A Problem for Emily As a class, we have read many short stories. Some of these stories focus on death, love, family, or a variety of other ideas. Out of every tale we have covered, may favorite so far has been, “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner. The lack of clarity during my read, the interesting characters, and the twists and turns that the plot held really pulled me in allowed me to become invested in reading. In this story, Faulkner shows that forbidding change can lead to problems with accepting the fantasies of the past and the realities of the future. Starting from the beginning of the plot, you can tell that Miss Emily is a well know person in this town, but not exactly for the right reasons. The statement, “When Miss Emily Grierson …show more content…
This love connection between a Southerner and Northerner sparks controversy all over town. The view of this tale is told from a townsperson, and they talk up Homer in a positive way saying he was a handsome and well-known man that liked to hang out with the guys, and he made everyone laugh when he was around. When Miss Emily enters the picture, their views change. They declare, “At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have a love interest because the ladies all said, ‘Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner day laborer.’ But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a lady to forget noblesse oblige—without calling it noblesse oblige” (Faulkner, 1931). They are saying that they feel sorry for Miss Emily. Not even grief can make her fall in love with a man less privileged than someone of her stature, but she is head over heels anyway. In Hector’s case, this just means that being from the North is less superior to the Southerners in Miss Emily’s town, and they do not approve of the relationship. No one is willing to change their values, and it puts a dim light on the relationship of Miss Emily and Hector. Having this love interest allows the plot to take an interesting …show more content…
Miss Emily visits the druggist and demands that he hand over a bottle of arsenic, or very strong poison. By law he is required to know what the poison is for, but instead of telling him, Miss Emily coldly stares into his eyes until he obeys. Her position in the community allowed her to manipulate the druggist to get what she wanted, even though the normal citizen would not get by so easily. As the story unfolds, we read that a dead body is found in the old house after Miss Emily’s death. As I mentioned earlier, the townspeople notice a strange smell coming from Miss Emily’s house, but during that time you did not tell a lady that she smelled. Because of the horrible stench, the townspeople went into her house late at night and filled the basement with lime to mask the aroma. Little did they know that they were covering up the smell of a dead body. This again goes back to the fact that Miss Emily cannot accept change. Her father died and she could not let go of him, and then she uses the arsenic to kill Hector because, more than likely, he wanted to leave her. She wanted to be with Hector so bad that her only option was to kill him. To make matters worse, the residents find a long gray hair and an indent of a human body next to the pillow near the corpse. Miss Emily could not surrender her love at all, that ultimately she slept next to the dead body of the man she poisoned. The fear of letting go causes Miss Emily to
After her sweetheart left her, the people of the town saw her very little. Faulkner then tells what might be viewed as the climax of the story. He explains that one day, Miss Emily went into town and bought rat poison. By revealing this so early on in the story, it challenges the reader to use their imagination. The readers’ view of Miss Emily could now possibly be changed.
After being reclusive for decades, Miss Emily dies in her dusty house at age 74 (305). After her burial, they force entry into the “room in that region above the stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (306). They find the “bridal suite” and remains of Homer laying “in the attitude of embrace” along with evidence that Miss Emily had also been in that bed with him (306). Readers believe that Emily kills Homer with the arsenic. In her mind, she is not going to allow him to leave her. She prefers to have him dead in her house, rather than gone
Faulkner tells the story through primarily a first person narration, primarily through the eyes of the townspeople, which is a white southern society. They too have a type of love affair with "Miss Emily." Emily Grierson is known to the townspeople as an icon. They feel a sense of obligation to her, as the narrator explains, "Alive, Miss Emily has been a tradition, a duty, and a care; sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (404). The relationship between the town and Emily is symbiotic, in the respects that neither can exist without the other, this in turn, makes the narrator and Emily foils.
The awful stench goes unexplained, in this way creating anticipation. The tattling lady's compassion Miss Emily to be single and alone, additionally appear to take some delight from the way that they keep tidier homes than this previous noble who is left with only a solitary inadequate worker. The townspeople kill the terrible stench, following two weeks. Notice of old Woman Wyatt, Emily's awesome close relative, recommends that Miss Emily's franticness is not a variation, but rather acquired, even brought about to some degree by the nostalgic and abusive society in which both ladies live. The townspeople both worth Miss Emily as a landmark to their past, yet deceptively scrutinize her for acting the part in spite of her neediness. Miss Emily's request that her dad is not dead is the primary sign we have of her profoundly irritated relationship to time, or to reality. She takes control of her life basically by denying change furthermore the principal sign that this exertion reaches out to a hallucinating limit even to prevent the truth from securing
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.
The story is clearly an illustration of the passing of the old to the new, and of the real character of human nature - decadence. The townspeople had an equal share in the crime that Miss Emily committed, and they were instrumental in its cover-up. She is described as "dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse." (85) This description sums up the people's outlook of both her, and themselves in their willingness to embrace her. Even today the fetters of certain types of ignorance and other forms of evil acts are on view anywhere in the country if one looks. A Rose for Emily illustrates it in its purest form in its own time.
Up to the very end of Miss Emily’s life, her father was in the foreground watching and controlling, and Miss Emily unrelentingly held on to the past. She went as far as keeping a loved one’s body locked upstairs in her home for years. While admiring her loved one’s body from up close and afar, she managed to maintain a death grip on the past.
As Faulkner begins “A Rose for Emily” with death of Emily, he both immediately and intentionally obscures the chronology of the short story to create a level of distance between the reader and the story and to capture the reader’s attention. Typically, the reader builds a relationship with each character in the story because the reader goes on a journey with the character. In “A Rose for Emily”, Faulkner “weaves together the events of Emily’s life” is no particular order disrupting the journey for the reader (Burg, Boyle and Lang 378). Instead, Faulkner creates a mandatory alternate route for the reader. He “sends the reader on a dizzying voyage by referring to specific moments in time that have no central referent, and thus the weaves the past into the present, the present into the past. “Since the reader is denied this connection with the characters, the na...
Although I do not agree with how Miss Emily Grierson behaved, but I do not blame her. Harbored from reality her entire life I can expect for her to do some unordinary things. I feel bad for Miss Emily because she was the center of attention in a modernized town where she still practiced her traditional values. Through the eyes the townspeople we get our views of Emily at a distance. Had the story been told from Emily’s perspective we could better understand her reasoning for her bizarre behavior.
William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily tells a story of a young woman who is violated by her father’s strict mentality. After being the only man in her life Emily’s father dies and she finds it hard to let go. Like her father Emily possesses a stubborn outlook towards life, and she refused to change. While having this attitude about life Emily practically secluded herself from society for the remainder of her life. She was alone for the very first time and her reaction to this situation was solitude.
Miss Emily’s isolation is able to benefit her as well. She has the entire town believing she is a frail and weak woman, but she is very strong indeed. Everyone is convinced that she could not even hurt a fly, but instead she is capable a horrible crime, murder. Miss Emily’s actions range from eccentric to absurd. After the death of her father, and the estrangement from the Yankee, Homer Barron, she becomes reclusive and introverted. The reader can find that Miss Emily did what was necessary to keep her secret from the town. “Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years” (247).
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. Characters:.. Emily Grierson – A young southern belle who adored her father and became a shut in after his passing.
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.
In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.
...olism, and conflicts in William Faulkner’s “ A Rose for Emily” the theme that one must change within time and let go of the past is introduced. Faulkner uses these literary tools to illustrate that refusal to change can lead to deterioration of self. Miss Emily, in this case, resisted changes in extreme ways ultimately her reluctance to changes brought horrific consequences to herself and her loved one. “ A Rose for Emily” teaches moral lesson that life is filled with instabilities. People, places and things change all the time. If we keep holding on to the past, it will only cause us more pain. We might lose many things from the process of letting go. However, by letting go of the old life, we can gain a better future. Sometimes one must forget what is gone, appreciate things that are still remaining, and looking forward for something better that will come along.