A Balance Between the Past and the Present To deny the change that comes with time, means that one must resist time altogether, and seeing as time is inevitable, one must go to extremes to reject it. William Faulkner uses “A Rose for Emily” to show how the desperate need to keep tradition in the old South leads to the resistance of time and change. Faulkner was born and raised in the South and has first hand experience of the way of life which is lived there, as seen through “A Rose for Emily”. Throughout Emily's life she is faced with many changes that she can't comprehend and meets a man by the name of Homer Barron that becomes her love interest, once word gets around …show more content…
Emily denies the death of her father and Colonel Satoris this denial goes much farther than the normal denial within a grieving period. When Emily denied her father’s death she completely disengaged in any type of grieving “Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days” (Faulkner). To completely ignore that her father was dead she refused to let anyone take his dead body, and the fact that she was able to live with the corps for three days without realizing her father was gone demonstrates that she may have a mental inability to recognize death. Death is a natural way of life and is impossible to ignore and when Emily resist time she is refusing to acknowledge death and this leads to Emily becoming a monster (West). This is proved by the murdering of Homer Barron. Emily’s motifs for murdering Homer were a way to resist change, and because Homer was planning on leaving Emily she took matters into her own hands. Since Emily does not understand death, she doesn’t realize what she has done, making her a monster. The story provides understanding “In terms “A Rose for Emily” would seem to be saying that man must come to terms both with the past and the present for to ignore the first is to be …show more content…
Society is a huge part of “A Rose for Emily” and the story is told through the perspective of the town, and how the town sees Emily, an example of this it the towns disapproval of her relationship with Homer “ They just said “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her.” (Faulkner). The town started to take pity on Emily because of her decision to associate with Homer, and this demonstrates the type of judgment that is passed on Emily. Society has influenced Emily’s actions just as her actions have influenced society. In the south Faulkner demonstrates the old ways which the south depends on and Emily’s relationship was scandalous and all the women in the town all said” Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer” (Falkner). How the people started to see Emily because she was dating Homer, decreased their higher opinion of her, because she was supposed to be better than to befriend a northerner. This sense of hierarchy that lies within the south puts even more of disapproval on Emily’s relationship with Homer, and if he were to leave her it would disgrace her name (West). Since the town already disapproved of her relationship, Emily was even more desperate to keep homer because if he were to leave her, then that would lead to her social downfall. By Emily being ostracized by society because of dating Homer, causes her to attempt to freeze time to
A Rose for Emily Life is fickle and most people will be a victim of circumstance and the times. Some people choose not to let circumstance rule them and, as they say, “time waits for no man”. Faulkner’s Emily did not have the individual confidence, or maybe self-esteem and self-worth, to believe that she could stand alone and succeed at life especially in the face of changing times. She had always been ruled by, and depended on, men to protect, defend and act for her. From her Father, through the manservant Tobe, to Homer Barron, all her life was dependent on men.
According to Charmaine Mosby, “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner, accentuates one of his primary themes: “change and decay.” The reader clearly acknowledges Emily’s denial to change as Faulkner describes how she refused to accept her father’s death. Hence, this foreshadowed why Emily kept Homer Barron’s corpse. Her inability to let go and accept the changing reality forced her “combine life and death in her own person.” Mosby further emphasizes Faulkner’s theme by mentioning that the gray long hair found next to Homer’s corpse symbolized Emily’s interaction between them even after his death. In addition to this theme, Mosby also reveals that another theme: the erosion of the social structure of the 20th century by the industrialized South. Mosby claims that Faulkner emphasized the acceptance of Homer and Emily’s relationship from the Jefferson’s community to enable the reader to realize how the change of views to modern ideals.
Although the story is only a few pages long, it covers approximately three-quarters of a century. Faulkner cleverly constructed the story to show the elusive nature of time and memory. Several critics have written papers in attempts to devise a chronology for the story. It would surely please Faulkner that few of these chronologies are consistent with each other. In "A Rose for Emily, he is not concerned with actual dates. He is more interested in the conflict between time as a subjective experience and time as a force of physics. For example, in section five of the story, the narrator describes the very old men gathered at Emily 's funeral The old men, some who fought in the Civil War, mistakenly believe that Emily was a contemporary of theirs when in fact Emily was born sometime around the Civil War. The old men have confused ". . .time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years." Here, Faulkner profoundly and poetically comments on the human need to deny the passage of time and the astounding capacity of the human mind to use memory in that ultimately futile denial. Emily, of course, has other methods of denying
The manipulation of time by the author is there to enhance the mystery. This creates for the reader a chronological table to the story line so that they can be an active part of the story looking for future clues. Emily's fight for survival in an era where women had many obstacles to tackle, along with her personal attempts to distort time, and her insecurity to love and be loved is the central theme of the story. For the dead, a rose is placed on the grave and giving a rose is a token of love.
Emily’s father rose her with lots of authority, he might had ruined her life by not giving her the opportunity to live a normal lady/woman life; but he build a personality, character and a psycho woman. Mister Grierson was the responsible for Emily’s behavior, he thought her to always make others respect her. Homer’s actions of using her as a cover to his sexuality was not respectful at all, Emily did not know any better and poison him to death.
who had lost the person she really knew. This repression of Emily’s father dying was
Faulkner writes “A Rose for Emily” in the view of a memory, the people of the towns’ memory. The story goes back and forth like memories do and the reader is not exactly told whom the narrator is. This style of writing contributes to the notions Faulkner gives off during the story about Miss Emily’s past, present, and her refusal to modernize with the rest of her town. The town of Jefferson is at a turning point, embracing the more modern future while still at the edge of the past. Garages and cotton gins are replacing the elegant southern homes. Miss Emily herself is a living southern tradition. She stays the same over the years despite many changes in her community. Even though Miss Emily is a living monument, she is also seen as a burden to the town. Refusing to have numbers affixed to the side of her house when the town receives modern mail service and not paying her taxes, she is out of touch with reality. The younger generation of leaders brings in Homer’s company to pave the sidewalks. The past is not a faint glimmer but an ever-present, idealized realm. Emily’s morbid bridal ...
Along with the passing of her father Emily is then allowed the freedom to finally think for herself and then comes Homer Barron, a man whose Emily’s father would have disapproved of if he was still alive. As Donald Akers stated that Emily dating a northerner as a, “reasonable, explanation for her relationship with Homer would be that is her way of rebelling against her dead father. During his lifetime, her father prevented her from having an “acceptable” suitor. Thus, she rebels by associating with a man her father would have considered a pariah: a Yankee day-laborer” (“A Rose for Emily”). That excerpt suggests since Homer was a Yankee, it was completely against the Griersons legacy to marry a northern man having the post Civil War mentality, so Homer would have never been the perfect suitor for Emily. Regardless to say Emily quickly fell in love with Homer and she couldn’t bare the humiliation of Homer leaving her since he was not the marrying type. Within all of the things happening around Emily and all of the mixed internal feelings Emily repressed throughout the years, especially not having many
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, we never hear the mention of a rose. The rose is a symbol of sympathy and pity that we feel towards her. Emily reflected the rose. She wanted to blossom and bloom but she was held down and lock up from the real world. Emily was the daughter of a rich man, a town hero. Her father, although he was looked up to by the town, was demanding and controlling. He turned down every man that he didn’t feel was worthy of his daughter. He set her up for a life that she could not escape. She became used to this lifestyle and it became who she was. When her father passed,
The plot of “A Rose for Emily” shows the later years of the main character, Emily Grierson, with flashbacks to her life interspersed between. It begins with the reader learning of her passing, developing into a story that provides insight in to her reclusive nature and past dealings with family as well as the town of Jefferson. Due to her reclusive nature and high standing in society she is often gossiped about by her fellow townsfolk. Throughout the story, the reader is told about her overbearing father, her reluctance to change her ways for the town of Jefferson, and her new love interest Homer Barron. With hints of foreshadowing and learning about Miss Emily’s past problems with letting her deceased father go, the reader finds the story ending at her funeral with the discovery of the body of Homer Barron kept in her house. Miss Emily did not want to lose her new love, so she poisons him and keeps his body around, letting her maintain a relationship with him even though he has passed on.
Through out the whole story of “A Rose for Emily” no one ever knows who the people are in her town and we never find out there age, size, color, and whether or not they personally know Emily or not. They are just townspeople, townspeople who gossip. We only know what the people are saying about her and how judgmental they are being through out the whole story. According to Faulkner, in his Short Story Criticism he says,
“A Rose for Emily” reads like a sad and tragic biography set in the nineteenth century. The narrator, who speaks as one representing the story from the town’s point of view, begins by narrating Emily’s funeral. As the story unfolds, the reader is taken through a grim sequence of events, some of which only make sense in retrospect upon reaching the end of the story. The narrator begins then to narrate her background since her father’s death. Emily’s father is cast as a protective figure who turns away any male suitors and keeps his daughter away from the townsfolk. When he dies, Emily refrains from acknowledging his death and for three days refuses to let his body out of the house. Eventually she breaks
Symbolism that “A Rose for Emily” displays is Miss Emily’s taxes that represent death. First is the death of her father. The taxes are a symbol of the financial remission her father experiences, but keeps hidden from Miss Emily and the town. Thirty years later, after the initial decline of Miss Emily’s taxes, the newer generation attempts to retract the deal of the past. In the new generation, the taxes now symbolize the death of Homer Barron. Although the taxes are a deal of the past, there is an effort in Miss Emily to keep them a thing in the present. Homer Barron is her new man of the present, and his death symbolizes the taxes she insists she does not have to pay (Shmoop 3).
The ways of the world had changed around her and Miss Emily just had not accepted it. She had tried to stop time in her own twisted ways, and even more astonishingly, the townspeople had let her. To them, she was a symbol of the old South, even if they did suspect some mental illness. She was her father's daughter, and they were more than content to let her do things in her own way. They liked her as a symbol of the Old South so that they could cling to an idealized past as well. But as the reader knows time stops for no one. It can never stop and no matter how you try to trap it, it will find a way out eventually. Emily's way out was death. She leaves behind the townspeople who are left to figure out how they will move into this new world of change and growth, how they will reconcile the Old South with the new one.
Through the use of setting, characterization and theme Faulkner was able to create quite a mysterious and memorable story. "A Rose for Emily" is more than just a story though; her death represents the passing of a more genteel way of life. That is much more saddening than the unforgettable scene of Homer's decaying body. The loss of respect and politeness is has a much greater impact on society than a construction worker who by trade is always trying to change things. Generation after generation Miss Emily happily escaped modernism by locking herself in her house the past.