The Role Of Conformity In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

Emily’s Mental Deterioration After getting over the initial shock of finding out that the mysterious woman that everyone was talking about was going to sleep each night with a decaying body next to her, it makes sense for the reader to question her mental state. If the reader took a closer look at the town’s description of her, they will realize that as time went on, Emily’s will power began to deteriorate. When she was young, she was the topic of everybody’s conversation, however, she did not let that bother her and walked down the streets with her head held high. Emily took over the old house after her father’s death and kept a few servants around to keep the house tidy, nonetheless, the outside of the house was not kept in the best of conditions.

Emily was growing old. Her hair was shortening and turning gray. Soon after realizing that “Homer was not the marrying man” and that he would much rather spend his time with young male mates, Emily decided to retaliate. In order to not lose what she thought was the love of her life, Emily went down to the nearest drug store and bought some rat poison and gave it to Homer. Homer died and Emily kept his body in the upstairs room where no one would dare to go.

Just as they were about to resort to law and force she breaks down and buried her father quickly.” (Faulkner 453) Miss Emily tries to keep her father’s body so she isn’t left lonely. She tries to keep him until the townspeople basically force her to bury him. The second reason Miss Emily may be crazy and mentally ill is because she kills Homer Baron.

Many people, when they are depressed, want distance to just be alone. Sadly, a lot of these people do end up taking their lives. This was the fear for the towns people because Emily had become such a figure for the

However, the love is unrequited which leaves Emily in a crisis because she is terrified of being alone. Before he can leave her, Emily kills him and keeps his body in her bed for the years to come. The narrator describes, "the body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long

Throughout the story, Emily has mental health issues. She is described as "sickly" and "frail," and she becomes increasingly reclusive as she ages. Her behavior is erratic, and she is living in her own world, detached from reality. The townspeople view her as a curiosity, and they are fascinated by her strange behavior. However, they also fear her, and they are quick to gossip about her behind her back.

“A Rose for Emily” is a dark, suspenseful Gothic tale in which a young girl is put on a pedestal by a town who sees her as haughty and scornful. Miss Emily Grierson’s father controls her and her love life, pushing away all people until he dies and Emily is left alone. As her life goes on the townspeople watch her and judge Emily, almost turning her life into a spectacle to be talked about. At her death, a gruesome sight is unfolded when her lover of over forty years ago is found decomposed in her upstairs room. William Faulkner effectively builds epic suspense in “A Rose for Emily” by the unchronological order of the story, the treatment of Emily’s father towards her, and her family’s history of mental illness.

As a young girl, Emily is cut off socially by her father who drove off all her suitors. When he dies she refuses to accept his death for three days, “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.” After the three days, the townspeople intervened and buried her father

The despair she had retained caused her to mourn in an abnormal fashion. The author makes one think that Emily’s love had passed, but really “what was left of him, [was] rotted beneath what was left of [that] nightshirt” (Faulkner 6). They had identified that his disappearance was false. He really had been murdered, they also “noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head,” Emily had murdered her once lover; she acted upon her loss in a cruel way (Faulkner 6). After experiencing only two losses Emily had become a new person, an outcast to

The indention and long strand of gray hair shows that Emily was lonely enough to sleep with a skeleton of someone who did not reciprocate her love. Homer may have threatened to leave her which would have left her to be alone again. The feeling of someone leaving her reminded her of her father’s death. When her father died Emily refused to even admit he was dead, “for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.” (560)

He can not handle all the trauma he went through and commits suicide to finally make them stop. Emily is not any different since she also suffers from depression. Due to being left alone all her life she became isolated to the point that, “she went out very little… people hardly saw her at all” (Faulkner 1). A key point in depression is isolation. The sadness she felt had accumulated to the point where she could no longer face people anymore.

She is mentally disturbed, and driven to her act by insanity. Miss Emily kills her victim, Barron, to keep him around because she truly loves him and she does not want to let go. Both protagonists have a distorted perception of

When Emily’s body was found dead, her servant for someone who is visiting and as soon as he realizes she is dead he “walk[s] through the house and out the back and [is] never seen again.” To him he thinks that the town is going to blame him for Emily’s death even if he didn’t do it. He believes the town is going to kill him because that’s what they did back

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

When she could not keep him, Miss Emily killed him, in order to preserve her fragile illusion of a time long