A Rose For Emily Literary Analysis

In William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” his main character Miss Emily Grierson’s deranged behavior leaves the reader questioning her mental status.

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.

Miss Emily Grierson, the gossip of a small town, is brought down and seperated from society. Although it is unlikely and unrelatable for an old lady to kill then sleep with the corpse of a man, Faulkner makes her character easily recognizable and relatable. With eerie and detailed descriptions, comparisons such as similes, metaphors, and personification allows the readers to make connections to their own world and emotions as well as understand the characters in a real life way. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” illustrates physical and mental characterization through the use of figurative language.

Emily seem to be an innocent woman who was not allowed to date because of her father’s rules, she did have some crazy or “perverse” sides to her. In part II, Ms. Emily “with her slender figure in white as she stood in the background, her father a silhouette in the foreground clutching a horsewhip.” She was never able to stand up to her father and no man ever met her father’s standards. When her father passed in the end of part II, she slowly began to transform into her father’s crazy ways. She had an interest in a man named Homer Barron but he went missing after he had returned from a trip up North. Once Homer went missing, Ms. Emily “had grown fat,” “had iron-gray hair of an active man,” and “her front door remained closed for a period of six to seven years.” Many of her neighbors believed she had something to do with his disappearance. Ms. Emily’s negro slave was the only person the neighbors would see come in and out of Ms. Emily’s house except when “she gave china-painting lessons.” Ms. Emily died and her house was opened for her funeral. The neighbors only wanted to come to see what mystery lied inside the Grierson’s house. Inside the neighbors found a room that “had not been seen in forty years” and they had found the bridal suite for when Ms. Emily and Homer Barron were suppose to get married. On the bed in the bridal suite “a man himself lay in the bed” and on a second pillow laid “a long strand of iron-gray hair.”

Southern Gothic writer William Faulkner author of “Rose for Emily,” knows that the form of a story gives it a special meaning. Faulkner uses the five parts out of chronological order to allow the reader to accept and understand why Emily Grierson is crazy or “perverse”. First, he must show why she is worth the town's “care”: and why she is a “fallen monument”. Faulkner starts the story with Emily already died to hint at his Gothic intestine. In Gothic stories, there is often a creepy or haunted house. Emily’s house is declared an “eyesore among eyesores” with a crayon portrait of Emily’s father and the house having a “dank” smell.

In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, the author uses themes of death and loneliness to portray the character, Emily Grierson. The theme of death is used to tell readers how death in Emily’s life became a detrimental issue and how she took it too far to benefit her. The theme of loneliness will show how Emily takes loneliness and how far she is willing to go to in order to not experience it.

Love, Loss and Longing—three traits that many would agree Emily Grierson, the main character from William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily”, experiences inexorably. At first glance, one might be confident in one’s understanding of the story at face-value, claiming it to be a thrilling mystery with a mysterious ending. Another may try to analyze contextual evidence to answer some of the many unanswered questions this story proposes. Why does Emily sleep with the corpse of her late husband? Why does she kill him in the first place? Yet, I will not attempt to do so, at least not directly. I will instead turn to the perspective from which this story is told: that of the townspeople. The ways which they describe Emily will lead to tangential yet important realizations that they share more with the outlandish characters they describe than they realize, illuminating basic human tendencies that we all share along the way.

Left open to interpretation, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” tells the remarkable story of Miss Emily Grierson whose life and death, particularly her funeral, drew the attention of her town. Throughout the story, respectability, and the loss of it is presented as the central theme. Faulkner’s elaborate use of setting coupled with characterization foreshadows and creates suspense and his use of metaphors help guide the reader to the climax of the story, Miss Grierson’s bittersweet ending. Initially, the story begins by depicting the death of Miss Grierson and subsequently includes flashbacks of her adolescence all the while hinting at the demise of a woman and the past she personifies. Using setting, characterization, and theme to move

Faulkner thinks the public’s point of view gives the story a weird feeling. It appears as if there is constantly someone following Miss Emily, patiently waiting outside her house, and taking notice of who goes in and out her door. This is obvious from the townspeople’s opinions about Emily. They seem to have a lot of information about her life. When she was first seen with Homer Barron, it was obvious that they would get married. Then, it was finally known that Homer Barron liked men and he would drink with the younger men in the Elks club. The narration of this story is biased. It is not possible for the public to really know what is going on in Emily’s private life; they are just obsessed with trying to pick apart everything she does. It is even stated in the beginning of the book that the women attended her funeral only to see the inside of her old house, which they were

Faulkner uses imagery to reveal Emily’s aristocratic family background, which is a heavy burden for her. Miss Emily Grierson’s family was once rich before the Civil War. Miss Emily carries her head high enough so that she does not lose the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson. No matter what happens to her, she holds on to her nobility to protect her identity. The story begins with Miss Emily’s funeral located at her house, which has remained closed for decades. Emily has been not hospitable as well as isolated to the town. The “big, squarish frame house decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies,” is located in the most

The townspeople believe she is going to use it to kill herself because when purchasing arsenic, the law requires the customer to divulge its purpose. When the druggist informs her of this law, “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” (33). The townspeople deeply disprove of Barron and Emily’s relationship so in an attempt to end it, they write to Emily’s relatives from Alabama (33). They are worried about Miss Emily’s health and wellbeing. When her “blood-kin” (33) arrive, they just “…sat back to watch developments… [then] we [her relatives] were sure that they [Barron and Emily] were to be married” (33). She is then observed purchasing a man’s toilet set. On each silver piece were the letters H.B. (34). “Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt…” (34). When the sidewalk project is finished, Homer Barron vanishes. Nobody seems to know where he is, and he is soon forgotten. This leads back to the Emily Grierson’s funeral.

William Faulkner presents us with a new way of interpreting the themes in which we read our stories by providing us with the short story “A Rose for Emily,” which grips the reader with every word challenging them to figure out what happens with Miss Emily and Homer Barron. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner starts off with Miss Emily denying that her father was not dead for three days after his death. After Miss Emily realizes that her dad is actually gone, she wants to purchase arsenic, which is a poison. Next, people in the town began to think that because Miss Emily was sick, she was going to end up killing herself because Homer Barron would not marry her. Miss Emily and Homer Barron, who was a man from the town that Miss Emily was seeing,

The final reason as to why I believe Emily killed Homer is that she does not want to lose the most important person in her life a second time. When Emily's father, the most important and most influential person in her life, dies, Emily keeps the corpse in her house. The day after he dies all of the ladies come over to Emily's to offer their condolences. "Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead." Emily could not let go of him, so she keeps his dead body in her house. This same thing happens with Homer. Once she knows that Homer is the one, she poisons him with arsenic and then leaves him in the upstairs bedroom. When the townspeople find Homer's body, they make quite an interesting find. "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."

By incorporating a collective narrative but shifting back and forth with limited perspective, Faulkner produces willing suspension of disbelief. When Miss Emily purchases arsenic, the narrator reveals that men and women of society believed it was a good thing that “she will kill herself” because her promiscuous relation with the Northerner Homer Barron was frowned upon (35). The townspeople’s opinion of Miss Emily convinces the reader that Miss Emily is simply a puppet to society’s expectations; therefore the denouement of the story remained ambiguous to both the reader and narrator who did not expect to find a “long strand of iron-gray hair” laying next to the rotted body of Miss Emily’s lover

Faulkner writes the story in a way that adds emphasis to the memories that make Miss Emily who she is. The events on which he writes help us understand why she becomes a reclusive woman. For example, when the townspeople reflect on the death of Miss Emily’s father, we learn that her he drove away the men in her life, which prevented her from loving. When he dies, it only makes sense that she denies his death and holds on to the one that prevented her from feeling compassion. Because we learn her past events before the present, we understand at the end of the story why this caused her to poison Homer Baron and keep his body. As an attempt at defeating the presence of time in her life, she controls the one thing she believes will attain her the love and happiness she never had. She conceals his body to prevent him from leaving. The trauma that Miss Emily undergoes in her life seems to justify her actions as a display of human nature rather than insanity.