Antebellum Death In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily Grierson is well known around town for her decaying antebellum house and more importantly for her genteel, old Southern father. In this small southern town, appearances were everything. What people did not know is that she held a wicked, sickening secret, finally revealed after her death, that she had killed Homer Barron and slept beside him until she died herself from natural causes. The backwardness of the town, her controlling, over whelming father, and the fact that Miss Emily was not self-sufficient all propelled her into dementedness or was Miss Emily to become insane because she was raised repressively to behave like a lady and as fading Southern belle? As the town …show more content…
She did, though, she poisoned him with arsenic and kept his body to sleep beside. In this pre Civil War period, in order to get arsenic, the druggist/ pharmacist had to know the intended use whether it be small rodents or in Miss Emily’s case humans. When the druggist asked Miss Emily what her intended use was, she was silent in her reply so knowingly the box was marked “… for rats” (734). This little dialogue from the story is very satirical as Miss Emily is referring to men, all men in her life, as rats. Homer’s refusal to marry her, not her virginity, and the fact that all men have deserted her is the issue.. On the one hand, all aristocratic, well bread southern ladies are married but on the other, Miss Emily believes she will relinquish what control of her life that she has gained by her father’s death. It is as if she is in a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation that the town and generation after generation has trapped her. She wasn’t going to have another lover walk out her life, so she poisoned Homer Barron before he had the chance to leave as no well bread southern woman is divorced. Faulkner used the evolving town to isolate Miss Emily as she portrays the aristocratic south, unable to move beyond the antebellum past to reach the future until
Ulf Kirchdorfer, "A Rose for Emily: Will the Real Mother Please Stand Up?” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 10/2016, Volume 29, Issue 4, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0895769X.2016.1222578
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, ...
In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, the butler is directly related to the traditional values in the older generation. Because of his status and race the butler is not allowed to openly express his ideals like Emily is allowed to. The butler’s role is to display the traditions of the older southern generation. The butler serves his role thorough this story by being excessively loyal and protective of Emily, by fulfilling his duty as a servant, and by being racial discriminated against from people in the town.
The protagonist of this story is Miss Emily Grierson, an old maid spinster without family who becomes a “tradition” and a “sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 299). The story begins with the death of Miss Emily, so I will rearrange my analysis of the character to begin with what we first know about Miss Emily.
The end of the American Civil War also signified the end of the Old South's era of greatness. The south is depicted in many stories of Faulkner as a region where "the reality and myth are difficult to separate"(Unger 54). Many southern people refused to accept that their conditions had changed, even though they had bitterly realized that the old days were gone. They kept and cherished the precious memories, and in a fatal and pathetic attempt to maintain the glory of the South people tend to cling to old values, customs, and the faded, but glorified representatives of the past. Miss Emily was one of those selected representatives. The people in the southern small-town, where the story takes place, put her on a throne instead of throwing her in jail where she actually belonged. The folks in town, unconsciously manipulated by their strong nostalgia, became the accomplices of the obscene and insane Miss Emily.
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).
Emily’s father rose her with lots of authority, he might had ruined her life by not giving her the opportunity to live a normal lady/woman life; but he build a personality, character and a psycho woman. Mister Grierson was the responsible for Emily’s behavior, he thought her to always make others respect her. Homer’s actions of using her as a cover to his sexuality was not respectful at all, Emily did not know any better and poison him to death.
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
William Faulkner used indirect characterization to portray Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted women through the serious of events that happened throughout her lifetime. The author cleverly achieves this by mentioning her father’s death, Homer’s disappearance, the town’s taxes, and Emily’s reactions to all of these events. Emily’s reactions are what allowed the readers to portray her characteristics, as Faulkner would want her to be
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...
A Rose For Emily: Analytical Paper A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is one of Faulkner’s most anthologized stories. Drawing on the tradition of Gothic literature in America, particularly Southern Gothic, the story uses grotesque imagery and first-person-plural narration to explore a culture unable to cope with its own death and decay. The townspeople are attending the funeral of Miss Emily. She is introduced as a stubborn wealthy lady who refuses to pay taxes.
“A Rose for Emily” is a short story that was written by William Faulkner. Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897 and lived most of his life in and around the area of Oxford, Mississippi and Lafayette County, Mississippi. He is considered one of the best writers of American literature. The major themes of his writings were the history and the culture of the American South. Faulkner was known for his imaginative and innovative way of documenting the ability of people to endure and that made others take notice and acclaim his pieces of works.
Explain why the Setting of Stories is Important Introduction The setting of a story is the area or place in which the scenes that are narrated in the story happen or take place from. In the narration of a story, the setting plays a very critical role in helping develop the mood of story, the manner in which the characters act, the effect of dialog, reflecting the society in which these characters live, play part of the story, in addition to invoking different emotional responses. This essay discusses the importance of setting in William Faulkner’s story “Barn Burning.”
Once again her luck was not her neither Homer was interested in getting married nor did town people let her do that. She bought poison from pharmacist and killed Homer. She didn’t buried homer’s dead body, perhaps she wanted to feel that she is living a normal married life with Homer. Although it was Emily’s mental condition that made think so. She was behaving normal with dead body.
...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.