How Can Love Lead To The Destruction Of A Rose For Emily Essay

Have you lost someone close to you or a family member that you loved? Losing a person you thought would be in your life forever can introduce self-destructive ideas and drive you towards them. “A Rose for Emily,” a short story by William Faulkner demonstrates that love can lead to the destruction of yourself and others around you. Miss Emily, the main character of Faulkner’s story reveals this destruction, when her soon to be husband left her suddenly, when her father abruptly passed away, and when the foreman the townspeople thought she would marry disappeared. In the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily Grierson shows that love can lead to self and others destruction with the way she acts after her soon to be husband deserted

The death of someone she loved drives Miss Emily farther down the path of destruction. When the townsfolk went to give their condolences to her, “She told them 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.” Her action of playing off her father's death caused a slight stir among the people but no one really thought too much into it. It didn’t seem out of the ordinary until Miss Emily was seen less and less around town. Many people began to talk about how her father had driven away many of her potential husbands so it was assumed that she acted that way because of his death, not that she had gone crazy. Following her father's death, “She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows — sort of tragic and serene.” Having been sick and isolated from the people in her community, she divided herself from them and the changes made in the world. She remained in the past, hung up on her man leaving her and her father's passing. Having that long time alone must have changed something in her. Miss Emily’s actions after

He arrived in the town when they started the contracts to get new paved sidewalks, and he caught her eyes. Everything seemed normal with the couple until she went looking for the strongest poison from the druggist. After requesting her poison, she she was urged to tell the druggist the use for it and “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.” The drug was known to kill almost any animal, so many people assumed she was going to end her life. There was some whispers and stirring of what might happen to her throughout the town but she kept making appearances around town. These rumors and the confusion separated Miss Emily from the town again after being with Homer so much. After a while though, most of the townspeople were not surprised when they didn’t see Homer around with Miss Emily since the sidewalks had been completed. The moment that they weren’t seeing Homer Baron was the moment they saw less and less of Miss Emily. She wasn’t seen around the town for six months, she was later found dead in her home. She “fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her.” Once it got out that she passed, the whole town gathered to see her and what was in her home. The