The Fillmore Rose: A Short Story

1930 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Symbolism and interpretation

Staring closely at the crucifix Burroughs remembers the strange story that Jenkins told him about Fillmore Rose, he imagines the two police officers as they struggle to pry open Fillmore’s hand. One at a time they eject the gripping fingers held closed with colossal vice-like strength. With each finger, another piece of the puzzled is opening the secret Fillmore’s hands so strongly grasped. The motionless body of Fillmore Rose lays dead; his right hand fully extended to the side, his open palm reveals in death what he could not reveal in life. With a stunning reflective brilliance, a Crucifix is in Fillmore’s palm.

With a solemn expression, Matt stands to hold the crucifix: Burroughs flashes back to the moment at hand with a distant place of where he has been in his eye he asks,
“Do you have a Bible in your car?”
Matt explains pausing a moment.
“Yes a King James …show more content…

He leans ever so carefully against the door to get a better listen becoming loud enough for him to make it out. Clearly, the words pierce his heart when he hears the voices chant.
“Anti-Christ the Devil's Child,”
“Anti-Christ the Devil's Child,”
“Anti-Christ, the Devil's Child.” Fillmore without a doubt understands exactly what’s going on behind those closed doors. Disapproving of the neighbors, he merely turns to walk away hearing Anti-Christ the devil's child” when a powerful thrust suddenly forces him up against the apartment door, pushing him into the room, smashing him hard against the wall landing right in the middle of a satanic ceremony of the black mass.
“Anti-Christ the Devil's Child”
A gold crucifix hangs suspended upside down, as the robed figures recite traditional prayers backward, performing a mock blessing with filthy water.

“Anti-Christ the Devil's Child” they chant as the four figures whose faces unseen, stand with daggers drawn high into the

Show More
Related

  • A Rose For Emily: Annotated Bibliography

    452 Words  | 1 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Compare The Fall Of The House Of Usher And The Minister's Black Veil

    753 Words  | 2 Pages

    The gothic characteristics that are found in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” delve into the dark side of the human mind where secret sin shrouds the main characters in self anguish and insanity. Both Poe and Hawthorne focus on how much of a burden hiding sins from people can be, and how the human mind grows weak and tired from carrying such a burden. Poe illustrates that with his perturbed character Roderick Usher who was rotting from the inside like his “mansion of gloom” (Poe 323). Hawthorne dives deep into the mind of one Mr. Hooper, a minister, a man admired by all, until he starts wearing a black veil to conceal his face because “ The subject had reference to secret sin” (Hawthorne 311) . An analysis of both Mr. Hooper and Roderick Usher show through their speech, actions, behaviors, and interaction with other humans, the daily strain of hiding sin from one another.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast A Rose For Emily And The Tell-Tale Heart

    838 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner both main characters are portrayed as irrational and are isolated from reality. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” murders an elderly man, as he is fearful of the man’s eye. Emily Grierson in “A Rose for Emily” lives secluded from society, until she marries a man, Homer. She ultimately kills Homer in his bed and leaves his body to decompose for many years. Both the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Emily Grierson in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” deny reality so vehemently that they isolate themselves from reality. Their isolation and denial of reality cause both to commit murder.

    Read More

  • At The Heart Of The White Rose Analysis

    621 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within the experts of Schindler's List and add At the Heart of the White Rose; Letters and Diaries of Hans Sophie Scholl, both experts demonstrate courage and the ability to be an upstanding are by standing up for the Jewish racing and defying Nazi commands. To begin with, Schindler was the ideal Aryan, to avoid military service he joined the German intelligence and traveled to Poland following the invasion. In 1939 Schindler acquired a contract for supplying kitchenware to the military and opened a manufacturing plant in cracow. He moved his shoe is labors to a remote and safe location away from enemy lines and treated them well until the war was over. The narrator states, “At his own expense he provided did his Jewish employees with the life suspicion diet, unlike the starvation-level rations mandated by the Nazis” (2).

    Read More

  • A Rose In Granny Weatherall, The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    Social withdrawal and social isolation can make it difficult to do the things you normally would enjoy or sometimes make it hard to get through the day. There are ways to avoid becoming distant. In “A Rose for Emily,” “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” “Miniver Cheevy,” “Miss Brill,” “Richard Cory,” and “Not Waving but Drowning,” each author uses the theme of isolation to illustrate all the literature.

    Read More

  • A Rose for Emily and A Tell Tale Heart

    909 Words  | 2 Pages

    One may have heard the simple saying that “Love can make you do crazy things.” Many adults can confirm that the saying proves true; one could even spend a few hours watching CSI type of shows that portray the stories of two love-struck people becoming cold-hearted killers just to be with their significant other. Why would they be so desperate to be together that they would kill anyone who got in between them? Desperation so serve that they would even kill a loved one? It could be that as children they were deprived of love and nourishment that children normally receive. This deprivation of love led them to cling to anyone that made them think they were being love. In A Rose for Emily and Tell-Tale Heart a character murders someone who they love. The two works, share similarities and differences when it comes to the characters, the narratives point of view and reason for killing a loved one.

    Read More

  • Black Veil

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    The corruption of hidden sin and guilt is exemplified by the late Gilbert Parker who once said, “In all secrets there is a kind of guilt… Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the mortal mind.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s major authors, often wrote about the harsh realities of human existence such as sin, redemption, and morality. In “Minister’s Black Veil,” the main character, Reverend Hooper, wears a veil over his face during his sermons. Though his sermons are very powerful, a feeling of fear and mystery is evoked in the congregation and often in everyday life due to the strange veil that he refuses to remove. On his deathbed, miraculously, Hooper still has enough strength to resist his veil being lifted; his eyes forever covered, he dies with the veil. Hawthorne uses symbols of the black veil to portray hidden sin, guilt, and peculiar shame attaching to sin in Puritan beliefs.

    Read More

  • William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    674 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner, the author talks about a life of a woman and the town she lived in.

    Read More

  • Religion and the Roman Empire

    1032 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Then the High Priest ordered all uninitiated persons to depart, invested me in a new linen garment and let me by the hand into the inner recesses of the sanctuary itself, I have no doubt, curious reader, that you are eager to know what happened when I entered. If I were allowed to tell you, and you were allowed to be told, you would soon hear everything; but, as it is, my tongue would suffer for its indiscretion and your ears for their inquisitiveness.”

    Read More

  • William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rather than stating the true meaning of his works, William Faulkner generally uses symbolism to portray the depth of his tales. Throughout the story “A Rose For Emily,” time is a continuous theme that is portrayed through symbols. The past, present, and future are represented by different people, places, and things. One of which such symbols, the main character herself, represents the essence of the past through her father, her house, and her lover.

    Read More

  • Gothic Horror Story

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    At last I arrived, unmolested except for the rain, at the hefty decaying doors of the church. I pushed the door and it obediently opened, then I slid inside closing it surreptitiously behind me. No point in alerting others to my presence. As I turned my shoulder, my gaze was held by the magnificence of the architecture. It never fails to move me. My eyes begin by looking at the ceiling, and then they roam from side to side and finally along the walls drinking in the beauty of the stained glass windows which glowed in the candle light, finally coming to rest on the altar. I slipped into the nearest pew with the intention of saying a few prayers when I noticed him. His eyes were fixated upon me. I stared at the floor, but it was too late, because I was already aware that he wasn’t one of the priests, his clothes were all wrong and his face! It seemed lifeless. I felt so heavy. My eyes didn’t want to obey me. Neither did my legs. Too late I realised the danger! Mesmerised, I fell asleep.

    Read More

  • Music of the Episcopal Mass

    900 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine my trepidation, then, when I walked into this church, with its high, vaulted ceilings and an enormous, emaciated, and slightly malicious-looking Christ figure suspended thirty feet among my head. As I came through the entrance, the prelude began. It sounded like nothing less than the soundtrack to a horror movie, as the slasher is about to leap out and dice an innocent schoolgirl. The organ wailed in threatening, building minor chords and did nothing to allay my trepidation.

    Read More

  • August Wilson's Rose: Surviving the Love and Deception

    1103 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alan Nadel in May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson states “August Wilson’s female characters are represented as nurturers” (6-7).This is exactly how August Wilson presents Rose to his readers. A key element is that Wilson names her after a flower just as his own mother; whose name was Daisy. It is apparent that through Rose, August Wilson wants us to see his mother. He intentionally portrays her as the caring, ideal woman, and one who stands by her man no matter how difficult this may be.

    Read More

  • Babies Should be Baptised

    282 Words  | 1 Pages

    "O, God you sent your Son to cast out the power of Satan, set this

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis of Swami Vivekananda’s Speech

    772 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism” (2). It is almost flawless metaphoric technique that personifies so-called “exorcism” – the deliverance from demons – because church bells send all evil forces away. That is why his last culmination paragraph made an enormous effect on the crowd.

    Read More

More about The Fillmore Rose: A Short Story

Open Document