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Isolation In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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A Rose for Emily is a story by William Faulkner that can be described as a Southern Gothic story about a girl named Emily Grierson who had a father that died and left her the house with no money. Many of the townspeople didn’t start worrying about Emily of how she started going into isolation. I believe Emily should have to ask instead of suffering the way she did. Isolation was something that was used to drive the plot of “A Rose for Emily.” As the townspeople started worrying about Emily, such as when she took poison that had arsenic because the townspeople thought she was going to kill herself. When she bought wedding clothes and people thought she was getting married. The fact that Emily never was using the arsenic for rats, …show more content…

They both started looking great, but then something happens of which the beauty started to fade from both. In fact, it was almost like the house was Emily and as time went by, Emily and the house were both wearing out. It seems to me that Faulkner was using the house to represent Emily. Lime in the story was used to cover up a smell of a rotten corpus which is ironic because the townspeople didn’t know about the body. The arsenic was supposed to be used for rats but it was used to kill someone. Arsenic is an odorless chemical to kill people and is used to kill rats. The rumor of A Rose for Emily is that the townspeople think of these different things to talk about. The people from the town were divided into age groups. The older people felt sorry for Emily, while were whispering that first with Tobe was with her all the time, and they were spreading rumors about Homer preferred men. No one did like Homer because he was a Yankee. People were talking how Emily and Homer were conducting themselves while the older people were happy that Emily found someone. Then some started talking about Homer left her. After Homer left she bought arsenic. They thought that she was going to kill herself, but then Homer reappeared. The townspeople was even talking about her getting married when she bought clothes and gifts for

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“A Rose for Emily” is about Emily who all the townspeople were interested in only because they didn’t know what she was like. She stayed secluded from the town and when she died everyone was curious. Both characters lived in social isolation as they were put away

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Even though the public and private had a distant relationship, the public tried to interfere with the private. Faulkner describes Miss Emily as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (803). For instance, when her house gave off a horrendous odor, the town took it upon themselves to get rid of it. Faulkner explains, “Four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn…they broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings” (806). Even when Miss Emily purchased arsenic, Faulkner states, “The druggist looked down at her, ‘…the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for’”

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In "A Rose For Emily" William Faulkner discusses the theme of isolation. In the story there is a lady whose name is Emily, who lost her father. Emily 's father was over protective and strict. A foreman named Homer Barron had a relationship with Emily later on after her father died. One day Homer goes to Emily 's house and the town never sees him come out.

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The element of mystery in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” plays an important role in the outcome of events and adds additional depth to the story. Faulkner is able to add this mystery to the work through using an out of order chronology and making the narrator be the people of the town. Faulkner relies heavily upon the use of flashbacks and slowly revealing to the reader the events that occur in an order that leaves the reader having to piece together information as opposed to just being given information. In the case of Emily buying arsenic, the reader is unsure of the reason why, but due to Faulkner earlier describing the townspeople complaining of a smell a significant time after she bought the poison, the reader can assume that there

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“We remembered all the young men her father had driven away” (453). Miss Emily’s father drove away young men interested in her, not allowing her to have a love life and therefore a life outside of him. This controlling treatment of Miss Emily by Mr. Grierson coincides with Emily’s fight to control her love life with Homer. “Because Homer himself had remarked - he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club - that he was not a marrying man” (454). If it weren’t for the fact that Miss Emily murdered Homer, he would have left her, therefore she used the murder as a way to keep him close to

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After Emily’s father’s death, she doesn’t keep the house clean anymore, the first floor is closed off, and the home begins to smell of a strong stench. Dust begins to fall on everything in the house “…smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell” (Faulkner 629). As the house is no longer being maintained, so too is Emily as she begins to age and descends into madness. Thomas Dilworth, journalist, quoted “In her personal life, Emily reproduced the pattern of this social myth by twice keeping at home the bodies of dead loved ones while refusing to acknowledge their deaths” (Dilworth). Faulkner relates the use of arsenic as a symbol of getting rid of a rat, specifically, Homer because he had no intentions of marrying Emily.

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The story "A Rose for Emily¨, tells the years of Emily´s life after her father's death and the towns reaction and thoughts based on her actions and events in her life. After her father's death she isolated herself from the whole town and rejected every man in the town.

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In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson, a prominent member of her small town, dies alone in her home. Upon her death, curious townsfolk entered her home trying to learn her secrets. It was thought she was crazy. Emily Grierson was not crazy; she was isolated by her father, which led to her odd social tendencies and unique interactions with others. A Rose for Emily is a short story based in a small town.

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Even the narrator’s often disjointed accounts of the past all push towards a fond remembrance and need without a want in today’s society. “an eyesore among eyesores” Miss Emily’s house was called, that was to show that even with its cobwebs and peeling paint this building stood as a testament to an age long gone, a

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When Emily’s father dies and shortly after Homer’s disappearance follows, we see a depressed and a lonely Emily who never leaves the

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Knowing the historical period can help account for Miss Emily’s behavior.

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She also hid Homer’s body after she killed him. Emily wanted to keep him with her forever and did not let him say no to marrying her. She bought clothes and a bathroom set to

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Symbolism is one literary device Faulkner uses and has major importance to the story. One big symbol in the story is Emily’s house. For most of the townspeople they only saw the house from the outside in never the inside out. Faulkner gives a good description of the house by saying, “it was a big squarish frame house that once had been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on

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When her father died she lost everyone that mattered to her. She eventually started dating people and getting back out into the world again. She had met Homer whom she had hoped to marry one day. The towns people were worried because he was a northerner and a Yankee therefore they tried to get her to stop seeing him, but they soon learned Homer was more interested in living the life of a single guy. When Emily learned of this she went to the drug store to buy arsenic, she wanted to ensure Homer did not leave her. She seemed to have a problem with people leaving her; she never was happy.

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