Theme Of Insanity In A Rose For Emily

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The stories “A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman both touch on the topic of insanity. In both stories, the insanity is caused by an obsession over a certain thing, or person. This suggests to the reader that fixating on a certain thing in life, even if it seems good at the time, often ends up being detrimental to our health. There are a few things that bring about the downfall of Emily and the woman from “The Yellow Wallpaper” who is possibly Jane, which is what I will be calling her in this paper. Jane faces many situations in the story that seem to be normal, but become incredibly oppressive to her. Jane is seeking freedom from her husband, John, throughout the story. This is why, in the end, she tears all …show more content…

Emily’s father controlled her life and when he died she insisted that he had not. “She told them that her father was not dead.” (Faulkner 302) This is when the reader can begin to see that something is not right with Emily. She clings to her father’s body, controlling him the only way she could after he controlled her for her entire life. Emily’s young years were ruined by her father driving off all the young men who would call on her, making her feel unable to fit in socially. As a result, she had no friends to help her cope, and her only close family had died. She blamed her father for leaving her alone, which is why, when Homer Barron showed some interest in her, she was able to move on from her father and obsess about him. I think that the majority of people would agree that keeping a dead body in your house would indicate some type of mental …show more content…

On page 303, it says that when Emily got home she opened the arsenic package and it says “For rats.” We, as the reader, are able to identify that Emily used the arsenic to kill Homer Barron. I do not believe that the words written on the box just happened to be there. Their inclusion lets us into the mind of Emily, she saw Homer as a rat. Homer “liked men” and was “not a marrying man” (Faulkner 305). With Emily’s intense feeling toward him, knowing that Homer was not going to stay voluntarily, Emily did the only thing that she knew could make him stay. It is common in our times for an individual to fall in love with someone who had no intention of staying, but this doesn’t rectify murder. No one in his or her right mind would resort to murder in this situation, demonstrating that Emily was clearly not in her right

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