Astrid Ndong English 1302 P. Holton Research Paper 4 Lost Soul William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” is a short story about a woman named Emily Grierson who’s life had been controlled by his father. She also had to deal with his mental abuse that was a result of her father’s domineering personality. The outcome of her not experiencing life and her father’s authority results in Emily’s incapacity to interact with society and have a normal life. The central idea of this story is that there’s a time in life where people should let go of the past and live the parent in order to have a healthy life and be happy. Faulkner introduces Emily’s character as a dominant and stubborn woman. The townspeople refused to confront her about the smell coming from her house. However, they put lime to handle the odor. “So next night, after midnight, four men cross Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house... they broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings” (Faulkner 264). Her attitude is also presented when the pharmacist gave her arsenic even though she didn’t give him a valid reason for its use. Emily was trying to find a replacement for her father’s death and Homer was the authoritarian character for that. She had a strong love for Homer that she wanted to have him around for ever; that’s why later on he decides to kill him and keep the body in his house. No one questioned the cause of Homer’s death even tough he disappeared and was found found dead in Emily’s Faulkner’s use of this time-period gave the reader an understanding to the values and beliefs of the characters in the story. The class system of the time was well shown. A negro woman couldn’t walk the street without an apron. Emily lived in an antique house. “It was a big squarish house that had once been white...” (Faulkner 262). The house represents her inside emotions and hatred for change. The house went from being a white prestigious and luxurious house to a house that was now decaying. This may be a comparable thing to Emily’s life because at certain point of her life she was happy like the house once was nice and gorgeous; and now Emily is a depressed person. The setting also tell us how isolated Emily is. The neighborhood was at once very populated, but as the story describes she’s now the only person living there. The rest of the town is changing their lifestyle but she tries to keep things exactly the same. The house represents her security place because she doesn’t let anybody or any sun
In a “Rose for Emily”, Faulkner uses Emily’s house as a symbol of the barrier Emily forms between herself and society. As society moves through generations and changes over the years, Emily remains the same, within the borders of her own household. The house is described as “in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street”(125), but years passed and more modern houses had “obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood” (125). Faulkner set the house apart from the rest of the neighborhood, and Emily is described in the beginning as “a fallen monument” and a “tradition” indicating that she had not changed in an extended amount of time. The symbol of the house, remaining unchanged through the decades that passed becomes stronger when Emily does not permit tax collectors to pass through the threshold of the house, “She vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before”. Emily’s image of a “monument” to the community’s small society caused her to become exempt from the demands of the state that the rest of the population had to adhere to. Emily’s house enab...
William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" is perhaps his most famous and most anthologized short story. From the moment it was first published in 1930, this story has been analyzed and criticized by both published critics and the causal reader. The well known Literary critic and author Harold Bloom suggest that the story is so captivating because of Faulkner’s use of literary techniques such as "sophisticated structure, with compelling characterization, and plot" (14). Through his creative ability to use such techniques he is able to weave an intriguing story full of symbolism, contrasts, and moral worth. The story is brief, yet it covers almost seventy five years in the life of a spinster named Emily Grierson. Faulkner develops the character Miss Emily and the events in her life to not only tell a rich and shocking story, but to also portray his view on the South’s plight after the Civil War. Miss Emily becomes the canvas in which he paints the customs and traditions of the Old South or antebellum era. The story “A Rose For Emily” becomes symbolic of the plight of the South as it struggles to face change with Miss Emily becoming the tragic heroin of the Old South.
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
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.
At the beginning of the story, the reader learns that Miss Emily “is portrayed as ’a fallen monument,’… because she has shown herself susceptible to death (and decay) after all” (West 264). The house can also be perceived as a “fallen monument”(Faulkner 81) as the narrator proceeds to describe the house, magnificent as it once was, and how it has become dilapidated through the years. The same can be said about Miss Emily, as time passed she “looked bloated like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue”(Faulkner 82).
Concerning the contextualization of A Rose of Family as a sign of the times of women at that point, where cultural norms of women lead to a life in domestication. The recognition of the rose here as it is carefully placed in the title of the piece as well bears significance to the physical rose and what it meant to the young women in the South during the 1800s (Kurtz 40). Roses are generally given as tokens of love and affection by males to females. There are even remnants of it today where young lads also profess their love to women with roses; women still see it as an act of endearment towards them.
Emily had a servant so that she did not have to leave the house, where she could remain in solitary. The front door was never opened to the house, and the servant came in through the side door. Even her servant would not talk to anyone or share information about Miss Emily. When visitors did come to Emily’s door, she became frantic and nervous as if she did not know what business was. The death of Emily’s father brought about no signs of grief, and she told the community that he was not dead. She would not accept the fact that she had been abandoned because of her overwhelming fear. Emily’s future husband deserted her shortly after her father’s death. These two tragic events propelled her fear of abandonment forward, as she hired her servant and did not leave the house again shortly after. She also worked from home so that she never had a reason to leave. Emily did not have any family in the area to console in because her father had run them off after a falling out previously. She also cut her hair short to remind her of a time when she was younger and had not been deserted. Even though people did not live for miles of Emily Grierson, citizens began
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’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
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.
...left on what was once one of the most selected street. The house was alone on that street. Emily’s father had died and she was alone and didn’t know what to do. She found Homer Barron, but he claims he liked men and wasn’t a marrying type. She killed him because she didn’t want him to ever leave. She had nothing to fall back on. She eventually grows sick and dies. She died alone. The house and her were alone with nothing in the world to fall back on.
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...
...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.