Emily Dialectical Journal

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

For forty years Emily Grierson has slept beside the physical remains of her dead lover. "In her bedroom, Emily and the dead Homer have remained together as though not even death could separate them."(Kazin 162) ."She is also a victim of her lover who would leave her", but she is driven "by her passion which would kill him rather then let him leave."(Pierce 1362) ."When his love is gone, and she has killed him, she holds on to her illusion of their love."( Pierce 1362) . "But even in the story, the intended gothic touch

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

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.

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.

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)

Passage: “It was the meanest moment of eternity. A minute before she was just a scared human being fighting for its life. Now she was her sacrificing self with Tea Cake's head in her lap. She had wanted him to live so much and he was dead. No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. Janie held his head tightly to her breast and wept and thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service. She had to hug him tight for soon he would be gone, and she had to tell him for the last time. Then the grief of outer darkness descended”(Hurston 184).

Emelie squealed sheepishly, and she quickly shoved her books into her bag and slammed her locker shut.

Before me loomed the old observatory which would be our home for the next year. Its walls were an expanse of red brick stacked on red brick, contrasting the two white front doors and the white domed tower. It sat atop Henrick Cliff with large fields sloping down from the front of the house. The tower could be seen rising from the back of the house, with the cliffs edge and sea beyond that. The observatory looked like a forgotten castle, waiting for the next rulers to occupy it.

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!

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.

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 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.