A Tragic Experience in A Rose for Emily - Book Report/Review Example

?Topic: “A Rose for Emily” “A Rose for Emily” is a short story written by William Faulkner that highlights the life of Emily who is eccentric and poor. The story is short and fictional and describes the life of Emily that somewhat resembles the life of the author himself. Through Emily, the author is attempting to convey his personal feeling, emotions and experience. The short story “A rose for Emily” starts with the funeral of Emily and then gets backwards to her life history. Before the death of Emily, none had entered the house for 10 years. Emily in her course of life lost her father and lover and was living an aloof life. We have sympathy for Emily but cannot really have a deep visual about her life. Anyway, it was obvious from her life that she had spent a tragic life mainly filled with skepticism and tragedy (Thesis). Emily has never lived an independent life. All she had was poverty and the house that her father left before his death. Emily was always under the control of her father and did not find a suitable partner to live with. Her father always wanted to control her and in this struggle she was left all alone after her father’s death. After her father’s death she was not paying tax and she kept herself away from the township. Later she met Homer and fell in love with him, but killed him with arsenic and continued to keep his rotten body with her. Describing the poverty of Emily The poverty of Emily is described here with the criticism from various authors and each one is as follows. 1) Father’s hidden body From my analysis of the short story “A Rose for Emily”, we may gauge the character of her as a psychopath. She is definitely a case of mentally unstable woman, and people did not have much connection with her, hence none could acknowledge her disorder. This is the understanding of mine and this thought of mine is similar to that of the criticism of Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. Both of these authors conducted an evaluation of the story of Faulkner and claimed that Emily is a pathological case. A normal person would not hide the body of another person from the public sight. The stench coming from home could be that of her father’s hidden dead body. She loved her father as they shared a nice and warm relationship with each other and she was barely able to accept her father’s death. She loved him because he provided for her life and comforted her and also handed over the house to her. However, both authors feel that the story lacks justification and meaning as Faulkner was only keen on narrating the psychopath nature of Emily. It is a fact what authors have said because even I feel that the story looks incomplete in some way. According to Brooks and Warren, “Miss Emily is obviously a pathological case. The narrator indicates plainly enough that people felt that she was crazy.” Emily here does not have an identity or characterization since the author intends mainly to portray her as a victim of the dominating world of men. 2) Homosexual Homer Emily loved Homer and her character evoked piety and sympathy from her contemporaries. Emily killed Homer just after one year of their alleged love relationship. She sleeps with the dead body of Homer, which is rotting in the bed in a room upstairs. Here we can perceive the state of Emily as abnormal, where she is mentally disordered and shows signs of a pathological condition. Here we can understand that Emily killed Homer because he was a homosexual. She believed that Homer was still alive and for that reason she hugs his decayed body and sleeps. She killed Homer because she could not accept the fact that he was homosexual. According to critic Ray West, Homer was an unheroic figure and Emily had a resisting quality which can be mentioned as “heroic.” According to West< “Her tragic flaw is the conventional pride: she undertook to regulate the natural time-universe.” Emily never wanted the time to move on as she wished to cuddle up with the body of her dead lover. The Barron Homer and Emily did have an affair and he was a popular person in the township. By killing Homer, she assured that Homer was hers and nobody could anymore hold authority on him. It could be her attempt to stop the natural law and order of the Universe from functioning. However, the murder of Homer occurs on the account of his sexual orientation. Emily did not want to share her love with anyone and she killed him. 3) Emily’s nonpayment of tax Emily in this short story is not paying tax unlike others. The reason I think why Emily is not paying tax is because she is from an aristocratic family. In earlier times, it might have been a custom for certain aristocratic families not to pay tax. Here Emily is portraying the pride of the family and their status .Moreover, Emily was not left with any money by her father while dying. She has no money to pay the tax and is obviously unable to pay it. Since the death of her father, Emily has been left like an orphan and she was also showing the symptoms of a psychopath. According to Strandberg, “With his customary economy of style Faulkner indicates Emily's huge burden of psychological determinism in a visual image—"a tableau” (indented Quote). The people in the township know Emily as the one who does not pay tax. Since Emily was mentally ill and orphan, the mayor exempted her from paying the tax. Since the short story is of a Gothic and horror theme, the living circumstances of Emily are ghostly. People did not visit her and due to her mentally unstable condition, she was pardoned by the court. However, Emily thought she was rich and needed not pay taxes. She is under an assumption that still she has the privilege like in her father’s age. Anyway the reality is the opposite, where Emily did not have any monetary wealth apart from that house. 4) Fear of Change The life of Emily has been completely stagnant after the death of her father and the killing of Homer. Before the death of her father, she was sheltered and provided by her father. Once he died, Emily was shocked and mentally disoriented. Moreover, Emily needed to maintain her status and privilege as a rich family. However, she was dependant from birth and now she was skeptical about her life and future. Emily found it hard to live without a companion and that is the reason why she hid the body of her father at home. In order to maintain the constant flow of love, she tried to accompany the dead body of her father and also remained aloof from the public. Emily, in a way, was craving for love and affection. As per Gioia, “Miss Emily seems starved for affection and emotionally desperate enough to risk censure from the town when she took Homer Barron as her lover.” With the disappearance of her father’s body, Emily tried to move on by searching a lover herself. That is how she met Homer and continued to move on with the relationship for one year. She wanted a timeless and eternal love from someone and death of her father shocked her deeply. And when she came to know about Homer’s sexual orientation, she had no choice but to kill him. When she found out that even Homer was less affectionate to her, she lost all hope and poisoned him. 5) Life of Emily and Faulkner “A Rose for Emily” is a short story which reflects, to an extent, the life and sorrow of its author William Faulkner. This short story is written with background of a city, which is author’s hometown. The main character of the story is Emily, and she is living in the same city as that of the author. Here we can feel the connection of author’s life and Emily’s one to some extent. Both Emily and Faulkner existed in poverty and this is one common attribute of Faulkner and Emily’s life. Here the author is also living under the control of his father. Emily lived under the order of her father and author also lived under the control of his father, which is an overstressing situation. According to Van O’Connor, “Stressing or rather over-stressing historical and sociological, or regional, aspects of Faulkner's fiction, even when the mythic qualities are acknowledged, leads to distorting the more basic intention of many, perhaps most, of the stories—to reading them somehow as documents in a legendary history of the South.” Both the author and Emily had suffocation and frustration living under the strict control of their fathers. This to some extent has affected their mental and physical wellbeing. The author is attempting to share the agony he has experienced in his life through Emily – the main character of the story. Faulkner was not educated either like the female character Emily in the short story. He could not gain a high school diploma like Emily due to their living situation. The author experienced a lot of rejection in his early life like Emily. Emily had no outside connection with the world and her only support was her father. Even her lover hesitates to marry her, which culminated in his murder by Emily herself. Conclusion Emily Grison has a tragic experience throughout her life time. The short story by Faulkner here is of a gothic and horror filled nature. The whole theme of the story is ghostly and Emily spent the whole life in her house accompanied by her father’s and lover’s dead bodies. The author has made references of symbolic nature to the character of Emily. Her appearance gets despair with time and there appears disintegration to the mental balance of this woman. The author himself acknowledges the pressure of time on Emily Grieson. The short story of Faulkner tells about a family with an insane background. Her picturization is a woman with a severe mental illness and deformity in psychological condition. The father of Emily regarded himself more worthy than he really was, and held a fictitious honor and pride about him in his mind. For the very same reason, Emily refused to pay tax after the death of her father. Her father also denied any courtship for Emily even when she was of a marital age. This might have had a negative impact on the psychological and physiological wellbeing of Emily. In the whole story, Emily craved for love and affection. The whole people in the town believed that Emily should be married, but the ignorance of her father made her live under a pressurized situation. “After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” Basically the whole story depicts the tragedy and loneliness faced by Emily throughout her life. Works Cited Brook, C." A Rose for Emily." wps.ablongman.com. Appleton Century crofts, 1959. Web. 1 June 2012. . Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." flightline.highline.edu. Flightline, 1930. Web. 2 June 2012. . Gioia, Dana. "A Rose for Emily." ablongman.com. N.p., 2001. Web. 2 June 2012. . O'Connor, William V. "A Rose for Emily." ablongman.com. Charles E. Merill Publishing Company, 1970. Web. 2 June 2012. . Strandberg, Victor. "A Rose for Emily." ablongman.com. N.p., 1999. Web. 2 June 2012. . West, Ray B. "A Rose for Emily." ablongman.com. Ed. Linda W. Wagner. Michigan State University Press, 1973. Web. 1 June 2012. . Read More