The Possible Effects of Loving Persons Renunciation - Research Paper Example

Among huge variety of human feelings there is one that is able to push you to commonly ambiguous and illogical actions. The power of love is so tremendous that occasionally it may crash and mend a lot of destines simultaneously. The story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner tells about one-sided infatuation that dooms two lives to failure.The main heroine, Miss Emily Grierson, becoming a major object of citizens’ attention and gossips, is a woman with special perception of the world and strong ability to be attached.

Tenderly fostered and guarded by her father, Emily after his death stays alone in transmitted house, where she locks herself for many solitary years. Being so much fond of her relative, Miss Grierson does not accept the sorrowful news properly. When her neighbours came to her to express their condolences, Emily “met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face” (Faulkner 30). A woman refuses to consent with a thought of father’s decease, because pure love prevents her to part with a person, who has been in Emily’s life since her birth.

However, later on Emily’s heart captures image of foreman named Homer Barron that comes to Jefferson to pave the sidewalks. At one instant Miss Grierson becomes a victim of human’s prejudice, when folks start saying that “it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example for the young people” (Faulkner 32). Naive Emily, being stared by entire neighborhoods, creates a rosy dream with an idea of future marriage. All her farfetched plans were born by the pressure of neighbours’ rumours that “were sure that they were to be married” (Faulkner 32).

Decorated room, which citizens found after Emily’s funeral, symbolizes an extremely vigorous belief in happy issue: “a thin, acrid pall seemed to lie everywhere. upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things” (Faulkner 34). It is not just a random writer’s choice of colors in the mentioned passage; it is a clear evidence of Emily’s obsession and eagerness to get married with Homer, while he does not have the same plans, “remarking to younger men in the Elks’ Club that he was not a marrying man”.

With a lack of strength and courage to accept repudiation Emily makes decision to poison her lover. Though the writer does not persuade readers in Emily’s complicity to the murder, however, bought beforehand arsenic and concealment of man’s corpse in her house during almost forty years compel to reflect about the existence of woman’s motive. Miss Grierson’s problem was in her warm affection to foreman, who slightly managed to relieve her suffering after father’s death. Most likely, the presence of Homer Barron’s dead body in one of woman’s rooms created a thought of broken loneliness and helped Emily to live on.

The power of Emily’s feelings was so strong that it killed adequacy of her actions and affected woman’s psychical conditions.Consequently, William Faulkner in his short story describes the possible effects of loving person’s renunciation and crash of cherished dreams that manage to destroy human fate so drastically.Works CitedFaulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 10th ed. New York: Pearson, 2007. 28-34. Print.