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 …show more content…
She no longer has a sense of independence and her self-reliance is compromised when he dies. Emily doesn’t recognize death, and we notice this when city authorities arrive to her house to collect her taxes. “See colonial Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson (31).” Her refusal to accept death may originate from her childhood upbringing of being controlled by her father. In her mind, she lives in a time where her father is dominating her existence even from his final resting place. Emily is grasping onto the life of her father and the house that is now under her name after his death, which indicates her inability to renounce with the things in her life of all that she has ever experienced. Towards the end of the book, we discover that she has necrophilia, where she develops a deep connection with the bodies that depart from her especially with the corpse of her father and Homer Barron, “She told them 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” (32). Emily finds value with her father’s body, and despite the fact that he controlled Emily …show more content…
Time is something no one not even Emily can control, which is what drives her to insanity as she is unable to grasp the concept of her loved ones leaving her and doesn’t comprehend it with age. Emily’s disposition is confined by her past, which she doesn’t try to depart from. “…on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression…a huge meadow which on winter ever quite touches divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years” (35). The old men have imagined to have danced or courted her at one point signifies what could have been had she not been secluded from society. The people have different outlooks of how times have passed and the memories they have made of Emily. They have lost their sense of time and value with Emily which she now only serves as a memory along with her house. The metaphor for parting of life is the meadows in where seasons change to winter and develops a cycle of life after her death. An allusion to Emily’s funeral is similar to the ending of The Great Gatsby, where his supposed friends and partygoers of his notorious celebrations didn’t attend his funeral out of respect and appreciation despite all that he has done for them. Nevertheless this is the opposite
Life is sad and tragic; some of which is made for us and some of which we make ourselves. Emily had a hard life. Everything that she loved left her. Her father probably impressed upon her that every man she met was no good for her. The townspeople even state “when her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad…being left alone…She had become humanized” (219). This sounds as if her father’s death was sort of liberation for Emily. In a way it was, she could begin to date and court men of her choice and liking. Her father couldn’t chase them off any more. But then again, did she have the know-how to do this, after all those years of her father’s past actions? It also sounds as if the townspeople thought Emily was above the law because of her high-class stature. Now since the passing of her father she may be like them, a middle class working person. Unfortunately, for Emily she became home bound.
Woman from town came over to visit and give there condolansis to her but shockingly Emily only said he was not dead. (pg98). This was a major point of the story were change is seen as a real problem for Emily. She kept her dad’s dead body in her home for three days teeling herself and everyone else that he was still alive. Eventally force had to be taken by the police and the body was put in a grave. It is not normal for someone to act like this but also her dad was all she ever knew. He ran off men and his own family, so when he died she went into a deep state of denial and refused to accept the fact she had lost the only person she loved.
When her Father dies, Emily cannot bury him because she feels like she has finally tamed him. Emily's father can no longer controll her. With his demise, Emily is now in control of her life, and in control of her father. The day after Emily's father died, the local women pay a visit to Emily. "Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her fac...
The first case to prove the theme is when her father had dies. She obviously is in great denial of her fathers death: “The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead” (31). Understandable Emily doesn’t want to let go of the only person who cares and shows love for her. When the case is such one holds on to a deceased body three days after the death; that’s when we have some serious problems. Who knows how long Emily is preparing to keep this body because it took threats from the law for her to release the body to the ministers (31). When she cuts her hair off to make herself look young again it is apparent that she didn’t want to go through change.
When it comes to death, no one plans on a time or date to die; what Emily is identifying as a tragic event is translated to being a casual experience. Emily writes, “The carriage held but just ourselves, and immortality,” (3-4). Emily describes her ride with death, but affiliates a third rider with immortality. “Davidson does not emphasize what is gained after death; she emphasizes what is lost because of death,” (Privatsky 35). Emily’s third passenger has a wide variety of interpretations.
As time goes on Emily grows up, her mother criticizes and blames herself for the distance between the relationships. It is causing tension in their already rocky relationship. The mother is obviously suffering from guilt on how Emily was raised and the unpleasant memories of the past. Emily was also suffering. We see her shyness towards those who care for her. She was a very depressed teen. She had quietness in her daily duties, and her feelings of not being good enough towards herself. She always felt that she was extremely ugly and not smart compared to her younger sister, Susan. She thought she was perfect. She was the typical “Shirley Temple” image.
William Faulkner takes us back in time with his Gothic short story known as, “A Rose for Emily.” Almost every sentence gives a new piece of evidence to lead the reader to the overall theme of death, isolation, and trying to maintain traditions. The reader can conclude the theme through William Faulkner’s use of literary devices such as his choice of characters, the setting, the diction, the tone, and the plot line.
who had lost the person she really knew. This repression of Emily’s father dying was
The author introduces the idea of “dead time” and the role it plays in the development of Faulkner’s story. Harris describes “dead time” as “a synthetic form or groundless foundation of time that lies moribund at the hollowed out core of the story.” He reflects on Faulkner’s technique for beginning the story with the funeral, followed by details from Emily’s past as a child, as an adult and even as an elderly lady, while still following the story of the mystery that surrounded Emily’s life in the mentioned years. Harris mentions that A Rose for Emily “is consistently punctuated by indicators of historical change... But on another level, the narrative consistently confuses the chronological order of these events.”
Through describing Emily’s confusing between past and present, Faulkner helps to illustrate her mental
Some changes in life are inevitable such as the aging process and death. Any day can be one’s last day walking or breathing, and for some the object of letting go of someone held for so long is tragic. It may even seem like the deceased person is still alive and everything is operating as normal or that it was all a big dream. In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose For Emily” the idea of Emily Grierson letting go of the only man she’s ever loved and cherished, in her father, leaves her torn apart. Looking to fill the fresh wound inside her heart, Emily sought desperate measures to ensure that the next man she loved would never leave her.
As time went on pieces from Emily started to drift away and also the home that she confined herself to. The town grew a great deal of sympathy towards Emily, although she never hears it. She was slightly aware of the faint whispers that began when her presence was near. Gossip and whispers may have been the cause of her hideous behavior. The town couldn’t wait to pity Ms. Emily because of the way she looked down on people because she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and she never thought she would be alone the way her father left her.
Emily attempts to recapture her past by escaping from the present. She wants to leave the present and go back to a happier past. Miss Emily wants to find the love she once knew. “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (243). Emily alienates herself from everyone when the two people she has loved most in her life go away. She becomes afraid to grow close to anyone in fear of losing them again.
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
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...