A Rose for Emily Free Essays

A   Rose for Emily by Faulkner is a conventional Freudian explanation of incest and necrophilia. The incestuous relation between Emily and her father had indelible impact on the future life of Emily. Her father’s motive to indulge her in assumed incestuous relationship is considered a protective tool. We will write a custom essay sample on A Rose for Emily or any similar topic only for you Order Now In order to protect Emily’s inviolability from future potential suitors, he must turn against her, unaware of the consequences on the psychological and emotional life of Emily. Freud asserted that sexual repression causes psychological abnormality. Emily’s overprotective and domineering father deprives her of a normal liaison with the opposite sex by chasing away any probable mates. So denial of a normal relationship and incestuous relationship with her father makes her an introvert and outcast for society. She takes refuge in solitude. Since her relation with father was so intimate, her aberration at the death of her father is a natural phenomenon. She refutes his death and keeps his dead body. Later in the story, she wants to develop a normal mundane life, when she allowed the children to come in to her house for painting and herself extended her relation with Homer. But again social actors remain a hindrance in her way. Certainly, the storyteller proposes that Homer himself may not exactly be enthusiastic about marrying Emily. Finally, Emily’s poisoning Homer can be taken as necrophilic act as she waited for the body to decompose before endorsing her oedipal fantasy. The discovery of a strand of her hair on the pillow next to the rotting corpse suggests that she slept with the cadaver or, even worse, had sex with it. In the fantasy of necrophilism, she might have played the imagined coitus with her father. Emily’s repressive life therefore adds to her psychological abnormality: necrophilia. Even if she commits a hideous crime, Faulkner portrays Emily as a victim of her circumstance. References Faulkner, William; contributing editor, Noel Polk. A rose for Emily. The Harcourt Brace casebook series in literature. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000.    How to cite A Rose for Emily, Papers A Rose for Emily Free Essays â€Å"A Rose for Emily† is a well thought out short story by William Faulkner published on April 30, 1931. This short story is told from the townspeople of Jefferson (first-person) to create a point of view to be able to see from the outside of the situation getting an insight on reality of the plot. At the beginning of â€Å"A Rose for Emily,† Faulkner immediately sets a tone. We will write a custom essay sample on A Rose for Emily or any similar topic only for you Order Now When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to the funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years†(Faulkner 30). This brings curiosity of why Emily never came outside of her house and shows that something had happened; the killing of Homer Barron. Faulkner puts literary elements to good use, especially point of view and atmosphere. Faulkner speaks from an Omniscient point of view, which is an all knowing narrator with multiple perspectives and an Objective point of view which is a detached observer. The story begins with Miss Emily passing away which gives the reader an insight into the main character by giving a hint of the stories plot. Using an objective point of view leads the reader to make conclusions and interpret the story when have read all the needed information. Writing in an Omniscient point of view gives you an insight coming from the outside looking in on all of the characters perspectives. This brings to what the townspeople think about Miss Emily, and why the townspeople act the way they act when Emily has passed. If this story would have came from Miss Emily’s point of view, the short story would have been perceived quite differently. Miss Emily was delirious, the least to say, behind the closed doors. If told from Emily, the story would have been of much more confusion and would have gave the main purpose of this story away. Faulkner leads his audience on with curiosity of what happens to Homer Barron. If told from Emily, there would not be a curious plot in this story. Faulkner describes the characters and places with terms, giving more detail for the reader to interpret throughout the story. â€Å"Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Faulkner 30). Explaining that Emily, the main character, was an old human being and was an asset towards the townspeople and their curiosity. Her lover Homer Barron is introduced as,† a big, dark, ready man†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Faulkner 32). Faulkner explains the home as â€Å"an eyesore among eyesores†(Faulkner 30 ), and the cemetery where Emily is put to rest as, â€Å"anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson†(35 ). All of these explained elements come together to describe Faulkner’s theme created throughout the story. In â€Å"A Rose for Emily,† the atmosphere goes between past and present. â€Å"The atmosphere is one of distortion-of unreality. This unreal world results from the suspension of a natural time order†(Ray B. West Jr. paragraph 3). This sense of atmosphere brings confusion throughout the audience making the audience crave curiosity about the main point; making the audience want to dig deeper down into the plot of the short story. Curiosity is always a major key concept to making a short story affective towards an audience and towards the atmosphere. †¦as in â€Å"A Rose for Emily,† the atmosphere becomes one of horror† (Ray B. West Jr. paragraph 3). At the beginning of â€Å"A Rose for Emily† you would have never guessed that this short story would lead to an event of horror. First reading â€Å"A Rose for Emily† gives the audience a sense of mystery. It is not proceeded as horror until the final deed of death has been committed. Giving the set tone as a mystery absorbs our shock to finding out what had been happening with Emily and Homer. One of atmosphere’s elements is foreshadowing in which prepares us for Emily’s actions at the end of â€Å"A Rose For Emily. † Point of View and Atmosphere, as you can see, are major elements in bringing a story together and memorable. Without careful thinking and detail among these elements, the story will not be completely designed as needed to catch the attention and memory of the story from your audience. Performing these elements in detail will give a story recognition and appreciate on a well written piece of work. How to cite A Rose for Emily, Essay examples A Rose for Emily Free Essays The short story â€Å"A Rose for Emily† by William Faulkner tells about the story of a young woman who murders her lover and keeps him inside her house for years. Emily Grierson has lived her entire life locked up in her own house because her father had kept her there, refusing to let her live as an ordinary woman. When the chance of love and life finally comes to Emily, she desperately holds on it even if it meant killing the person she loves. We will write a custom essay sample on A Rose for Emily or any similar topic only for you Order Now Faulkner adds crucial details to this seemingly simple tragic love story. First, the story is set in a town steeped with racial strife. At one point, the story mentions a certain Colonel Sartoris imposing dress codes for Negros (Faulkner 457). Second, Emily’s father is described to be a tyrant—locking up his daughters and depriving them of a normal life. These two elements points to the theme of racial and gender discrimination which pushed Emily to commit murder. Faulkner disrupts the chronological sequence of the story and begins with the death of the curious old lady named Emily in order to highlight the attitude of the town towards her and the things that had happened in her life. At the beginning, we see how she was locked by her father who overruled her life and how people around them thought this has turned Emily crazy. Perhaps there is reason to agree that Emily’s traumatic situation has made her unstable, but what Faulkner asks in the story is whether she can be blamed for her instability. The townsfolk seem to ignore the fact that Emily is a victimized woman and that there is no reason for them to treat her tragedy as a spectacle. While Emily’s tragic past reveals the belittling and oppression of women during that generation, the tragic affair of Emily with Homer Baron reveals the steep racism plaguing the town. Upon learning that Emily is having an affair with a common, Black construction foreman, people started to pity her, referring to her as â€Å"Poor Emily† because it is not proper for a white woman—one with a â€Å"noblesse oblige†Ã¢â‚¬â€ to have an affair with a Negro (Faulkner 460). Despite the rumors about her, Emily â€Å"carried her head high enough† and proved to everyone her dignity (Faulkner 460). However, the oppressive reality presses the relationship of Emily and Homer. Thus, Emily is left with no choice but to murder her one true love in order to keep him forever. Her little town has left her with no option but to commit this cruel act. Faulkner ends the story with a testament of Emily’s genuine love for Homer. The strand of gray hair beside the bones of Homer proves that her love goes beyond the grave. The story’s grotesque images, specifically at the end, render the story to be a creepy, disturbing tale at first. However, Faulkner includes in it details grounded in his immediate reality, creating a rich layer of meaning in one simple, tragic love story. How to cite A Rose for Emily, Papers A rose for emily Free Essays Getting into the Faulknerian world of Emily Grierson would take an incubation of thought and lots of heart. The title itself invokes a certain feeling of thrill on wanting to know who Emily is and to what prestige is the rose for, only to make us realize in the end how we could be no different from the people we would learn to detest in time. The beginning of the story is its end – the death of the ‘fallen monument’. We will write a custom essay sample on A rose for emily or any similar topic only for you Order Now So from the very start, the author had warned the readers to the complexity of the paradoxical overlay. And true enough, as we continue to delve into her life, we have learned to offer our own rose for Miss Emily as we began to see her frailty as her strength and her failure as her success. She ‘was’ a picture of beauty, and prestige was embossed in her name that ‘none of the young men were quite good enough’ for her. Her father drove them all away.   For a long time, people looked for a reason to pity her. At last when her father died, ‘people were glad’. ‘Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized’. The plot also led us to her affair with Homer Barron, a Yankee day laborer. As expected, the whole town buzzed about ‘Poor Emily’ while ‘she carried her head high’ still to reaffirm her ‘imperviousness’. These two instances are crucial in examining the course of Miss Emily’s life; her questioned sanity and the manner she ‘chose’ to live it all until the end. It is incontestable that being brought up in a commanding patriarchal environment took a toll on her behaviour towards people and circumstance. She was bounded to two authorities; her father at the foreground and the Southern society’s eyes at the back. For more than 30 years, she let these two command her life. Thus the coming of Homer Barron, a Northern foreman, only ignited her rebellious manifestation. What could ever top the love story between a noble woman and a day laborer? It was unacceptable, even appalling to the ‘older people’ who said nothing but ‘Poor Emily’. But that one man who could’ve renewed her cling to life was not the type of man a damsel in distress should cling to. He was a flirt. ‘Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere†¦ Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. ‘He was not the marrying type’. There is even a hint of his homosexuality since ‘Homer himself remarked – he liked men and that †¦ he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Club’. Again, she was bounded to a man, only this time, she stood at the foreground of the social stresses. She refused to bow like the Grierson she is. Finally, she took the matters to her hands; she killed that one man she longed to marry and imprisoned him in her doors that remained closed from anyone else. Was Emily a victim of time, her father, Homer and the society’s imposed values? Yes, she was. But she won them all. First, looking at the odd chronology of events, a reader finds it difficult to see order, yet, with each piece patched from one recollection to the other, we would begin to see how Faulkner views the frivolity of time (or age) and order. Much emphasis was given to her iron-gray hair and her obese yet small skeleton. This play of language turns Miss Emily into a picture of a living dead. Hence, clock time is not essential; rather, time is captured by experience and consciousness. Like a kaleidoscope, this opens us to the understanding of Miss Emily’s denial of her father’s death and Homer’s rotting corpse at the bridal chamber. Second, Miss Emily rejected her father’s patriarchal values upon developing affection towards Homer. She, who was brought up to reject any lover, for once chose to take one for herself. Her buying of a ‘man’s toilet set in silver†¦ and clothing’ may have created hysteria of gossips but she refused to care anymore. Taking on Faulkner’s approach to the murder (delaying the matter until the end), the author tries to appeal for the reader’s sympathy than judge and loathe her directly for the crime. He rapt the readers first in his spell-binding narrative and let them reserve their judgment for later. She sought for love and whether it came in sanity or madness, she welcomed the consequences, even if it means living an individual life. Homer was at last hers†¦ and hers alone. Third, she overcame Jefferson – the setting and the antagonist, as we begin to feel the thriving of compassion of the narrator towards her. The narrator is the voice of the society, its representation. She was judged in the beginning, pitied in the process and was saluted in the end. How to cite A rose for emily, Papers A rose for emily Free Essays In â€Å"A Rose for Emily,† the structure of the story is one that typically does not appear in many stories. It starts off with the ending which eventually leads to what really happened to Miss Emily. This story Is surrounded around the Ideas and visions of someone that lives in the town. We will write a custom essay sample on A rose for emily or any similar topic only for you Order Now It lets us know of what the people In the town thought of Miss Emily, and the things she was going through. The structure also does not follow a chronological order which plays out Like that of a detective story. Also the story has different sections that don’t go detail to detail It skips some detailed parts of the story that keeps us guessing. This story Is not a traditional because It does not start off with a beginning to ending type of structure. Usually stories start off with a beginning and goes In an order that we understand since all of the details are put Into perspective and order. We see that In the beginning MISS Emily passes away and are left with the ideas of what might have happened since we do not know anything about the story. Later, we find out about Miss Emily, and the troubles she went throughout her time to the point where she died, and Homer was found dead in her bed. Throughout the story the narrator seems as though he is someone that is art of the town. He tells us of what is going on in the town through Miss Emails life. The narrator has obviously been following Miss Emily, and her many struggles, loves, and to the point where she no longer alive. In the beginning of the story everyone in the town get’s together to see what is in Email’s house because they are curious to find out what really has been going on in the house. In the town that Emily lives in the townspeople think she is crazy. They only complain and talk about how her house smells, and that it is extremely dirty. Since the Judge will not do anything they take eaters into their own hands. The townspeople discover that Emily buys poison, and think it is for her but they think that it is better if she is dead anyways. That is not the case though Emily uses the poison for something else. The townspeople seem as though they are an audience to Miss Emily show. The story is also not in a particular chronological order. It Jumps from section to section which skips certain details, but it still portrays what is going on in the story. It goes from Colonel Astoria showing up at her house to claim the taxes to them vanishing. So we really don’t know what happened. Faulkner structures the story like that of a detective story to keep us guessing when he goes from section to section. Moreover, â€Å"A Rose for Emily’, has many structures that make the story unique and Interesting because It Is not Like many other stories. We see the point of view of the townspeople as though they are always up to date with Employs life. The story has a unique beginning because It starts off like the ending and ends with an ending. Also the chronological order jumps from section through section, which Is not In order that still keeps the reader Interested because It Is Like that of a detective novel. A rose for Emily By monomaniac really happened to Miss Emily. This story is surrounded around the ideas and visions of someone that lives in the town. It lets us know of what the people in the town not follow a chronological order which plays out like that of a detective story. Also the story has different sections that don’t go detail to detail it skips some detailed parts This story is not a traditional because it does a beginning and goes in an order that we understand since all of the details are put into perspective and order. We see that in the beginning Miss Emily passes away and part of the town. He tells us of what is going on in the town through Miss Emily life. Showing up at her house to claim the taxes to them vanishing. So we really don’t Emily’, has many structures that make the story unique and interesting because it is not like many other stories. We see the point of view of the townspeople as though they are always up to date with Emily life. The story has a unique beginning because it starts off like the ending and ends with an ending. Also the chronological order Jumps from section through section, which is not in order that still keeps the reader interested because it is like that of a detective novel. How to cite A rose for emily, Papers