Emily Dialectical Journal

A statistic shows that “by summer of 1863, in New Bern, N.C., only 20 of the 250 white people remaining in town were men” (Abbott). In a depletion of man, the appearance of Homer Barron is like a light to Emily’s heart. She does not mind about Homer’s origin, as long as she has a man whom can live with her. However, it is not easy to own a man in this period. Abbott states that “widowed women in their 30s faced stiff competition for available men in their age group and suffered constant reminders of their grim odds” (Abbott). This fact explains Emily’s action of poisoning her lover, Homer. She wants to keep him beside her forever. Killing Homer is the only way, she can get him away from all other women and do not lose him. Due to the effect of war on men, Emily is trying to fight over her destiny to own a man for herself, but she seems to go too far with it.

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.

Ten years ago on the sun there was a girl named Emily she was just five years old and so was her twin their mom and dad thought that it would be better to send them to Earth in a separate rocket well when the rockets left the ground Octavios came and stole their mom and dad. Emma her twin got stuck on a twig and those are very dangerous because if you touch anything like that on the sun you may die. and then the rocket started to catch on fire and it almost caught her on fire with it but it didn't she got out at the perfect moment because it blew up right after she started to fly away and she was shocked because she have

“I doubt it is no other but the main:/His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.” (2.2.56-57)

I feel as though Katie Nolan lacks the ability to confront her problems. Rather than making a compromise with her drunken husband, she locked him away. This symbolizes that she may not be a strong willed, emotionally stable person after all. What if she only ignores her problems until they wither away into nothingness? I took a particular liking to Sissy. Although overly promiscuous, she appeared to be a very good person. - it’s just the way she solved dilemmas, through the use of promiscuity and lies. She was certainly emotionally available, however. Which is why I believe Francie and Johnny took a liking to her.

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.

Ela ran in front of the family and planted her sturdy body like a mountain between the hunters and the babies standing in a position of charge. With her ears backward, her long trunk swinging from side to side she aggressively trumpeted. Her small amber eyes filled with undaunted resolution. But the hunters weren't afraid of Ela, they rose their rifles ready to shoot her!

You had never thought of yourself as an object, nor did you ever truly think of yourself as human being. You were simple existed with no real meaning. If you thought about it deep enough, you might conclude it was for your sister, the leader of some gang in the midst of some unknown town on the east coast of the US. You remember the nights she crawled into your bed when her night terrors became too much and you missed the warmth of her slipping her arm around you as she cried into your back. You wondered how she would be getting along without you now, considering she gave you up.

Sleep deprivation, vexation, feeling exasperated and a bit depressed; unfortunately, I feel every one of those today. Plans for Wednesday have changed for several reasons, each one respectively, due to either mum, Alexis, and myself; mine being a large monetary setback at USC this morning. In feelings and changes, I will work off the hours as I can this week, and try to have it finished by April. I would hate for a situation to arise, or yet another situation to arise rather, to come up, and still be jerking-off with this. With the blue-shifted deadline for those hours becoming bluer still, may be best to bite, swallow, and shit the bitter bullet and be done with it. Oh dear, proper British lady has crashed.

While rereading the story, I was searching for additional clues that would give me more insight on the death of the man on the bed. First time around I had my suspicions about the outcome more or so, but after knowing how the story ended I was more attentive the second time I read it. One detail of the narrative that stood out to me was Miss Emily’s mental state. I believe she had some type of mental disease. It sounds like her father was a very harsh man and did not want any man close to her; that most have been very difficult. Another detail that stood out the first time and was definitely on my mind the second time, was the smell that emanated from the house. I thought that the overpowering smell was a red flag and that something was not

Being a member of an antebellum southern aristocracy meant that she was in a family that was defined as a “planter” also known as a person owning property and twenty or more slaves. After the Civil War, the family went through another hardship. The woman and her father kept on living their lives as if they were still in the past. Her father refused to let her get married. When the woman was thirty years old, her father died. This took her by surprise. After her dad passed, the woman refused to give up his body. The town thought it was just part of her grieving process. After she finally accepted her dad’s death, she grew closer to Mr. Homer. This took the town by surprise. Homer explained to Emily that he wasn’t the marrying type. She did not like hearing those words. Emily went to town and bought arsenic from a drug dealer. Because of this, the towns people were certain she was trying to kill herself. Emily’s distant cousins came to visit because the priest’s wife had called them. Homer left for a couple of days, but then came back after the cousins had left. Emily wouldn’t talk to any of the towns people. They wouldn’t confront her given her reputation. They wanted to ask her about the awful smell that had been coming from her house and to talk to her about her taxes. At first, they said her taxes were over looked in debt to her father, but then they changed their minds and sent her notices. The woman refused to pay them! Years later Emily had

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

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.

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.

When everyone had though Miss Emily had found love, he disappears. She seemed to be very happy with him. They would ride around town in a Buggy. His name was Homer Barron. In the story it doesn’t imply that they were an actual couple. As we discussed in class Homer might even have been homosexual. If this or anything else was the cases were Homer couldn’t be with Miss Emily her desperation for that companion made her do an outrageous passionate act. She murders him to keep him with her forever. I think she thinks she has finally found someone she doesn’t want to let go. She feels like she needs this and doesn’t realize that it is out of this world. She doesn’t recognize that she has lost her mind. By not only living but sleeping with a dead corpse.