In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, the reader observes the life of Emily Grierson. The reader learns about Emily’s life from the townsfolk from her teenage years all the way to Emily’s death from various points in her life. Emily is a person with a possible mental disorder, who struggles with letting go and how it affects Emily’s grasp on past and present. Emily’s life is one that fascinates and captures the reader’s attention and leads to decade’s worth of arguments amongst generations of readers.
At the beginning of the story we learn that Emily as well her house were once young and prominent in the town of Jefferson. They were both highly sought after and “select”, the house being on a street of wealth and built to an almost unparalleled mansion, Emily being a young beautiful woman who had many suitors knocking at her door. However, the suitors were al turned down by her father who stated that they were not good enough for his daughter. This leads to a relationship almost entirely dependent on her father as years pass. It is when he dies that the story unfolds and the reader can see the beginning of Emily’s struggle with accepting reality and how it affects her future. After the death of her father both her and the house grow old, the house was the only one left on the street as the town expanded around it, “an eyesore among eyesores.”, then Emily once a sought after young lady in the town has now become “a small, fat woman….Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small...
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.... Emily would represent the past and Homer would represent the present in this short story. As Emily was stuck in the old ways of the past time continues and Emily refuses to move on with the times. Emily does not accept the present or the future and has her ways of denying anything new in her life. By staying at home alone, Emily can continue to dwell in the past and not move on with any updates to her life.
The reader can see that Emily struggles to accept anything new into her life since her teenage years. This causes Emily as she ages to stay stuck in the ways of the past as Emily does not accept time or reality. By doing so she blurs the past with present and continues to live in the past even as the present time continues and moves around. Just like the invisible ticking watch she has, time cannot not be seen even though it is always there and always present
\Miss Emily Grierson, the main character in Williams Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” removes herself from society and becomes a total recluse, refuses to progress with the passing of time, murders her lover, but continues to sleep with his corpse until her dying day. The behavior presented in Emily is a sign of mental illness. Throughout the story, Emily’s mental instability becomes apparent through her character. The house that she was raised in and died in, and the love she had for dead bodies lead to her mental illness eventually causing her death.
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the main character named Emily is a women of high status and is the gossip of the town. Emily was thirty and remained unmarried. Soon she found a Northern man named Homer Baron and was spending most of her time with him until the town didn’t see him after he stepped foot into the house of Emily. The narrator/detective revealed at the end a very disturbing attribute about what was held in Emily’s house. However, William Faulkner’s idea of a detective story is far from becoming visible as the traditions make it stand. Based on William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” he used a unique style to re-create detective genres that clearly made him an extraordinary writer
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.
The author of the story does not represent main events according to chronological time, which shows the dehumanization of Emily. This is done not only to create suspense or to make the story more interesting, but because Emily’s time has not any kind of importance. The author seems to present the existence of two kinds of times in the life of a person; one is the psychological time and another is the biological time. Emily’s psychological time has stopped since her father died.
in "A Rose for Emily", Faulkner uses the element of time to enhance details of the setting and vice versa. By avoiding chronological order of events of Miss Emily's life, Faulkner first gives the reader a completed puzzle, and then allows the reader to examine the puzzle piece by piece. By doing so he enhances the story and presents two different perspectives of time held by the characters such as, the world of the present and, the world of tradition and the past-"confusing time with it's mathematical progression...divided from them by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years"(Faulkner 35-36).
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.
One of the many indications that Miss Emily is stuck in the past is her refusal to accept that her father is dead after holding on to his body for three days. “She wants to keep him as she has known him instead of allowing him to return to dust”(Kurtz 40). Miss Emily’s father had such an impact on her life, that she was left powerless in every aspect, thus her decision to live in the past where she knew she could be in control.
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.
After all the tragic events in her life, Emily became extremely introverted. After killing Homer, Emily locked herself in and blocked everyone else out. It was mentioned, “…that was the last time we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time” (628). In fact, no one in town really got to know Miss Emily personally as she always kept her doors closed, which reflects on how she kept herself closed for all those years. Many of the town’s women came to her funeral with curiosity about how she lived, as no one had ever known her well enough to know. This was revealed at the beginning of the story when the narrator mentioned, “the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant… had seen in the last ten years”(623). Everyone in town knew of her but did not know her because she kept to herself for all those years.
The present was expressed chiefly through the words of the unnamed narrator. The new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron (the representative of Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and thus toward the entire South), and in what is called "the next generation with its more modern ideas" all represented the present time period (Norton Anthology, 2044). Miss Emily was referred to as a "fallen monument" in the story (Norton Anthology, 2044). She was a "monument" of Southern gentility, an ideal of past values but fallen because she had shown herself susceptible to death (and decay). The description of her house "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores" represented a juxtaposition of the past and present and was an emblematic presentation of Emily herself (Norton Anthology, 2044).
... The watch shows that Miss Emily is constantly aware of how much time she has left, and her hair is used by the townsfolk to denote how long it has been since they last saw Miss Emily. Themes: Old ways opposed to new ways – Faulkner uses Emily’s reluctance to change in juxtaposition with the town evolving to show a woman set in her ways. Her closeted nature is emphasized to show that even though the world is changing, Miss Emily lives in the ways of the past, holding on to what she has always known.
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.
Miss Emily's house as the setting of the story is a perfect metaphor for the events occurring during that time period. It portrays the decay of Miss Emily's life and values and of the southern way of life and their clash with the newer generations. The house is situated in what was once a prominent neighborhood that has now deteriorated. Miss Emily's "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 of an earlier time," now looked awkward surrounded by "cotton wagons" and "gasoline pumps." The townspeople consider it "an eyesore among eyesores." Time has taken a similar role with Miss Emily altering her appearance from that of a "slender figure in white" (624) to that of "a small, fat woman in black" (622). The setting of Faulkner's story defines Miss Emily's tight grasp of ante-bellum ways and unchanging demeanor.. Through her refusal to put "metal numbers above her door and attach a mail box" to her house she is refusing to change with society. Miss Emily's attitude towards change is ...
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...