Emily is a lonely, obstinate and abnormal woman. She is hard to accept those who she loved leave her, like her father and the labor. She even killed Homer Barron, kept his body in the room and slept with the body every night—just because Homer Barron didn’t want marry her. By…
Ms. Emily Grierson, a well know figure in her community has a lot of controversy surrounding her. Known for being reserved and quiet, Ms. Emily is considered to be the local crazy person. Her family is known for having members with mental illnesses, and she is quite bizarre also. After her love interest Homer is found dead in her house, everyone wonders if Ms. Emily killed him. Ms. Emily never really got the chance to have a male companion in her life, so when she met Homer Baron she fell in love. Homer showed Ms. Emily attention and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, therefore she had no need to murder him.…
The narrator starts with a flash back telling us about her. Then telling the events in her life, and how she killed homer. Then what she did with the body, over the years.…
The people of the town noticed the obvious lack of independence in Miss Emily’s life before her father passed. “We remembered all the young men that her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” After the death of her father, she was faced with the reality of needing to carry responsibility for her own life. Miss Emily, finally free of her tormentous girlhood, suddenly became able to make choices for herself. Even with questionable acts, this character further demonstrated her independence by taking…
7. What does the title of the story suggest about the townspeople’s feelings toward Miss Emily? Why do they feel this way about her? (Or: What does she represent to them?) Is there anything ironic about their feelings?…
Emily is the typical outcast. She is controlling while at the same time she restricting the town’s way in to her true personality by keeping it concealed. Emily’s house protects her from the thoughts of the people that live around her, and the mind…
When we first hear of Miss Emily , it is the time of her death and funeral, attended by the whole town of curious men and women. Their attitude and reverence towards Emily sparks our interest, a sort of “ respectful affection for a fallen monument” (30). We begin to ask why was she such an important woman and what has caused such an intrigue in her fellow townspeople. The inquisitiveness of the town becomes our own , and we want to know the whole, complete story of Emily’s life. Beginning the story of Emily’s life with her death gives us an opportunity to wonder what made her such an iconic part of this town and the lives of her neighbors there.…
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner presents Miss Emily as a mysterious character with sequences of unusual events. Faulkner compares Miss Emily’s lifestyle with rapidly changing community of Jefferson, Mississippi, where she used to live. To understand Miss Emily’s life seems as putting together the pieces of the puzzle, which makes suspense for the people of Jefferson. I feel Faulkner missed to introduce the narrator in this story, which reader can assume as one of the Emily’s neighbors.…
It’s as though the time in and around the house would stand still if it weren’t for the townspeople making it move with their judgments and actions. Emily Grierson and her solitary, isolated life was the talk of the town. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town”(84). Even from the beginning she’s not made out to be a human with free will but a plaything of the towns people, who were the driving force in the piece. The story is written in the perspective of the town looking down on her from above, and toying with her and her life; very similar to a god-like figure. The people in the town, throughout her life and after her father passed away “felt sorry for her”(86). They were so involved in the judgment of her personal life. “When she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances…”(86). And then along comes a suitor that inevitably breaks her heart. The town dictates what happens to this woman. They control her life and the effect it has is devastating. They say “poor Emily”(87), the town thought she “carried her head high enough-even when we believed she was fallen”(87). Society here is providing a foreshadowing that they brought upon her. When she went to go get poison, they didn’t stop her, they said “she will kill herself”(88), and “it would be the best thing”(88). The town and society condemn her. They are what drive her to do what she did. And at the end, it’s her funeral and they find that in her upstairs bedroom the man she married, “lay in the bed”(90). Dead by poison. The town and the society around her drove her to madness with their constant judgment and condemnation, they controlled her. She was the odd…
Emily locks herself up in the house for six months. The townspeople only saw the Negro man leaving her house occasionally carrying a market basket around, but there were still no sign of Miss. Emily. In fact the front door remained closed. “ After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” ( Faulkner 865). These tragedies overwhelmed Miss. Emily to the point where she abandoned herself inside of her house. The townspeople believed she was sick for a long time. When they finally saw Miss. Emily again her whole appearance changed, making her look younger. “When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl...” ( Faulkner 867). Miss. Emily was not comfortable around the townspeople, so she would stay in her house majority of the time. The last time the town saw Miss. Emile she had grown fat and her hair was turning greyer and…
When her father passed away, it was a devastating loss for Miss Emily. The lines from the story 'She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days,' (Charter 171) conveys the message that she tried to hold on to him, even after his death. Even though, this was a sad moment for Emily, but she was liberated from the control of her father. Instead of going on with her life, her life halted after death of her father. Miss Emily found love in a guy named Homer Barron, who came as a contractor for paving the sidewalks in town. Miss Emily was seen in buggy on Sunday afternoons with Homer Barron. The whole town thought they would get married. One could know this by the sentences in the story ?She will marry him,? ?She will persuade him yet,? Miss Emily Grierson is nobody's best friend. Neither is she the enemy of any man…
reader to better see the isolation and separation that Miss. Emily has not only from the townspeople, refusal to change…
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…
Throughout the story, the narrator describes changes in attitude towards Emily. It is evident that as time passes, the people of Jefferson become assertive towards her. The narrator describes the house that Emily’s father left her as “…big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies… set on what had once been our most select street” (Faulkner). Based on the narrator’s description of the house,…
The common townspeople also thought that Miss Emily was above the law because of her high class stature. Emily's power over the town is proven by the fact that Emily is not only exempt from paying taxes in Jefferson, but she gets away with murder. Emily buys arsenic without anyone ever thinking that her intentions might possibly be homicidal. The women instantly assume that Emily will use it to commit suicide because her suitor, Homer Barron, has abandoned her. When she continues to live, no one gives a second thought as to what the poison was really for. Even when a terrible stench begins…