William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily - Essay Example

In “A Rose for Emily”, the narrator has highlighted some of the extremes of isolation and seclusion which are the true reflections of Emily’s physical behavior and mental attitude towards herself, the relatives and the society in general. The character Emily is emerged as a true personified character which covered the main theme of the story under the umbrella of isolation. This feeling of being isolated led Emily to react in a certain way which kept everybody out of the enlarged circle drawn on the basis of isolation.

Thesis Statement “Emily’s life is a reflection of isolation that can be experienced from her acts, behaviors and attitudes.” In the story “A Rose for Emily”, the narrator presented several times the withdrawal of the character Emily. Emily withdrew herself from her close relatives even from her father, her lover, the community and townspeople around her. Every now and then the proofs of her seclusion from different people around her are found in the story. The script witnessed that Emily lived a substantial period of her life with his father only.

After her father’s departure, his lover entered into her life, entered into her house but never came out. The townspeople looked the corpse of her lover, Homer, after the death of Emily. There were no signs of Emily getting married to any man and involving herself towards creation of a family which also reflects as how badly she wanted to be stay away from the people. No women of the town had ever seen her house till… Her isolation with man and woman of the town can be observed in the beginning of the story where narrator describes the event of Emily’s funeral.

The narrator states that “The women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.” This shows that how unaware were the women of that town that even at this sad occasion, every women was looking at her house more than sharing grief of the death of Emily. To all the women, the personality of Emily was hidden and none of those women ever had any relationship wtih Emily. The other thing that can be observed from the narrator’s statement is that there was only a single servant, elder in age, had the duties of gardening and cooking.

This shows that not even a single woman ever entered into her house and maintained any sort of relationship with Emily. People of the town observed her presence very rarely even after… The story also depicts her isolated behavior of living in the town. For instance, at one point in the story, the narrator describes her persistent isolated behavior even after the death of her father and after the departure of her lover. Her father kept her away from the men till the end of his life. In this way, she remained isolated from men and it can be said that her young age was spoilt by her father.

There is also an evidence of her isolation when her lover disappeared from her life, which can be characterized as another incident of her isolation. The narrator states these lines in the story showing her isolation as “After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” These lines tell her isolation in many ways like isolation due to death of her father, isolation due to departure of her lover, and isolation due to lack of her interest towards the town as anyone hardly observed her presence in the town even after the disappearance of those people.

Emily had no interest towards… The reason behind her isolation was the way her father brought her up to stay away from the people especially from men. Even when was she was in her thirties, she was still single. The