Eulogy For Emily

I have mixed feelings about this story. While I did find the story heartbreaking, I also thought it was too slow for me at first. This story does not remind me of others I have read or heard. I can personally relate to the story by connecting with the character Emily based on the fact that just like her, I too have been depressed and have had dark days in my life. Though I have never experienced the death of anybody close to me as Emily did, I know what depression is like. What is really unclear to me after reading this story is why Emily killed Homer. The title is very significant to the story. Though the word “rose” does not appear in the context that it is present in in the title, nevertheless it still is important. For example, the first

One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (323). Emily’s slow mental deterioration is clearly shown here. Her state of mind has driven her to necrophilia. Her secret is finally out in the open. Emily, although she deliberately sets up a solitary existence for herself, is unable to give up the men who have shaped her life, even after they have died. She hides her dead father for three days, “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days. . . Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly” (319). She also hides Homer’s body in the bedroom upstairs and by doing this, she keeps her twisted fantasy of love and marriage alive. Her desperate need for privacy is challenged by the townspeople’s extreme curiosity about the facts surrounding her life, such as “‘She will marry him’”(321) when she is seen with Homer or “‘She will kill herself’” when Emily purchases poison. Eventually, these very people break her privacy by breaking into the locked bedroom upstairs that Emily kept secret. This is when the people realize the truth of Emily and how mentally ill she was. All of the tragedies she endured in her life drove her to the point of going mentally insane