William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily” is a story about isolation, curiosity, and madness It starts off with the death of Mrs. Emily Grierson, A town favorite in the sense that she is mysterious and reclusive, becoming somewhat of an old interest to the town. With this beginning, the narrator begins to tell us the nature of Mrs. Emily and her interactions and presence over the town, as well as her morbid personality. From purchasing the rat poison to the locals finding the preserved body of her long but passed lover, Homer Barron, in her own home. It is the descent into the mind of deranged and unstable woman, a woman who is the main focus of the tale, yet without appearing repeatedly throughout the story, and having the reader hear her thoughts. …show more content…
Miss. Emily Grierson's mysterious and shadowy nature is what keeps the reader engaged. Miss Emily was an isolated individual, sheltering herself from the town and her duties, before she had passed. “After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.”(Faulkner 80). Because her protective father sheltered her from suters, this quarantined personally began to bloom inside of her. Her father believed that no man was perfect or suitable for his beautiful daughter. “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.” (Faulkner 81). When her father had finally passed, his presence still loomed over her, even as she had met Homer Barron, he was still a shadow over her. “Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized”(Faulkner 81). For several days, she would meet the woman of the town at her door, to greet their condolences. It seemed everything would begin to have light in her life, but this was not to be. She began to give painting lessons to some ladies of the town, but suddenly stopped. The isolation, that had once held her as a child, began to grow again. She never paid …show more content…
It started with when she greeted the women of town at her door, when they came to pay their respects to her late father. “ She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days” (Faulkner 81). The reader begins to see that, with the death of her Father, begins to fall into insanity. With the later disappearance of Homer Barron from inside the house “and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man – a young man then – going in and out with a market basket” (Faulkner 83). When she appears inside the druggist's store, she requests an unusual item. “I want some poison”(Faulkner 82), to which the druggiest questions if she be using it to kill rats. The druggiest begins to ask what the need for such an item to which she replies “I want Arsenic” (faulkner 82). At this point in the story the reader begins to question why the need for such a poison. Some of the townsfolk hypothesize that Miss Emily will kill herself with the poison. The suspense has been building and the reader wants answers, it has turned into a mystery. When it was announced that Miss Emily had passed with “...the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers” (Faulkner 84). They begin to search the house and come to a room that “no one had seen in forty years” (Faulkner 84). Upon opening the door, the see a man, lying upon the bed. The man in the bed is none other than Homer Barron, frozen
One great puzzle in "A Rose for Emily," highlighted by Faulkner's language is the exact nature of Emily's relationship with Homer Barron. That is because Homer himself remains such an enigma. With an initial reading of the story, Homer appears to be an average kind of man. Those things about him that Faulkner reveals to us, such as his being "a Northerner [and] a day laborer"(279), while highly uncomplimentary in the eyes of the people of Jefferson, warrant little attention from a modern reader. We are glad for Emily and do not begrudge her the companionship, but contrary to Hal Blythe's view of Homer in his article, he never appears to be an "aristocratic and . . . chivalric . . . courtly lover"(49). He is, in fact, a construction worker whom the little boys of Jefferson followed to hear shout at the "niggers"(Faulkner 279). Little about him is aristocratic or chivalrous, because his relationship with Emily is h...
Isolation dominated the seventy four-year life of Emily Grierson in 'A Rose for Emily' by William Faulkner. Never in this story did she live in harmony with anyone one short time. Even when she died at age seventy four, people in Jefferson town rushed into her house not because they wanted to say goodbye forever to her, but because they wanted to discover her mystic house. Many people agreed that it was the aristocratic status that made Emily?s life so isolated. And if Emily weren?t born in the aristocratic Grierson, her life couldn?t be alienated far away from the others around her.
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.
In the first sentence the reader is informed that the main character, Emily Grierson, has died and that the entire town has attended and everyone for a different reason. The narrator begins a flashback to ten years before her death when the “backbone” of the city began to harass Emily for her taxes; the reader is introduced to a situation. Then flashback another thirty years to when her father passed and that’s when Emily began to live for herself and met Homer Barron. The towns people began to interfere out of jealousy but always stated that it was them having pity on Emily and got her upper class family involved with the socially unacceptable relationship; the reader at this point has received the conflict. The reader receives clues throughout the second flashback to conclude that Emily has killed Homer out of fear; this is where Faulkner provided us with the climax. Years pass and nothing really goes on at the Grierson house which raises the mystery of what is going on behind closed doors; the falling action of the story. Upon Emily’s death the ladies of the town enter her home and discover Homer’s corpse in a shut off bedroom upstairs with one piece of Emily’s hair on the pillow next to him; bringing the story to an end and giving the reader the denouement.
Emily Grierson, is a woman who experiences a sequence of bad events during the course of her life. After the Civil War her family fell on hard times. At the age of 30, “When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her” (Faulkner 1). Not long after, the man she thought she would marry deserted her. She soon became fond of Homer Barron who worked for a construction.
In the story of “A Rose for Emily” a lady who is suspected to be mentally unstable raises suspicion through her actions which foreshadow her mental instability. Throughout the story “ A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner scatters the past, present, and future by talking about her family background, inability to determine the past from the present, and her interactions with the community to foreshadow her mental instability. Emily’s family background helps to foreshadow her mental state. Emily keeping her father's body in her house shows her unusual attachment to her father and foreshadows her mental state.
As a child, Emily was unable make friends or even play outside because her father held his family to a much higher standard than other townspeople “The Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner 36). Emily’s father, selfishly held Emily back from living, loving, and freedom. She was unable to find a soul mate because her father believed that “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 36). Because of this, Emily stuck close to the only man she’s ever known like a newborn to its mother. Emily and her father had such a close bond that when he died, for days she refused to believe he was dead, and she also refused to let the townspeople dispose of the body. For the townspeople, Emily’s reaction to her father’s death was quite normal, but for readers it was our first glimpse at her necrophilia.
By using strong characterization and dramatic imagery, William Faulkner introduces us to Miss Emily Grierson in “A Rose for Emily”. The product of a well-established, but now fallen family, Emily plays common role found in literature- a societal outcast, who earns her banishment from society through her eclectic behavior and solitary background. Often living in denial and refusing to engage with others, Emily responds to her exile by spending the remainder of her life as a mysterious recluse that the rest of society is more content to ignore rather than break social customs to confront her. Emily’s role as an outcast mirrors a major theme of the story, that denial is a powerful tool in hiding a secret, however, the truth will eventually emerge. The mystery surrounding Emily’s character and the story’s memorable imagery creates a haunting tale that lingers with the reader.
Miss Emily’s isolation is able to benefit her as well. She has the entire town believing she is a frail and weak woman, but she is very strong indeed. Everyone is convinced that she could not even hurt a fly, but instead she is capable a horrible crime, murder. Miss Emily’s actions range from eccentric to absurd. After the death of her father, and the estrangement from the Yankee, Homer Barron, she becomes reclusive and introverted. The reader can find that Miss Emily did what was necessary to keep her secret from the town. “Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (247).
period in her life. These parts are prime examples of how Faulkner jumps back and forth throughout Emily’s lifetime. Part one begins with Emily’s funeral while part two begins “thirty years before”, “two years after her fathers death and a short time after her sweetheart”, Homer Barron. (93) Part three begins with her meeting Homer. This is interesting because the part before takes place after he dies. This also shows how Faulkner keeps one guessing with his unorthodox plot order. The next part talks of how Emily is planning to supposedly kill herself. It tells of how she buys the...
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
A Rose for Emily is a southern gothic story written by William Faulkner about a woman’s life of isolation and her inability to comprehend life after death. From a first person narration, we are able to see Emily Grierson’s life from an outsider’s perspective rather than from her point of view consequently leading us to take the side of the narrator. This paper will argue how through themes of isolation and rebirth, this story implies how Emily’s character deals with seclusion and how she fails to part with death and distinguish time with the men that she has placed great significance in. Out of many of Faulkner’s works, A Rose for Emily demonstrates his detailed style of prose and conveys the emotions of people that have gruesome, complex lives
She and Homer began to see each other, but Homer was not the marrying type. This did not make Miss Emily happy so she decided to go to a drug store and buy arsenic. When asked what she was buying this for she said it was for rats. Little did they know that sweet, well respected, Miss Emily was plotting to kill her lover, Mr. Homer Barron. People of the town noticed that they stopped seeing Homer, but they never suspected that Miss Emily would ever do such a thing to anyone, especially Homer.
Emily is one of the strongest, strangest and memorable characters of Faulkner’s short fictions (Kriewald
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...