In the short story 'A Rose For Emily'; and the short story 'Killings'; people have been murdered and the motivations for the killings are understandable but never the less still murders. The reason for murder in 'A Rose For Emily'; is not as clearly shown as with 'Killings';, that story is a classic 'eye for an eye'; type story. The main character in 'A Rose for Emily'; (Emily) and the main character in 'Killings'; (Matt) both kill out of love, but the types of love seem to be different. Emily was not what you would call the average murderer. She was strange however, after her own death (which is known to reader in the very first line of the story) the townspeople described her as '…a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town';(73). When her father died she would not let them take the body for three days, now that's pretty strange. The people in town at the time didn't think she was crazy, they explained her actions like this, 'We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.'; (75) Here is the first indicator that her motives for killing her only love Homer Baron are founded on an emotional type of basis. Her father believed that no one was ever good enough for his daughter, and because she never got close to anyone she didn't know how to let go either, she never experienced that kind of love you get when you meet ...
...y of Homer Barron was found in the locked room. Well that was what she used to kill the man she thought to have loved. Her fear of abandonment mix with her already messed up head, is what led her to commit those heinous acts. Evidence showed that she also slept next to Homer’s corpse based on the facts that there was an indentation on the second pillow with grey hair found on top of it. It is obvious that the stuff done by Emily, someone who is sane would not have done that.
A rose for Emily and Lamb to The Slaughter are both books about two females getting rejected to the men they love, and the way they get revenge was by killing them. Emily was a shy type of person but she came from a family that are known to be crazy and do crazy things. She fell in love with Mr. Grierson she met when he was doing construction work next to her house. Eventually she married him but not knowing that he is more attracted to men and for that reason she killed him. Mary was in a situation where her husband Patrick did love her but he decided he wanted to leave her for another woman when Mary was pregnant with his baby. This leading up to her killing over the anger she had towards him. The purpose of this is because both females have had the feeling of rejection, and revenge. Emily’s husband was attracted to other men which made her feel rejected because she knew she wasn’t going to be love by Mr. Grierson as much since he doesn’t find her attractive. For Mary, her husband Patrick did love but he wanted to leave her for another woman because he didn’t love her anymore.
We eventually find out in the end that Emily kills Homer. She does this not do this out anger or hatred toward this man. It is the belief on her part, that a man has to play a significant role in her life that drives Emily to do this unbelievable act of violence. In her mind this was not a crazy thing to do.
Emily meets Homer and she soon becomes very attached to him. The town’s people instantly began to notice this, “Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable” (Faulkner 301). As the town’s people began to see them together, they all started to wonder if they would get married. Soon they realized that Homer was not interested in marriage and that he was interested in men. Emily is obviously very distraught by this and eventually leads her to commit acts reflecting her character as someone with very little morals.
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.
Behind every killer there is a purpose for the killing. So why did Emily kill Homer? Some could say it was by cause of her going crazy with the death of her father. Others could predict it was that he wouldn’t marry her by reason of he “isn’t the marrying type” (page 724). I believe it was by reason of she wanted to keep Homer with her forever. She wanted to make absolutely sure that
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” death plays a major role in developing the story. It also shows how the death of one person can change a city as a whole. However, if you compare this story to the life of the author, William Faulkner, you can see how death in his life can contribute to why he wrote the story the way he did. The death of the people is used to add to the meaning of the work altogether. William Faulkner’s experiences add meaning to his work, “A Rose for Emily,” through several deaths and Emily’s ultimate demise.
People are taught that murder is a sin. People are also taught not to seek revenge, but to pray for the person(s) that revenge is wanted on. Is that easier said than done? Absolutely. A definition of revenge is “An opportunity to retaliate or gain satisfaction” (Dictionary.com). Satisfaction is not always guaranteed. In “A Rose For Emily” and “Killings” the motivation for murder is seen in Emily and Matt’s lives through their backgrounds, the relationships between them and their victims, as well as the emotional triggers that are revealed to the reader to make the stories add up to Emily and Matt’s final decisions to murder.
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
Symbolism in literature is using an object to portray a different, deeper meaning in a story. Symbols represent ideas or qualities that the author has maneuvered into his or her story that has meaning. There can be multiple symbols in a story or just one. It is up to the reader to interpret the meaning of the symbols and their significance to the story. While reading a story, symbols may not become clear until the very end, once the climax is over, and the falling action is covered. In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” there are multiple examples of symbolism that occur throughout the story.
Miss Emily was essentially a monument in the town as she was very well known. Shortly before her death the townspeople noticed her beginning to shelter a construction foreman named Homer Barron. The townspeople speculated that she had great feelings for Homer and that she would eventually marry him, however, Homer remarked that he liked men and that he was not a marrying man. Miss Emily later purchased Arsenic, commonly known as rat poison, from the local druggist for an unrevealed reason. Near the end of the text, Homer Barron is discovered dead in Miss Emily’s attic wearing a full wedding suit, presumably from a dosage of Arsenic given by Miss Emily. This is an example of man being inherently evil because Emily was a very odd, but well liked, figure in the town. This developed into her having an obsession over Homer Barron and eventually killing him. A direct quote from the text that relates to evilness is when the town begins to assume things of Emily, such as “..we all said ‘she will kill herself’ and we said it would be the best thing.” This displays the inherent evilness in humans as the townspeople see it as a good thing for Emily, the backbone of their community, to end her own
Her necrophilia is realized first when she refused the death of her father as she desperately clings to the father figure who disciplined her into loneliness. It was the only form of love she knew. It is once realized when Homer dies, however, this time it is with her hands that death has come upon it. She almost actually controlled it. She denied the changes, the possibilities of Homer leaving her, of refusing to marry her, by cutting his timeline—preserving him in death, effectively. Emily and Homer’s weird cohabitation divulges Emily’s upsetting effort to marry life and death. However, death ultimately triumphs.
At the beginning of the story when her father died, it was mentioned that “[Emily] told [the ladies in town] that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (626). Faulkner reveals Emily’s dependency on her father through the death of her father. As shown in this part of the story, Emily was very attached to her father and was not able to accept that fact that he was no longer around. She couldn’t let go of the only man that loved her and had been with her for all those years. While this may seem like a normal reaction for any person who has ever lost a loved one, Faulkner emphasizes Emily’s dependence and attachment even further through Homer Barron. After her father’s death, Emily met a man name Homer, whom she fell in love with. While Homer showed interest in Emily at the beginning he became uninterested later on. “Homer himself had remarked—he liked men” (627) which had caused Emily to become devastated and desperate. In order to keep Homer by her side, Emily decided to poison Homer and keep him in a bedroom in her home. It was clear that she was overly attached to Homer and was not able to lose another man that she
The theme of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is that people should let go of the past, moving on with the present so that they can prepare to welcome their future. Emily was the proof of a person who always lived on the shadow of the past; she clung into it and was afraid of changing. The first evident that shows to the readers right on the description of Grierson's house "it was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street." The society was changing every minutes but still, Emily's house was still remained like a symbol of seventieth century. The second evident show in the first flashback of the story, the event that Miss Emily declined to pay taxes. In her mind, her family was a powerful family and they didn't have to pay any taxes in the town of Jefferson. She even didn't believe the sheriff in front of her is the "real" sheriff, so that she talked to him as talk to the Colonel who has died for almost ten years "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson." Third evident was the fact that Miss Emily had kept her father's death body inside the house and didn't allow burying him. She has lived under his control for so long, now all of sudden he left her, she was left all by herself, she felt lost and alone, so that she wants to keep him with her in order to think he's still living with her and continued controlling her life. The fourth evident and also the most interesting of this story, the discovery of Homer Barron's skeleton in the secret room. The arrangement inside the room showing obviously that Miss Emily has slept with the death body day by day, until all remained later was just a skeleton, she's still sleeping with it, clutching on it every night. The action of killing Homer Barron can be understood that Miss Emily was afraid that he would leave her, afraid of letting him go, so she decided to kill him, so that she doesn't have to afraid of losing him, of changing, Homer Barron would still stay with her forever.
...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.