A Rose for Emily

Heydi Honderman
English 101 M-W 5:25-6:50pm
Sally Olivas
23 April 2013
Till death do us part? When it comes to getting married, it is the happiest moment that every girl dreams of because it’s the day where love is in the air and a moment where two lovers connect and become one until death pulls them apart. They always say a bride gets cold feet on the night before her wedding. In this case, Miss Emily Grierson just doesn’t get cold feet, but also becomes a cold-hearted killer who murders her fiancé to fulfill her bridal fantasy of a wedding she will never have. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner builds shocking surprises that will leave you speechless. Or so you think. Therefore, the twist is that the surprise isn’t really a surprise because Faulkner gives us clues throughout the story by using characterization to describe Emily’s characteristics, situational irony to lead us to the twist of the surprise, and diction to explain the attitude towards the town. Using these, Faulkner leads us to think twice about Emily’s deadly and mysterious personality. In the beginning of the story, Faulkner uses the people from Emily’s town as narrators to talk about Emily’s physical and mental characteristic after her death. He uses characterization to describe Emily’s attitude towards the town and how bad her fame was. The townsmen mention physical characteristics by describing her as a really huge old lady who had no friends which symbolizes the loneliness she felt. They also describe her mental characteristic as rude because she believed that she could’ve done whatever she wanted just because her father was rich and didn’t have to pay taxes, and as insane because would sleep next to a dead body. They would talk about how she held her head high to demand “the recognition of her dignity” (Faulkner 34). Faulkner connects characterization to the surprise of finding Homer’s corpse in a room that has been locked up for four decades because by Emily keeping her father’s corpse, one can clearly see how insane she was. So the readers would expect that from Emily. Only insane people would convince themselves that a dead body is still alive, and keeping her father’s body proves her mental illness and is a huge clue that Faulkner gives. She kept the father’s corpse until the city authorities were close “to resort law and force” to dispose the body immediately because of the awful smell (Faulkner 27). The situational irony Faulkner uses is to lead the reader on to the surprise and makes them go back to the story to connect the clues to put the surprise together. As if it was a puzzle that had to be put together. Yet, the reader knew all along that the surprise at the end wasn’t such a shocker because all the signs point to how crazy Emily was. Faulkner leads the readers to the surprise by not expecting Emily to buy the arsenic, which is rat poison, especially when she doesn’t give the reason why. This shows Faulkner wanted the readers to think about why Emily bought the arsenic. Then as soon as the city authorities discover the corpse of Homer Barron laying on a bed in a room that Emily had locked up, the reader can go back to Part IV and come to a conclusion that Emily bought the arsenic to poison him when the townsmen mentioned that it was the last they “saw of Homer Barron” (Faulkner 48). The reader also doesn’t expect when the city authorities notice that the pillow next to Homer’s “fleshless” body, had the “indentation of a head” and “a long strand of iron-gray hair” on it (Faulkner 63). This situational irony takes the readers back to Emily’s characterization of her insanity, especially when the city authorities mention that the room looked like a honeymoon suite for the never wedded couple. Therefore the readers know that the only reason she poisoned Homer was because she didn’t want to feel the loneliness her father caused her when he passed away. So she killed him to fulfill the bridal fantasy that she’s always dreamed of. This is where Faulkner uses situational irony to connect the surprise and prove that it truly isn’t a surprise because these clues make the readers think about how buying the arsenic and Homer’s disappearance leads to his death, how Emily’s insanity leads to keeping Homer’s body locked up in a room, and how finding the strand of hair and indented pillow leads to Emily sleeping next to a dead body. Faulkner’s diction in the story specifies Emily’s personality and attitude to show the readers that she believed she could control the town due to the fact that she didn’t have to pay taxes and believed that her high social class was “a little too high” than everyone else’s (Faulkner 25). By using the word “vanquished” in Part II, Faulkner shows that Emily had some sort of authority over the city authorities because she “vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years ago…” (Faulkner 15). Miss Emily didn’t literally vanquish the tax collectors; she rudely kicked them off her property because she was tired that everyone kept asking her to pay her taxes. This connects to the false surprise because Faulkner shows the readers that Emily technically was the bully of the town because she wouldn’t give explanations to the tax collectors and wouldn’t give a reason of why she bought the arsenic. All she would tell the tax collectors is “’I have no taxes in Jefferson… see Colonel Sartoris.’ (Colonel Sartoris had been dead for ten years.)” Which shows that she had some authority of Colonel Sartoris to not make her pay her taxes (Faulkner 14). Monument is a memorial statue giving a positive effect of those to be remembered, but in the story, Faulkner uses the words “fallen monument” to describe the town’s negative effect on Emily. This shows the readers that Emily had some kind of bad fame in the town. It connects to the surprise because it leads readers to think of why the town looked at her from a negative viewpoint. This makes the readers expect a shocking ending which turns out to be an expected surprise. The last choice of words that Faulkner uses to build the surprise and connect the reader is when the town’s people talk about how Miss Emily is supposed to be “noblesse oblige” which means she is supposed to act with kind and generosity because she was in a higher social class than the rest. On the contrary, Emily was just a grumpy old lady with no friends and had a mysterious behavior, as if she had something to hide. This builds the surprise by showing the readers that Emily didn’t care about nobody but herself. So therefore, she poisons Homer to live her eternal bridal fantasy. All these clues show readers on how Emily was and how the surprise wasn’t a surprise at all because all these little details pointed out huge signs about Homer’s death, how he was murdered, having his corpse locked up in a room for forty years, and how the room he was in resembled to a honeymoon suite. Her characterization proved on how insanely sick she was and the town expressed about her. The situational irony pointed to the signs of the murder and the disappearance of Homer. Finally, how Faulkner used diction to show the somewhat authority Emily had on the town and how her personality gave out clues on becoming a cold-blooded killer. I guess getting cold feet wasn’t enough for Miss Emily. She wanted more than a simple “I do.” She wanted to bring Homer even closer than they ever were and to literally never leave his side. Weddings can be the greatest dream for every girl, but can also become a twisted fantasy to those who would kill for love. Miss Emily Grierson wished for nothing more but to relive her bridal dream and to be next to the mad she supposedly love, Homer Barron, for the rest of her life. She could kiss goodbye to the wedding she never had, and is to have and hold, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, through sickness and in health, till death do us part. In Emily’s case, death just brought the never wedded couple closer than ever before.

Work cited
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Google 17 April, 2013 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html