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Analysis of Rose for Emily
Faulkner's major works
Analysis of Rose for Emily
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Miss Emily Up Close
In the short story of A Rose for Emily, the main character illustrates a disturbed individual that doesn't want to separate herself from a deceased loved one. Everyone knows what its like to loose a loved one, but the town of Jefferson had no idea how hard Emily had taken death until they unraveled her deep, dark secret.
People knew what it must have been like to be Emily. They knew the type of life she had lived and felt bad for the way her father had kept her all cooped up and sheltered away from any man. They also knew her father had felt that no man was good enough for her. The people of Jefferson felt that the family thought they were better then everyone else and showed no sort of insanity. When her father died, people realized the toll it had taken on Emily. They were somewhat relieved to know he was gone, and she too would discover what it was like to be a ?pauper.? They also knew they could pity her and the woman even came to her house to console her. They found it interesting when they saw no sense of grief amongst her face, and that she acted like she had no idea of the death of her father. People of Jefferson still didn?t think she was crazy, they had just figured it was all she had to do. She wasn?t very tidy and she had left an African American to clean up her house and be her butler. They women knew that a man surely didn?t know how to clean a house so they knew he was the reason for the horrible smells. The scent of her house was gruesome, and left people nauseous. Unfortunately, no one had the guts to let her know that she had basically had an odor, which surrounded her property. So the townspeople had squeezed lemon juice around her yard to relieve the horrid smell. When Miss Emil...
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...dering emotions which might have driven Emily to her insanity. Although it is hard, I have not even thought of the perverted things that she had done to Mr. Barron, nor have I thought that an individual was capable of telling themselves that someone isn?t dead and argue with people and say I wouldn?t give up their body. Emily did go through a lot in her lifetime. It is hard to loose someone close to you, and especially if that is all you truly have. I feel that all Emily wanted was to feel loved, and to have someone in her life that made her feel special and feel like she was somebody. She was lonely, and she needed someone to love her and someone for her to love. She sought attention which she rarely received as a child. She demonstrates a quite luminous type of psychosis that was affected and hindered from her father?s death and corrupt and shelter childhood.
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.
The main symbolism running throughout A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, is the theme of how important it is to let go of the past. Miss Emily clings to the past and does not want to be independent. The Old South is becoming the new South and she cannot move forward. The residents of the South did not all give in to change just because they lost the Civil War. In A Rose for Emily time marches on leaving Miss Emily behind as she stubbornly refuses to progress into a new era. In the story, symbolism is used to give more details than the author actually gives to the reader. Symbolism helps to indicate how Emily was once innocent but later changes, how her hair, house, and lifestyle, helped to show her resistance to change. The story is not told in chronological order. The events of her life are revealed slowly and create suspense over the telling of the story by the narrator. The narrator represents the town and its residents.
Emily ultimately resists social conformity when she passes away. Between the time when Homer disappeared and Miss. Emily’s death, she never left her house. The community would only see her negro servant enter and leave the house. During this time Miss. Emily fell ill and soon pasted away. She died in the downstairs bedroom that was filled with dust and mold. When her cousins came to host her funeral, they noticed the upstairs in her house was boarded shut and had not been seen by anyone expect Miss. Emily in forty years. They waited until after her funeral before they opened the upstairs. They were shocked when they found a dead mans body lying in the upstairs bedroom. Faulkner said, “What as left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt” (Faulkner, 7). They soon realized the dead body belonged to Homer Barron. After a closer look they noticed the pillow next to his still had the indention of a head, and they “saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (Faulkner, 7). By seeing this gray hair, they realize Miss. Emily killed Homer, and had been sleeping with him every night. Miss. Emily killed Homer to trap him from leaving her, like she expected him to do. This was Miss. Emily’s was of ultimately resisting
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
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.
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner sounds like an inspiring story or a story in which Emily was the kind of person that one would describe a rose as. When we think of a rose most people feel that a rose symbolizes love or an intimate symbol. “Using the decay and corruption of the South after the American Civil War as a background, William Faulkner produced his famous short story A Rose for Emily, which recounts the story of an eccentric southern spinster, Emily Grierson. Emily was born in an old southern aristocratic family, whose life was strictly controlled by her father.” (Qun, 2007). This story is far different than what I interrupted from the first time I read the title of it. The story itself has a very interesting plot due to the story first starting off at Emily Grierson’s funeral. As the story goes along we learn more about the life of Emily Grierson and what has led up to the point of her death. The way A Rose for Emily is being told it’s hard to tell or understand who exactly the narrator of the story is. The plotting of the story does create a lot of interest and suspense. Starting the plot off with the death of the main character leads the audience to
Symbolism in literature is using an object to portray a different, deeper meaning in a story. Symbols represent ideas or qualities that the author has maneuvered into his or her story that has meaning. There can be multiple symbols in a story or just one. It is up to the reader to interpret the meaning of the symbols and their significance to the story. While reading a story, symbols may not become clear until the very end, once the climax is over, and the falling action is covered. In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” there are multiple examples of symbolism that occur throughout the story.
Concerning the contextualization of A Rose of Family as a sign of the times of women at that point, where cultural norms of women lead to a life in domestication. The recognition of the rose here as it is carefully placed in the title of the piece as well bears significance to the physical rose and what it meant to the young women in the South during the 1800s (Kurtz 40). Roses are generally given as tokens of love and affection by males to females. There are even remnants of it today where young lads also profess their love to women with roses; women still see it as an act of endearment towards them.
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
Miss Emily’s refusal to change all started when her father had passed away and when asked about it she was in denial and “she told them her father was not dead.” She didn’t want to come to the realization that the only person in her life that loved her and protected her was gone. The fact that he was so controlling of her life and how she lived made Miss Emily afraid of what was going to happen next. She wasn’t used to making her own life choices.
Although I do not agree with how Miss Emily Grierson behaved, but I do not blame her. Harbored from reality her entire life I can expect for her to do some unordinary things. I feel bad for Miss Emily because she was the center of attention in a modernized town where she still practiced her traditional values. Through the eyes the townspeople we get our views of Emily at a distance. Had the story been told from Emily’s perspective we could better understand her reasoning for her bizarre behavior.
“A Rose for Emily” reads like a sad and tragic biography set in the nineteenth century. The narrator, who speaks as one representing the story from the town’s point of view, begins by narrating Emily’s funeral. As the story unfolds, the reader is taken through a grim sequence of events, some of which only make sense in retrospect upon reaching the end of the story. The narrator begins then to narrate her background since her father’s death. Emily’s father is cast as a protective figure who turns away any male suitors and keeps his daughter away from the townsfolk. When he dies, Emily refrains from acknowledging his death and for three days refuses to let his body out of the house. Eventually she breaks
The plot of “A Rose for Emily” shows the later years of the main character, Emily Grierson, with flashbacks to her life interspersed between. It begins with the reader learning of her passing, developing into a story that provides insight in to her reclusive nature and past dealings with family as well as the town of Jefferson. Due to her reclusive nature and high standing in society she is often gossiped about by her fellow townsfolk. Throughout the story, the reader is told about her overbearing father, her reluctance to change her ways for the town of Jefferson, and her new love interest Homer Barron. With hints of foreshadowing and learning about Miss Emily’s past problems with letting her deceased father go, the reader finds the story ending at her funeral with the discovery of the body of Homer Barron kept in her house. Miss Emily did not want to lose her new love, so she poisons him and keeps his body around, letting her maintain a relationship with him even though he has passed on.
They often complained about a distinct smell came from her house. The “close, dank smell” (pg. 121) left many people wondering why it stunk so badly and therefore they filed complaints. “A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.” (pg. 122) As the story progresses you learn there was more than one complaint. “The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident depreciation. “We really must do something about it, Judge. I’d be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we’ve got to do something.” (pg. 122) Another way the narrator expresses how different Miss Emily was when Miss Emily’s father died. As for it took Miss Emily three days to admit her father was actually dead. “Ministers and Doctors called trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body, Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.” (pg. 123) Miss Emily was different in the way that she had no one to be there for her and how she often kept reality to the side. Through this Faulkner exaggerates how different he wanted the character Miss Emily to be, but also humanizes her by pitying her and showing exactly how bad off she is. He humanizes her through pity of having no one and by her not being able to find
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.