No one leaves Miss Emily. Miss Emily feared those she loved of leaving her. As she clung to the past, even one in which she created in her own mind, she morphed her own denial into a life for herself. She refused death in any form. Her mind tried to survive a state of mind in which abandonment was lethal. As her internal psychosis set in, she robbed herself of a life while trying to erase the thought of her loved ones’ deaths. Emily Grierson came from the most prominent family of her town. Although she rarely left the house or socialized with the townspeople, they were fascinated by her seemingly quiet life. She was a peculiar woman, never married and never looking. The Griersons held themselves very high in their community and thought of themselves as better than others. It is through this conditioning that Emily first begins to train her mind to abolish separation. She believed that if her family was her only suitable associates, she best not let them leave her sight. Emily rarely left the house and did not socialize with the ladies or men of her town. It is when she purposefully segregates herself that she starts her eventual spiraling psychosis. As years went on Emily’s mental state deteriorated slowly. When Emily’s father died the town knew, but Miss Emily knew no such thing. Although the physical realization was obvious, the woman sat with her deceased father in the parlor for nearly three days. When the town was finally allowed inside the house, she showed “no trace of grief on her face” and “told them her father was not dead.” Emily was resorting to a mental self-medication, a psychosis in which to treat her pain. By denying what might be devastating, she lived in a “distorted or non-existent sense of objective reality... ... middle of paper ... ...cally, in hopes to keep her loved ones from leaving, and in hopes to erase death’s wicked embrace, she stole her own life from herself. By ignoring reality, she lived no such life but a fantasy created by a vicious psychosis. No one leaves Miss Emily. In the end all that was loved was dead, and one whom had loved was too gone. Perhaps the woman’s theory was not so absurd. Abandonment is lethal. The abandoners and abandonee, each dead. Each robbed of the life that could have been. Works Cited Donna Olendorf, Christine Jeryan, Karen Boyden. The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine Volume Four. Farmington Hills: Gale, 1999. Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." In An Introduction to Literature, by William Burto, William E. Cain Sylvan Barnet, 449-459. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Richard R. Bootzin, Joan Ross Acocella. Abnormal Psychology. New York: Random House, 1984.
Emily was drove crazy by others expectations, and her loneliness. ““A Rose for Emily,” a story of love and obsession, love, and death, is undoubtedly the most famous one among Faulkner’s more than one hundred short stories. It tells of a tragedy of a screwy southern lady Emily Grierson who is driven from stem to stern by the worldly tradition and desires to possess her lover by poisoning him and keeping his corpse in her isolated house.” (Yang, A Road to Destruction and Self Destruction: The Same Fate of Emily and Elly, Proquest) When she was young her father chased away any would be suitors. He was convinced no one was good enough for her. Emily ended up unmarried. She had come to depend on her father. When he finally died, ...
For years Miss Emily was rarely seen out of her house. She did not linger around town or participate in any communal activities. She was the definition of a home-body. Her father was a huge part of her life. She had never...
Upon Miss Emily’s purchase of the poison, it shows her steep transition into obsession of the past. To the public eye it was incredibly out of character in which they believed she was preparing to kill herself after not being able to marry Homer Barron. However, when she fails to prove them right, the disappearance of Homer did not take the public by surprise until the sudden self-seclusion of Miss Emily herself. “Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets.” (Faulkner 314) It is because of her self-inflicted isolation that Miss Emily dies all alone in a diminished and dilapidated home where “the house is an essence of her crypt, enclosing in its walls all the signs of death, dust, shadows, foul odors, not to mention a corpse that rots into a skeleton.” (Harris 174) Miss Emily’s death signifies her self-inflicted solitude, and her complete and final result of internal and external
When her Father dies, Emily cannot bury him because she feels like she has finally tamed him. Emily's father can no longer controll her. With his demise, Emily is now in control of her life, and in control of her father. The day after Emily's father died, the local women pay a visit to Emily. "Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her fac...
For that reason, it is easy for readers to assume that Emily has separation anxiety. In this story by William Faulkner, she takes what modern day society would consider drastic measures to make sure the two never leave her. An example of this is offered when Emily Grierson’s father passes away due to old age. Emily is so attached to her father that she keeps his body in the house for several days after his death, pretending, most likely for her own sake, that he is still alive. In fact, the townspeople proclaim, “The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom, Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face.
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.
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.
...suaded to send Emily away to live in a convalescent home so that she could get better, and it would free Emily’s mom to care for the new baby. When Emily was released from the convalescent home eight months later, the narrator desired a connection with Emily, “I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff, and after a while she’d push away” (Olsen, 1953-54, p. 817).
“After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (364). When her father left her, she was a lonely woman. Mr. Grierson secluded her from people for years and once he was gone, she had nothing. She had a hard time letting go because he was all she had. Emily’s father was always the one person she counted on, looked up to, loved and adored since she had no one else.
Emily’s psychotic personality disorder is made completely obvious through the details of the story. Before his death Emily’s father refused to allow her to reach sexual maturity by preventing her from loving any man below their class. This caused sexual ...
Emily’s reaction to her father’s death reveals her inability to accepting of let go of the past and as well as her inability to live independently.
At the end of this short story, Miss Emily has passed away, and her house is finally being searched through. Only to the relatives dismay, they find the dusty and decaying body of some poor bloke in a bed in the topmost room. Right away, the second a dead body is mentioned, the mind just recoils. Faulkner did a great job of really building that climax and keeping the reader on the edge. He discusses the duty of a writer and how they can 't forget the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself. Miss Emily just as a single character represents this idea with her odd habits, troubled heart, and distant mind. She was literally a human heart in conflict with itself. Jian-hui discusses, “A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner presents us a heroine who drifts apart from the world and others. Besides, she indulges in her world, confronting conflicts. She is a victim of society and tradition. Tortured by two definitions by men, she goes through obedience, betrayal, and loss of herself, alienated from an original"angel"to a"monster".” Everything she did was almost odd, and sort of creepy. Faulkner again captivated his audience with the horror of Miss Emily, fulfilling the writer’s
As can be seen Emily had a hard life. Everything that she loved left her. After her fathers death she
His controlling manner, later learned by her, lead to her obsession with control over other’s will. Showing signs of developing necrophilia and schizophrenia (derived from her symptoms and the family history with her aunt), it is further proof of the instability of her mental state. As Emily makes her descent into that darkness, it is shown how she secludes herself in her house and continues that journey away from the prying eyes of the town’s people.
...she believed might be the only way to keep the man she loved from leaving her. Out of desperation for human love, when she realized Homer would leave her she murdered him so she could at least cling to his body. In his death, Emily finally found eternal love that no one could every take from her.