A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner - Essay Example

A Rose For Emily Introduction “A Rose for Emily” is a short story written by William Faulkner and it takes place in a fictional The of the story according to the author was a salutation to a woman who ended up in tragedy who could have been handed a rose. The story starts with the funeral of Emily Grierson who was a member of aristocratic family. Emily had been living with her father in Antebellum but even after his death she could not accept this fact. Later she has an affair with a gentleman called Homer but later he disappears from the city. However after some years she dies and the people find the rotten body of Homer in her bed. The story explains that Emily got isolated and insane because of her Father which led her to kill her love and later die in agony.( Thesis). Emily had lived with her Father till he died and she never wanted to accept that she lost her father. As per (Fang 18-24) “ In “A Rose for Emily”, Emily is such a tragic figure who forever lives under her father’s domination, even after his death. But her insanity started with her father’s death and went on to escalate later in life”. Her father never allowed anyone to court Emily and he contributed to her isolation. Later she got used to the lonely lifestyle and lived in isolation. After, her Father’s death she embraced isolation to lighten up her life. For example, she did not even take time to throw out the people who come to collect tax but order to throw them out. She also did not hold a civil conversation with them. She also did not communicate with her community and never went out. This in a way supported her. Because of her isolated life people thought of her as a weak women but she was strong inside. She could kill Homer and pretend to be naïve and isolation allowed her to keep her secrets. The root cause of all her problems had been her father. She is isolated from her city, relatives and people around her. Her alienation from love has led her to insanity. Emil’s isolation is evident because after her Father death, she felt deserted and hid from the society and embraced loneliness. As per ( Faulkner 129) “After her fathers death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all”. Emily is a character who did not want to confront the reality. She lives in a fantasy world and where death has no meaning. Emily refused to accept that the life around her is changing and she wants to fondle the memories of her fast forgetting the present. After her father’s death she did not go out much and her servant did all outside chores. The seventy four years of Emily’s life was dominated by loneliness. She never lived in harmony and people believed that the aristocratic life of her led to isolation. Otherwise, she would have lived more closely with people around her. Being the only daughter of a noble family, she was over protected by her father and hence she was alone until she was thirty. As per ( Burg 377-392) “Left with almost nothing and still not married by the age of thirty, Emily found herself an object of pity rather than envy among the townspeople”. Actually Emily gradually liked isolation more and more. She helped herself to isolate by thinking that she was above others and should not communicate with all people around her. For example, the house remained closed all the time and she hardly got out of house. Her black servant did all of her shopping and she did not let anyone in to her house. She was from a noble family and need to keep her social status and socializing with other people in the city was not an ideal choice for her. She chose to remain in the city even when she knew she could not fit in it. If she wanted she could have moved to a place where people did not know about her social status and live more free. But she isolated herself and lived in an insane environment. For instance, her isolation from the world was such that even the odor emanating from her home was unknown to her. As per ( Faulkner 120) “From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting”. She isolated herself because she was living under her Father’s protection and could not accept any man in her life. Her father has always rejected all men entering her life. So gradually she was attached to her Father and could not accept any man in her life. As per (Kim 1-13 ) “Emily is motivated above all by a refusal to accept change. Her life teaches her that change brings loss. She fails to adjust to a world almost completely transformed during her lifetime” She never tried to change her lifestyle but maintained the same pattern of life and chained herself to pain and loneliness. For instance, she never tried to meet people or meet a man to change her lonely life. When the whole society around her changed she remained the same. She could try to change if she wanted and could go for walks and be more socializing with people in town. Her isolation was relieved when she met Homer and everybody thought they would marry. They went out together and even she bought a toilet set for him with his initials in silver. For example she started going out with Home and visited shops and places of social interest. The people could see the couple everywhere. But, when she realized that Homer is not a guy who would settle in life but she wanted to keep him forever. For her, the only solution was to kill him as she did not want to lose a second man in her life. After the death of her father, her lover leaving her was not an option for Emily. She killed him because she loved him and did not want him to go far away from her. As per (Bolin )“In “A Rose for Emily,” the collapse and the inner truth are contained within Emily’s house, the inner world, which is separated from the outer world”.Homer was her only hope of happiness and a way to communicate with outside world. Homer wanted to leave her and she killed him to keep him with her. She was in love with Homer Barron for a year and was the only man she loved after her father. It was unfortunate for her to know that Homer was a homosexual. She was afraid that another man would take him away from her. It was also an exercising of power on Homer because she was controlled by her Father all of her life, this time she took the power over and killed him. As per ( Faulkner 56) “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. 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." Conclusion The Story “A Rose for Emily” is one which talks about the isolated life of Emily and how she brought upon her destruction through her actions. Being a loner most of her life, her only support was her father. After his death she became alienated from the world and she started becoming insane day by day. Emily could not accept her Father’s death and did not believe it for three days. She did not have any man in life as her father never allowed any man to enter her life. So when he died she was locking herself at home and living in an illusion.However, later in life she met Homer and fell in love and all in town thought they were planning to get married. However when Homer disappeared from the city, little did the people knew that his body will be seen on her home after her death. But later after her death people found his rotten body in her room. The life of Emily can be only explained as one which waned in isolation. Emily never has any contact with outside world and being mentally unstable she could not accept realities of life Work Cited Burg, Jennifer. "Using Constraint Logic Programming to Analyze." Kluwer Academic Publishers. 34 (2000): 377-92. Print Bolin, Michael. "The Decay of the South: Duality and Containment in “A Rose for Emily”."http://ue.ucdavis.edu. UC Davis, 2009. Web. 5 Apr. 2014. . Fang, Du. "Who Makes a Devil out of a Fair Lady?" Canadian Social Science 3.4 (2007): 18-24. Print. Kim, Ji W. "Narrator as Collective We:The Narrative Structure of "A Rose for Emily"1." English Language & Literature Teaching 17.4 (2011): 1-13. Print. Read More