A Rose for Emily by Charles Faulkner

Littered throughout the story is evidence that the murder took place. When Emily takes up with Homer Barron, a man whom the narrator makes clear was not the marrying kind; rumors start to fly about the two at a time when it was not considered proper for a man and woman to live together. The town, her relatives, and the Baptist minister disapproved of the relationship, and Emily was in danger of loosing Homer. A year after the relationship begins, and the pressures to either marry

The summer after her father died, the town hired contractors to pave the sidewalks. The foreman, Homer Barron, and Miss. Emily became quite fond of one another. On Sunday afternoons they could bee seen driving in his buggy together. Soon the people began to whisper about Emily and Homer. Emily held her head high; she would not be seen as anything other than respectful. The town's people believed that Miss. Emily should have kinfolk come to stay with her for a while.

It is noted in the passage that “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” (4). First her father runs away men, then when a man finally comes around he is homosexual. One day Miss Emily goes to the druggist and says “I want arsenic” (3). It is after seeing this that the people in town started to think she was going to commit suicide (4). Homer barron leaves and returns after Miss Emily’s two cousins leave. The people in the town never see him again and they say “the one we believed would marry her … had deserted her. The body of Homer Barron was found on the bed with a piece of Miss Emily’s gray hair next to the body.

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

Homer entered her life by courting her publicly; by not wanting to marry her, he would have robbed her of her dignity and high-standing in the community. The ladies of the town felt that Miss Emily was not setting a good example for the "younger people" and their affair was becoming a "disgrace to the town" (75). The traditions, customs, and prejudices of the South doomed this affair from the beginning. Emily could not let Homer live, but she could not live without him. He was her only love. When she poisoned him with arsenic, she believed he would be hers forever.

William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, is a dark tale of a young girl damaged by her father that ended up leaving her with abandonment issues. Placed in the south in the 1930’s, the traditional old south was beginning to go under transition. It went from being traditionally based on agriculture and slavery to gradually moving into industrial and abolition. Most families went smoothly into the transition and others, like the Griersons, did not. Keeping with southern tradition, the Griersons thought of themselves as much higher class then the rest of their community. Emily’s father found no male suitable for his daughter and kept her single into her thirties. After her fathers death Miss Emily was swept off of

In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner escorts the reader through the peculiar life of the main character Miss Emily Grierson. The gloomy tone of the story is set by the author beginning his tale with the funeral of Miss Emily. During course of the story, we are taken through different times in Miss Emily’s life and how she was lost in time, with the town around her moving forward. Through the use of southern gothic writing style, narrator point of view, and foreshadowing, Faulkner aids the reader in creating a visualization of Miss Emily and the town in which she lives while also giving an insight into her sanity.

Faulkner brings this up pretty quickly in the story, only after mentioning her death and her vanquishing of the tax aldermen. There is a long passage that describes the smell emanating from her house, which started "a short time after her sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her--had deserted her". The clues are there, we just don't see the connection quite yet. The next hint is the fact that after her father died, she was in complete denial and wouldn't release his body. She "did that for three days" before "she broke down" and allowed them to take the body away. Again, not a connection to be made yet, but definitely hints at her disturbing tendency to hang on to dead bodies for a long time, and be in denial about their deaths. The most obvious hint comes when she buys arsenic, and then Homer Barron disappears soon thereafter. It is then that we can start piecing things together; we can assume the arsenic was for him, that the smell was him, and if we are very insightful, make a connection between the toiletries she bought for him, and her father's death, and maybe draw

The townspeople felt bad for Emily and thought the reason for her craziness was because her family had a history of it. Emily also waits three days before revealing the death of her father. Emily allows the dead body of her father to lie in her home rotting away. Another crazy action that Emily does is when she goes to the pharmacy to purchase “rat poison”. When Emily goes to buy the arsenic she doesn’t tell the druggist what exactly she is going to use it for, but stares him down making him feel uncomfortable. “Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up” (213). One of the most extreme actions Emily performs is being responsible for Homer Barron’s death. But, after fully reading the story the reader understands that Emily not only kills Homer but sleeps with his corpse. “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay… Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (215) There the reader’s thought of Emily sleeping with the dead body and her psychotic tendencies is confirmed.

At most, women have always been second to man, and the concept of a woman ever having her own mind or free will was obsolete, but only with time women slowly gain their independent mind frames. In both stories, “A Rose for Emily” and “Story of an Hour,” there are two women who long for freedom in different ways. The men in their lives keep them from making any kind of decisions that were based on themselves. In these stories, the symbolism, conflict, and the foreshadowing have the readers interested in the ironic endings.

My overall impression of A Rose for Emily is that the story was very eccentric and kind of heart-breaking. The story was eccentric to me because I did not expect that out of Miss Emily. I knew she was weird from the beginning because she hid her father’s corpse for three days. What person in their right mind would do that? Definitely not I and I do not think a lot of people would either unless you have a mental disability. Emily held onto what she admired the most and looked up to. Emily looked up to her father, who sheltered her and held her hostage his whole life. He believed no one was good enough for his daughter and did not want anyone to take his daughter away from him. This is where the story becomes heart-breaking for me. Miss Emily could have had a lot of potential and her father took it all away from her. He sheltered her for his own sake and Emily did not know any better. Emily believed everything he told her since she was not allowed outside the house and did not know the basics of reality. When her father passed away, Emily stayed to herself for awhile and then she met Homer Barron. Homer was a Yankee and the foreman of the construction company. Everyone liked Homer in Jefferson including Miss Emily. When Homer left to go back up North, Miss Emily felt abandoned again. First she was abandoned by her father and now by her love, Homer. She felt she had to do something, so she got arsenic poison which is very harmful and she kills Homer. She killed Homer because he

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In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the story of an sad and lonely lady, stuck in her time. Because her father died, she never fully recovered from it and was not able to find herself. Emily’s house was in the past was considered elegant and was built on the best street in town in the 1870’s. Now the house is old and an unattractive building to the neighborhood. People in her town begin to bad mouth her because of her lost soul. Homer Barron, an employee of a construction company, begins to begins to date Emily. The townspeople do not seem ecstatic about this, because they think she is doing it out of being lonely and depressed since her father died. Later on, she

Another important character from the story is Homer Barron, a man who develops an interest in Miss Emily, “Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable” (519). According to the story, it seems that the whole town was thinking they would get married: “She will marry him” “She will persuade him yet” (520). However, Miss Emily ends up killing Homer by poisoning him. There seems to be two reasons why she did it. One is that she wanted to marry him, but it appears he refused. The other one is that he might be homosexual: “he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Club, that he was not a marrying man” (520). All these speculations about the principal characters Emily and Homer have one questioning what the narrator’s intention towards them was really. “The narrator wants to trap us in the speculations made about Emily’s and Homer’s characters by making us believe that Emily will kill herself or that Homer is homosexual” (Wallace). He might be right on this statement because this is what one is most likely thinking about through the reading.

To put it bluntly, Emily is an aristocratic Southern Belle and Homer is a sidewalk builder from the North. “The townsfolk view Emily simultaneously as an idee fixe and a bete noir whose cruising with Homer Barron they monitor” (Melczarek 240). The older folks would say that Emily, in the wake of her father’s death, was forgetting “Noblesse Oblige,” or nobility obligations (Faulkner 797). Of course Emily had had suitors more suited for her in the past, but she decided it was Homer she wanted. The narrator comments, “She carried her head high enough – even when we believed that she was fallen” (797). Then, when Homer prepares to go back North, the townspeople are suddenly in her corner and pity her when Homer disappears.