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Privacy In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

525 Words3 Pages

"Colonel Sartoris, the mayor, . . . remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity"(Faulkner 803–4). The citizens of Jefferson are determined to take care of Miss Emily and how she is viewed publicly, but they are demolishing her privacy by doing so. The odd relationship between Miss Emily and Homer Barron also shows how public and private connects. According to Willow D. Crystal, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" suggests how Miss Emily and the town of Jefferson are not only private and public but also how they connect. I agree, but I would add that the townspeople of Jefferson begin to feel like it is their duty to take care of her. Therefore, that’s how public and private connects.

Miss Emily distanced herself and became very private after her father died, so the townspeople of Jefferson made it their responsibility look after her. Crystal states, " the price of privacy for Miss Emily becomes the loss of that very privacy" (3). Miss Emily was so private that it cost her the exact thing she was trying to have, privacy. As claimed by Faulkner, "the …show more content…

Nevertheless, the citizens feel a need to help her as if they owe her something. In Crystal's perspective, " despite—or perhaps because of—her refusal to buy into the community, the citizens of Jefferson determine that it is their “duty,” their “hereditary obligation,” to oversee her activities"(3). The citizens of Jefferson are being so persistent that they did not realize that they were ruining her privacy and how she is viewed publicly. In other words, Faulkner asserts "Miss Emily’s house begins to emit an unpleasant smell, the town officials decide to solve the problem by dusting her property with lime"(803). Hence, the townspeople's effort to help Miss Emily obliterates her public image by treating her as a helpless woman who cannot make decisions for

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Miss Emily comes from an old wealthy line of family in the deep south. Faulkner story is highly symbolic, enhancing miss Emily’s values and character. “Miss Emily is described as a fallen monument to the chivalric American South”(Allmon). Faulkner uses the setting of the story to show the emotional state of Emily. The female-male relationship between Emily and her father is strict, oppressive, and controlling; Their relationship has a major impact on Emily’s character Throughout the short story.

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Miss Emily comes from an upper class family. She shuts herself off from her community and hides the fact that she lived with her dead husband for years. Faulkner characterizes Miss Emily as a “monument” and as “a tradition, a duty, and a care, a sort of hereditary obligation”. Miss Emily comes from an upper class, and because of this people allow her to do things uncommon to the normal man, such as not having to pay taxes. In addition to her social status, Miss Emily isolates herself.

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It is clear that in her era, Miss Emily was seen as traditional American Southern women, who lived to become an inferior women to man but was later a burden to her society. She was a lady who was secluded from society, lived a psychopathic life, which at the end, and was no secret for the town’s people. While Miss Emily was alive, she lived in a secluded home of a single father, thus leading her to be dependent upon him. She did not have much of a socially engaged life, for her father drove men away. When he finally died, Miss Emily told the townspeople that he was not dead, and finally, on the third day, let the town’s people buried him (William Faulkner 1105).

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Beginning the story, Faulkner explains how a terrible smell starts to conjure up from Miss Emily Grierson’s house. Neighbors and townspeople were complaining that the smell was so bad that they were starting to worry. The judge of the town sends 4 men at night to sprinkle lime and as they are doing that Emily is watching them through the window. Emily may have know that the men were going to be there soon and she expected them. The author may have

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As he walks in, Josephine screams and falls down dead; the happiness that she had felt was too much for her weak heart. Likewise, “A Rose for Emily,” written by William Faulkner, opens on a woman, Emily Grierson, except this time the woman is already dead. The story is told from the perspective of the townspeople, a collective “we.” They recount when she was exempted from her taxes, and then when she refused to pay them after the death of the person who remitted her. Then, the townspeople go back further to a time when Emily’s house had a stench so foul, a judge was consulted about what to do; it was decided that a few townspeople would stealthily sprinkle lime about her property in order to not confront her and seem discourteous.

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In the story “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, Poe uses irony throughout story to allow the reader a little inside and humor on what is about to happen. Throughout the story examples of verbal, dramatic, and situational irony can be found easily and are helpful is foreshadowing what is to come. Verbal irony is when one thing is said, but another is meant. For example, when Montresor runs into Fortunato at the beginning of the story, he says, “My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met” (237); However, he actually means that he himself is happy to see Fortunato because he will profit from this meeting, not Fortunato.

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(808). o Crystal describes the relationship between Miss Emily and the town of Jefferson: Arguably, the townspeople’s actions serve to protect Miss Emily’s privacy…as much as they effectively destroy it with their intrusive zeal. In this very act of protection they reaffirm the town’s proprietary relation to the public “monument” that is Miss Emily and, consequently, reinforce her inability to make decisions for herself.

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In many situations, the people within the town notice Miss Emily’s odd behavior, but they choose to maintain peace with her instead of helping her when she clearly needs it the most. However, this need to preserve the respectful image of Miss Emily ultimately leads to her emotional breakdown of isolation and

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Telling the story in an irregular order, Faulkner develops a sense of suspense by adding details to the mysterious Miss Emily. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care: a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (451). The reader learns that Miss Emily had been seen as an eccentric woman that the people of the town had to take care of and overlook, ultimately overlooking her as a suspect in Homer Barron’s disappearance. Miss Emily often disappears into her house for months and years at a time,

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“The Great Gatsby” is a modernist novel written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. It was published in 1925.It was a time when people needed to recover mentally and economically (Lee, 1997).It is a novel dedicated to Zelda. According to Parkinson (1987), this novel illustrates two themes: 1. The disappointment after the First World War, concerning the society and the function of the state.

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She was alone, she was humiliated by the town, she had to hide away because she was not able to cope. In Tim O’Brien’s article he states, “After her death, Emily is reunited with the other members of her southern class …”, which means, in death, with the people she loved she will no longer be alone” (O’Brien

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The town has covered Emily since her youth; the duty they share remains even as time passes. The townspeople thought of Emily as a “tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation” (Faulkner 454). Protecting Emily’s

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Furthermore, the short story is written in a first person point of view by the community of Jefferson, which develops the irony that leaves not only Jefferson, but the reader in ‘awe.’ The community of Jefferson is left with a plethora of questions of Miss Emily’s mysterious lifestyle. Correspondingly, the community of Jefferson becomes very obsessed with Miss Emily. “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her 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…” (Faulkner)

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Emily kept her house the same way it had always been and was letting it decay while she stayed in it. She refused to clean or change the house at all to preserve it in the Old South. She did not want to accept the death of other people. When Emily’s father died, she refused the town from taking his body and burying it. She wanted to keep her father’s body with her and the town was “about to use law and force, but she broke down, and they buried her father quickly” (453).

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Society, at the begin of the story she is given tax notices for Jefferson. She refuses to acknowledge them she refuses to do anything with them, so they are sent back to sender. They try to give Emily the benefit of the doubt because she has had a rough life, but she must pay her taxes. They keep sending her tax notices until they decide they must show up at her house to collect. When they send aldermen to collect her taxes they try to explain she must pay them that it is the law, but she is adamite that she doesn’t have taxes to pay and she kicks them out of her house.

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