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A rose for Emily character development and theme
A rose for emily character development
Emily rose character analysis
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To begin opening ourselves we first must begin to identify Emily. I do believe Emily does have some problems; due to her resistant to change and some controlling issues. That is most likely due to her father. In fact, when her father dies the townspeople went to give their condolences. Saying “We remember all the young men her father had driven away and we knew that with nothing left; Emily would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” With that, you can see where Emily’s control issues came because her father had robbed her making Emily cling to have control. Emily shows no appreciation for the abandonment of her husband. Deciding that her best bet was to kill Homer and keep him in her house for decades. As watching Emily
Emily’s mother is just a teenager when she had Emily. She did not have the money or resources to take care of her, so she had to let Emily live with her grandparents for a couple of years before she could get Emily back. When Emily was two, her mother finally got her custody of her, but Emily is not the little girl she remembered. When the mother first had Emily, she described her as a beautiful baby (302), but it changed when Emily became sickly and got scars from chicken pox. The mother said, “When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pockmarks. All the baby loveliness gone. (302)” Nevertheless, the mother is never there for Emily as she grew up. Emily tried to show her mother in different ways that she needed her, but she never seemed to catch the hint. For example, when Emily was two her mother sent her to a nursery school. The teacher of the nursery school was mistreating the children, and instead of telling her mother directly like the other kids told their parents, she told her in different ways. She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick. Momma, I feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren’t there today, they’re sick. Momma, we can’t go, there was a fire there last night. Momma, it’s a holiday
life and looked for a way to gain her freedom. Emily must endure her fathers
The power Emily's father has over Emily can be seen in a portrait of the two that the narrator describes: "Emily a slender woman in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip." (141) He does in fact control her like a horse, never allowing her to date anyone. And until his death she indeed does not.
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.
The first five years of Emily's life were spent in a small house in Kenosha Wisconsin. There she lived with her parents Martin and Kris and their golden retriever Shyla which they had gotten 4 years prior. Her dad left every morning for work at Evinrude and her mom stayed home with her all day. Emily turned 3 then she started going to a Lutheran School for 3k and then 4k. Also at the age of 3 Emily had experienced something she didn't know much about before. On April 27th 2004 her brother Sam was born. Emily did not have any other siblings so she did not know what was happening. She did not know why a little boy was coming to live with them. Later she came to realize that was her brother Sam and what it meant to be a big sister.
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.
Emily’s father controlled her life and when he died she insisted that he had not. “She told them that her father was not dead.” (Faulkner 302) This is when the reader can begin to see that something is not right with Emily. She clings to her father’s body, controlling him the only way she could after he controlled her for her entire life. Emily’s young years were ruined by her father driving off all the young men who would call on her, making her feel unable to fit in socially. As a result, she had no friends to help her cope, and her only close family had died. She blamed her father for leaving her alone, which is why, when Homer Barron showed some interest in her, she was able to move on from her father and obsess about him. I think that the majority of people would agree that keeping a dead body in your house would indicate some type of mental
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.
who had lost the person she really knew. This repression of Emily’s father dying was
Homer was in place of her father, but seeing that Emily ended up taking his life she had been impervious to any true feelings for the guy. She wanted to almost “redo” what had happened with her father. However, this time she would be able to keep the body seeing as nobody would know Homer was her in house. Her relationship with Homer had reflected her relationship with her father. For example, “Like her father, he carries a “Whip in a yellow glove” when they ride through the streets during their “courtship” (Polk 82). There is tiny details that remind her of her father, she is not affected by the fact that it is not her father, but rather Homer Barren. Emily did not want to give up her father’s body but the authorities had forced her too. Eventually after killing Homer, she kept the body. This was significant because she had wanted to keep her father’s body orginally. As stated in the story, there was evidence that Emily had been laying next to Homer’s body in bed by the imprint in the pillow. This was “the extent to her Oedipal dream” (Polk 82). In other words, her sexual desires of her father from being raised that way. Homer Barren was known to be also a father-surrogate (Polk 82). After her father’s death she is able to keep Homer’s body at least unlike her father’s body and she is able to somewhat “consummates” the Opedipal dream she had (Polk 82). She shows she is impervious by being able to keep the body upstairs in the bedroom all those years. She was not affected by the knowledge at all. The relationship with Homer Barren had been reflected with her relationship with her father. “Those who attended Emily’s funeral some forty years after Homer’s death saw a crayon portrait of her father “musing profoundly” over her coffin” (402) There was another reference to the painting as the people entering her bedroom saw Homer’s remains, Faulker described the skull confronting the
Due to depression, Emily did not leave her house a lot because she did not want to be around anyone. After she poisoned and killed her husband she is seen for the “last time.” The author describes Emily as, “she has grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-grey” (Faulkner 4). She was beginning to not care about what anyone thinks about her anymore. The only person that she needed to impress is now dead, so she has no reason to care.
However, the nature of the crime paired with the protagonist’s behavior leaves you wondering what psychological trauma Emily must have endured to be able to commit a crime as reprehensible as that. In Staton’s analysis of A Rose for Emily, he claims that the protagonist “feeds of Homer” because “she has taken into herself the violence in [her father] which thwarted her and has reenacted it.” (Literary Theories in Praxis 275). Going back to the image we have of Emily’s father scaring off interested men with a horsewhip while guarding Emily’s white figure, we see this not as simply protective, but oppressive, according to Fang. He claims that Emily’s father is “depriv[ing] Emily of her woman's happiness and isolat[ing] her from the outside world.” (DU). By refusing Emily of any male interaction, her father is creating an irreparable disconnect when forming natural, normal attachments and friendships within Emily as well as creating insecurities and self-confidence issues within her, making her believe that it’s not any man that’s not good enough, but Emily who is not good
Emily’s isolation is evident because after the men that cared about her deserted her, either by death or simply leaving her, she hid from society and didn’t allow anyone to get close to her. Miss Emily is afraid to confront reality. She seems to live in a sort of fantasy world where death has no meaning. Emily refuses to accept or recognize the death of her father, and the fact that the world around her is changing.
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