idea and does not pay (30). Apparently, thirty years prior to this attempt, the tax collectors of the town have a strange encounter with the Grierson residence. Two years after her dad’s passing and the mysterious disappearance of her lover, a tax collector notices a pungent odor emanating from her home that becomes a stronger and stronger scent. This leads to many complaints from the townspeople. However, the authorities of the town do not want to have a confrontation with Emily, so, instead, “they broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings” (31). The smell eventually subsides “after a week or two” (32). People do not think anything of the smell anymore. They do not think about the cause of it either; they continue with their lives.

    Read More

  • A Rose For Emily

    1740 Words  | 4 Pages

    who had lost the person she really knew. This repression of Emily’s father dying was

    Read More

  • Examples Of Characterization In A Rose For Emily

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, Emily Geierson is a woman that faces many difficulties throughout her lifetime. Emily Geierson was once a cheerful and bright lady who turned mysterious and dark through a serious of tragic events. The lost of the two men, whom she loved, left Emily devastated and in denial. Faulkner used these difficulties to define Emily’s fascinating character that is revealed throughout the short story. William Faulkner uses characterization in “A Rose for Emily”, to illustrate Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted woman.

    Read More

  • Foreshadowing and Suspense in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    All things considered, “A Rose for Emily” is only one of Faulkner’s complex literary works using such intricate uses of flashbacks and foreshadowing. Faulkner chose his events and descriptive language well to support key event such as, Mr. Grierson’s death, Emily’s purchase of arsenic, and the odor complaints by the townspeople. All of these events lead up to the ultimate culmination of events that shows the demise of one Homer Barron and Emily

    Read More

  • Theme Of The Past And Present In A Rose For Emily

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    The ways of the world had changed around her and Miss Emily just had not accepted it. She had tried to stop time in her own twisted ways, and even more astonishingly, the townspeople had let her. To them, she was a symbol of the old South, even if they did suspect some mental illness. She was her father's daughter, and they were more than content to let her do things in her own way. They liked her as a symbol of the Old South so that they could cling to an idealized past as well. But as the reader knows time stops for no one. It can never stop and no matter how you try to trap it, it will find a way out eventually. Emily's way out was death. She leaves behind the townspeople who are left to figure out how they will move into this new world of change and growth, how they will reconcile the Old South with the new one.

    Read More

  • A Victim of Society in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...

    Read More

  • Emily Grierson Breakdown

    1089 Words  | 3 Pages

    She is found dead there at the age of seventy-four. Her Alabama cousins return to Jefferson for the funeral, which is attended by the entire town out of duty and curiosity. Emily's servant, Tobe, opens the front door for them, then disappears out the back. After the funeral, the townspeople break down a door in Emily's house that, it turns out, had been locked for forty years. They find a skeleton on a bed, along with the remains of men's clothes, a tarnished silver toiletry set, and a pillow with an indentation and one long iron-gray hair.Although an unnamed citizen of the small town of Jefferson, in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, tells the story of the aristocratic Miss Emily Grierson in a complicated manner, shifting back and forth in time without trying to make clear transitions, the story line itself is quite simple. Miss Emily's father dies when she is a little more than thirty, in about 1882. For three days she prevents his burial, refusing to accept his death. He had driven off all of her suitors; now she is alone, a spinster, in a large house.

    Read More

  • A Rose For Emily Essay

    440 Words  | 1 Pages

    William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” is a story of a woman, her struggle with society after the war and her house. This woman, Miss Emily, lives in the Old South during a time where men dictated women’s life, but she was not one to live to the expectations of her family or society. In the end, she joined the man she loved by murdering him and living with him in her house in secret for the rest of her life. Faulkner may have deleted the two page revealing that Tobe, Miss Emily’s servant, knew of her secrets, because he might have felt the revealing took away from the mystery the story was following. Also, I believe the two page revealing doesn’t flow as well as the rest of the short story as the climax was meant to be at the end

    Read More

  • A Rose For Emily Mental Analysis

    1135 Words  | 3 Pages

    Emily yearned for love and affection after her father died and she had no one. Emily was an only child to Mr. Grierson. Her father had turned away every young man that tried to get next to Emily which left her all alone. Emily was convincing herself that her father was still alive which conveyed a like for the dead. It took ministers, doctors, and family members to convince her to dispose of the body. “She told them her

    Read More

  • Literary Elements in A Rose For Emily

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.

    Read More

More about A Rose For Emily Letter To Her Father

Open Document