“A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner was written in 1930. It’s the story of a strange, high society woman with a dead body in her house. Only when she dies and you enter the house is this secret revealed. It’s not very easy keeping something like that. Especially when you live in a town full of nosy people. Why did she kill her lover? How did she get away with it? With the help of her servant, her status in society, and how conservative people were, I believe it was fairly easy to keep her secret for so long. 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 …show more content…
I believe it was with the help of her butler and how conservative society was at this time. People were nosy, but never pester the person about the subject. People just came up with their own conclusions when it came to rumors with not all the facts shown to them. When Emily bought the arsenic they all just believed she was going to kill herself. They never thought for a second she would kill someone else (725). People are funny that way. They will just think up something when they don’t know the real reason. The negro man helped a lot in her not getting caught. After the death of Homer he stopped speaking to everyone who even tried to get information on Miss Emily. He only went to grab her groceries and came back to the house until the day she got sick and died. The townsfolk didn’t even know she was sick (727). She was a very fortunate women to not have been caught in the murder. If it wasn’t for the Negro man keeping quiet or how society acted she would've been tried for murder no matter the
Emily is different from the duke in how she personally killed Homer by giving him arsenic. While the duke gave commands to have his duchess killed. They both had motives for the death of their lovers. She did it because she was afraid to lose him since the only person she loved was her father and he died. Emily felt like she had to kill Homer or else she would be lonely. The duke gave commands to have his duchess killed because he was jealous and he wanted to be in control of her life. He got tired of how she acted and how she disrespected his name and social status. The duke complains about how his duchess treated his gifts and anyone else gift equally, he wanted her to appreciate his gift with respect and not treat his gift like it was nothing, “She thanked men, ---good! But thanked....Somehow---I know now how---as if she ranked my gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name with anybody's gift” (stanza 31-34). Emily and the duke both had to do with their lovers' death but their motives were different.
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
"A Rose for Emily" is a fictional short story written by 1949 Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about an aristocratic woman who lived a very secretive and unusual life. Miss Emily had always been very sheltered by her father. He was the only man in her life and after his death, her behavior became even more unnatural. However her father's death cannot be seen as the only cause of Miss Emily's insanity. Miss Emily's behavior was also influenced by her own expectations of herself, the townspeople's lack of authority over her, and her neighbor's infatuation with her.
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.
...l us, "then we noticed a second indentation of a head on the other pillow" and the room looked like one that was surrounding the time of a wedding. Because of this, it is possible to infer that Homer would not marry Emily causing her to betray him and herself in the process by murdering him.
The townspeople were unaware of this. They had thought that the Colonel had left Miss Emily and never showed his face in town again. That’s probably why they were so shocked when they found his body in the upstairs room. The signs all pointed to Miss Emily having killed her lover. If going crazy did run in her family then she must have just snapped when her lover tried to leave her. The town mayor had gotten numerous complaints about an awful smell coming from Miss Emily’s house. No one even thought twice about what the smell could’ve been, instead the narrator says, “ So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder.” (Faulkner 32). The men covered up the smell, which was most likely the horrid smell of a rotting corpse, and once the smell went away, no one thought about it again. Another sign that pointed towards Miss Emily having killed her lover was a strange encounter she had with the druggist in the town. She said, “I want poison” (Faulkner 33) and then went on to say “I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.” (Faulkner 33). She wasn’t even trying to hide what she was doing. She almost made it sort of obvious, yet no
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 ...
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.
Homer had lived in the present, and Emily eventually conquered that. Emily’s family was a monument of the past; Emily herself was referred to as a “fallen monument.” She was a relic of Southern gentility and past values. She had been considered fallen because she had been proven susceptible to death and decay like the rest of the world. As for the importance of family, Emily was really close to her father. He was very protective of her and extremely dominating.
Miss Emily bought some arsenic from the druggist refusing to state her intended use. She also purchased a man's toiletry set and clothing. Everyone assumed that they had been married. Miss Emily had two cousins staying with. After the street work was finished, Homer left and did not return until her family had gone. He was seen entering Miss Emily's kitchen door and was never seen again until his body was discovered years later in an upstairs room of Miss Emily's house.
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.
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
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
...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.
A Rose For Emily is a short story that was written in 1930, by William Faulkner. It is considered to be among the greatest piece of literature that has been interpreted many times. This is a story about the life and death of the protagonist Emily Grierson. The story is arrayed in five sections. First, it starts with the death of the protagonist, and her encounter with the tax officials when they came to inquire bout her tax payment. Next, is her father’s death followed by Emily going to a local store to buy poison for an unknown reason that the author conceals. The fourth section talks of Emily and Homer Baron’s story of aging and isolation. Finally, Faulkner talks of Emily’s death and funeral, and the shocking discoveries that follow it.