Throughout life, a person can bear so much pain that can whirl its way into becoming a heart breaking tragedy. “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that.” (302) “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is about a girl named Emily Grierson who faces a tragedy, leading to the unraveling of her life. Emily’s father has died and she has to worry about paying taxes when she was originally told they were not her problem. After mourning for her dead father she meets a boy named Homer Barron, and Emily begins to like him. Everyone was worried about what she was doing. Emily buys arsenic and the town rumors have it that she is going to kill herself. To change the scene and make it look like a wedding, Emily buys a couple of things like man's toilet set and clothing and people think she is getting married. When Homer entered the house, he never came out. Emily is dead downstairs, and Homer’s skeleton is found in Emily’s bedroom upstairs room that has been locked for over 40 years and laying there is an indented pillow of a head and a long strand of gray hair. William Faulkner …show more content…
For Emily, it is love at first sight. She instantly fell head over heels in love with him. Nobody really liked Homer and people in the town did not accept him since he was a laborer and came from the North. The town’s people said, “Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer” (302). It seems here that Homer isn’t accepted by the town and people seemingly did not have much thought and respect for Emily’s family. This also demonstrates how Emily was the only person to be accepting of Homer while the rest of the town didn’t accept him, but soon Emily would want Homer by her side for the rest of his life. He wants readers to understand how people can be rejected from society because of where they come from, and how it can affect and lead their
Originally when the community found out Emily was interested in Homer, they were happy that she had found someone because she seemed hopeless. However, the happiness did not last long. The townspeople began to feel
Faulkner says, Emily buys Arsenic from the druggist and the next day Homer is seen entering her home and that was the last time anyone ever saw him or Emily for some time. No one but the negro servant left the house. (Faulkner 455) Emily kills Homer because she doesn’t want him to leave her. If he’s dead, he can’t run
Several times it is mentioned that he drove all her suitors away because no one was good enough for her in his mind. This showing of love from Emily's father has proven to be more harmful than it is helpful. After her father's death, Emily somewhat begins to panic. She no longer had that leader or figure of total control and dominance in her life. This leads us to Homer Barron which Emily hopes will fulfill her feeling of isolation.
Paloma Cerda Mrs. Koehler ENGL-1301-566 September 20, 2017 In A Rose for Emily written by William Faulkner, the story of Miss Emily is told through a very loose format. Through this narration, there is a long and drawn out suspense built up through little hints left by the reader without fully giving away the dark truth behind Emily and her house. Until the end of the story, the narrators ambiguity cleverly points the reader towards the climax of the story where Emily is discovered to be Homer Barron’s killer. This ambiguous element is important to the quality of this short story as it drives it forward and keeps the reader interested.
Not only that, as Homer becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, it scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. Even though Emily is from the high class family, it does not mean that she is living up to the pleasant lifestyle. As a matter of fact, she is actually living a gloomy and desolate life, which is essentially the opposite lifestyle expected for Emily's rank in society by the townspeople. Although Emily once represented a great southern tradition centering on the landed gentry with their vast holdings and considerable resources, Emily's legacy has devolved, making her more a duty and an obligation than a romanticized vestige of a dying order.
“We remembered all the young men her father had driven away” (453). Miss Emily’s father drove away young men interested in her, not allowing her to have a love life and therefore a life outside of him. This controlling treatment of Miss Emily by Mr. Grierson coincides with Emily’s fight to control her love life with Homer. “Because Homer himself had remarked - he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club - that he was not a marrying man” (454). If it weren’t for the fact that Miss Emily murdered Homer, he would have left her, therefore she used the murder as a way to keep him close to
Homer Barron is described as “a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” (Faulkner 4). No woman wants to feel as if they’re unattractive, especially when it comes to someone they like in an intimate way. However, Emily’s problem wasn’t that she was unattractive because according to Faulkner, she was quite beautiful in her youth. The ultimate issue did not lie on Emily, but on Homer Barron because of his odd remark that he liked men. Emily must have been confused and a tad bit sad to find out that the man she liked didn’t like her back.
Homer Barron, another main character in the text, is a foreman from the North. In the story, Homer is first introduced when there was construction going on the same pavement of Emily’s house. Emily Grierson seemed to have fallen deeply for him, but things seemed to go from better to worse quickly. For example, the following line states that the people of the town had suspicions about his sexual orientation. As Faulkner stated, “…because Homer himself had remarked – he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club – that he was not a marrying man.”
In Love and In Death William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, centers around a reclusive woman named Emily Grierson who is the protagonist of this story. Emily lives in Jefferson, Mississippi with her strict and over protective father who turns away any male suitor who shows any interest in her as he believes them to be unfit for his daughter. Emily and her father are regarded as upper-class southerners who live in a very nice home. The townspeople see Emily as a mysterious individual, often pitting her.
“A Rose for Emily” is a unique short story that keeps the reader guessing even though its first sentence already reveals the majority of the content. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is the epitome of a work that follows an unconventional plot structure and a non-linear timeline, but this method of organization is intentional, as it creates suspense throughout the story. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” follows an unusual plot structure, which creates an eccentric application of suspense to a short story. Throughout the story, there are no clear indications of standard plot structure in each section, such as intro, climax, and denouement. Instead, there are sections, which are not in chronological order, that describe a particular conflict or event, which in turn creates suspense, as each conflict builds upon each other to make the reader question the overall context and organization of the story.
The study attempts to check the style of William Faulkner in his story A Rose for Emily. The story is talking about the tragic life of the character Miss Emily Grierson and presenting her personal conflict which is rooted in her southern identity (Meyer,1996: 56). This paper is going to adopt an integrated approach of language and literature in its analysis. Thus, the present study is going to adopt the stylistic model of short (1996) for the purposes of linguistic analysis. The focus of the study is to show and analyze the following themes: given vs. new information, definite and indefinite articles, deixis, value-laden expressions and endophoric vs. exophoric references.
Homer worked for a construction company with niggers while Miss Emily came from a fortunate family. The reaction of the community is that she is better than him, not realizing that they should be able to love whoever they want, without any rules or social
Emily Grierson is from the story "A Rose for Emily"and is the main character. In a story, you usually have a protagonist which is the hero or main character of the story and also an antagonist which is pretty much the bad guy. Well in "A Rose for Emily," she is both protagonist and antagonist. Emily is qualified to be the antagonist because she murdered Homer Barron. Murder is quite a big deal and would definitely go under as being the bad guy.
A literary analysis on who is the narrator: The Narrator in A Rose for Emily is First Person Plural There is a mystery that seems to be unsolved throughout the years. Many important and influential literature critics have tried to discover who is the narrator in A Rose for Emily. After an extensive period of research, the mystery of who the narrator is has been solved. There are different points of view and information collected by the main narrator.
This story looks like a horror one because the main character becomes monstrous, a woman who kills her lover and lives with his corpse for forty years. Why would Homer Barron – “a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” - be interested in Emily if he is supposed to be gay? The narrator states that he is homosexual: “he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club” . Is this the reason why Emily killed him? Did she feel betrayed?