A Rose For Emily Character Analysis

When she finally found a male that showed some interest and emotion, she was attached to them. That’s where Homer Barron comes into the story. He would visit Emily and go for Sunday drives with her. When Homer told Emily that he must move on she found herself on the verge of loneliness once again. If Homer would leave it would be two men that have left her. When she realized that he was about to leave she poisoned him and would keep him forever.

When Miss Emily finds somebody, though, it quickly pushes her to desperation. Her relationship with Homer Barron is a result of the life and death of her father. Ironically, he is a northern, roughneck Yankee, the exact opposite of any connection a Grierson would consider. Unsuspectingly, Emily is attracted to him, which is an oddity itself considering her lack of personality and his obvious charisma, for “whenever you [hear] a lot of laughing...Homer Barron [will] be in the center of the group” (560). He is also the first man to show an interest in her without her father alive to scare him off. The town is doubtful that the pair will remain together, but Emily's attachments are extreme, as seen when she would not surrender her father's body. The circumstance exhibits how her feelings are greatly intensified towards Homer. However, he is “not a marrying man” (561). When it appears as though he will leave her, she kills him with poison. While seemingly the opposite effect of love, killing Homer is quite in line with her obsession. If he is dead and she keeps Homer all to herself, Emily will never lose him; he can never leave her. Other such details that express her extreme attachments appear as she buys him clothes and toiletries before they are even considered married. There is also the revelation at the end of the story that she has been keeping his body for over thirty years and sleeping with it, clearly demonstrating her overt desperation

In William Faulkner's short story entitled "A Rose For Emily", Emily Grierson kills her lover Homer Barron after being in love with him for about a year. She then sleeps next to the body in the upstairs bedroom of her home, loving it as if Homer were still alive. She then closes up the upstairs, never seeing the body again. There are three different motives that can be looked at as to why Emily killed Homer. She wanted to exercise power, she couldn't accept that Homer was a homosexual, and she didn't want another man to be taken away from her.

Emily’s father, as well as the people of Jefferson, had always pressured Emily to marry. Her father was never able to find a match for her though, and he eventually passed. Emily then met Homer Barron, a contract worker for the town. They begin to see each other more often, and the townspeople are shocked that Emily would lower herself to being with a man of low class. This shows a bit of irony, in that there has always been pressure for Emily to marry, yet when she finally meets a man she loves, people think she is wrong in her decision. Another piece of irony in this relationship, comes after Emily dies. The body of Homer Barron is found in the attic of Emily’s home. Next to the body are signs that Emily had been sleeping next the corpse. It can be assumed that Emily did murder Homer with the arsenic she had purchased earlier in the story. It

“She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short making her look like a girl” (32). Through this image the narrator portrays Emily regressing back to her youth. It is at this point that Miss Emily is being seen around town with a young contractor named Homer Barron.

Emily was obsessed with holding on to the past and to avoid change. When her father dies she is really sad. She then meets a man named Homer Barron. She is afraid she will lose him too because he is not the kind of guy to settle down. So if she kills him she could at least still be able to see him after he is dead because she will keep his dead body in her house. By her keeping the body in the house it shows she had a hard time of letting go. Emily kills because of her extreme love.

Emily simply wanted to be freed from her father past control and from being a proper lady. After what look like she was going to get married, her boyfriend Homer just disappeared. After Homer's disappearance Emily was not the same. She barely left the house and kept aging terribly. At the end she died and the towns folk discovered that she had kept Homer’s body and a head.

Faulkner states that Miss Emily would tell the other people 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. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly,'' (Faulkner 804). This part of the story foreshadows another incident where Emily again refuses to let go of the deceased. Instead of Emily not being able to let go of her father, this time she couldn't let go of her close friend, Homer. The hint of Emily not being able to let go of her father in the beginning serves as an indication for the reader that Miss Emily is very isolated and will do anything to prevent that. Emily’s suspicious actions causes the reader to anticipate certain happenings and wonder what will happen next.

Though both Emily killed their husbands Emily was the only one who anticipated it. Emily had always been alone all of her life prior to her father’s death, until she met Homer Barron. Considering the fact that this relationship was her first it is unsure if the feelings in her “relationship” were mutual. It was believed that Homer was perhaps because bisexual. Faulkner stated, “ 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.”

Emily is destroyed by her father's over-protectiveness. He prevents her from courting anyone as "none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such" (82). When her father dies, Emily refuses to acknowledge his death; "[W]ith nothing left, she . . . [had] to cling to that which had robbed her" (83). When she finally begins a relationship after his death, she unfortunately falls for Homer

Her relationship with her father is a total mystery, however it’s well implied that their relationship was more than the typical normal father and daughter relationship. For this reason the community wasn’t at all shocked that Emily was single and turning thirty. In denial about her father’s death, she refused to le the townspeople remove the body for three days. Once she met Homer Barron, Emily begins an undesirable affair. Many of the town people were happy she was with someone. Though it is soon found that Homer played for the other team, Emily goes to the pharmacist for poison, it is then that the townspeople think that she will kill herself. After buying the arsenic, the next time they see her it’s stated, “she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray” (Faulkner 521). This perhaps the result of Homer Barron’s murder and the loss of her dad. At seventy four years old, Emily died in her home “She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight” (Faulkner 521). The major plot twist is that the townspeople find Homer Barron in a bedroom upstairs, lying in a lover’s embrace, with the indentation of a head upon the pillow next to him and one “long strand of iron gray hair” (Faulkner 522). Ms. Emily is “jilted” by the death of her father and Homer Barron leaving her. Since her father isolated her so well

            The insanity of Miss Emily is also foretold in A Rose for Emily.  When the body of Homer is found in her bed, the reader can understand that Emily killed him, because her mental stability had been questioned a number of times.  The narrator begins these allusions to her mental state when he tells how the mayor, Colonel Sartoris, bestows a special tax exemption upon Miss Emily.  Colonel Sartoris makes up a story so unbelievable that it is described as so outlandish that "only a woman could have believed it".  Later, the townspeople talk about her great-aunt, the lady Wyatt, who had gone completely crazy.  They wonder about "poor Emily" with the insanity in her family.  Her mental state comes into question again when the town removes the body of her father.  She is said to have "broke down" and finally let them in to take and bury the body.  This is an obvious analogy to her having a mental breakdown.  This is followed with the statement that the townspeople did

She knew Homer was homosexual and still flaunted him throughout town like an accessory in trying to convince both herself and the townspeople she could move on from her father’s death. However, her relationship may have got into deep with Homer and she had to kill him to make sure he didn’t leave her side as her father did. After Emily kills Homer, “a window that has been dark was lightened and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her” (p.395). This image shows Emily has now become her father in a way and took dominance in her life by murdering someone else, which causes an internal self satisfaction. She keeps the corpse of Homer almost as the resemblance of a trophy for her work. Emily was wealthy woman who appeared to have it all however, she never accomplished close to anything in her life except for taking the life of Homer. The lost of her father signified the lost of herself, in an attempt to find herself emerged a dark character who became mentally and physically consumed by her pain that she was left to fight alone.

In “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner alludes to how Emily hides the dead body of Homer Barron, by how the story previously mentions that Emily denies her father’s death, the police have to take the body by force, she bought arsenic, Homer Barron was never seen coming out of Emily’s house, and that there was a repulsive smell for months. To start, when Emily’s father had passed away inside of their house, she told others “that her father was not dead” as she had “no trace of grief on her face” (3). Being that she did not admit to the body, Emily shows that she was in denial of the death, and this connects to the ending by how no one questioned if Homer was not alive, so she never had to confess. Another hint of the ending, was the fact that the police were “about to resort to law and force” in trying to “dispose of the body” of Emily’s father (3).

At the end of the story “A Rose For Emily” the town folk finally make their way into Ms. Emily's home. I don't think anyone expected to find the bizarre scene that they found themselves stumbling across. Mr. Homer is found dead and decaying in this bed wearing the shirt that people had seen Ms. Emily buying for him. If thats not bad enough it almost seems as if Ms. Emily had been laying in the bed next to him. Possibly cuddling up to his dead body. It is mentioned throughout the text that Ms. Emily's father had scared off many of men over the years before his death, leaving her a single woman over the age of 30. The question is never answered as to weather Ms. Emily killed Mr. Homer or not, but you cant help but question it. I think Mrs. Emily