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Rose For Emily Reflection

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After I have read and reread the short stories listed in the Complete section of this week, I find that A Rose for Emily intrigues me the most. I think it is probably due to the way the story is narrated. I like the way it is framed in a first-person point of view but also relies on the feelings of many. In the nearly 90 years since William Faulkner produced A Rose for Emily, many writers, scholars and critics have written about the intriguing story and have produced many different opinions regarding the meaning of the title, the plot and numerous others points in the story.

I have read this classic short story over and over and have drastically different ideas of why Emily did what she did depending on the point of view that I have at the time of the reading. This is my first look into a topic such as I am writing on now and feel quite overwhelmed with the idea that I have absolutely no clue what I am doing or how I am going to accomplish this task.

It seems from reading the story and conducting basic research that one of the most talked about and controversial subjects is whether Emily went to bed, or even had sex, with her dead lover Homer Barron (Iken & Stralen, 2013). This topic, I feel, is key to both …show more content…

To me, it seems that the dedication of a former slave is almost inclusive in the death of Homer. How could he not know that Homer was dead? How could he not tell others? It seems to me the only reason he did not say anything was his commitment to the family name, or dedication to Emily, that he feels some type of unsubstantiated commitment to. I think that this level of commitment is exemplified by the fact that he stayed with Emily after her death, until others came and then he simply walked out of the story all together. To me, his involvement is the most bizarre part of the whole story. Toby was there from the start to the finish of this saga and actually has very little to do with the

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Mr. Grierson, Emily’s father, prohibited her from socializing with men because, in Mr. Grierson’s eyes, there was no man suitable for Emily. After being tired of being alone for so long, Emily decided to date Homer Barron. Homer Barron was a Northerner and worked as a foreman for a construction company. The older folks of the town were excited for Emily, there was even talk about marriage between the couple. However, the younger crowd did not believe Homer was that of Ms. Griersons high status.

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Paloma Cerda Mrs. Koehler ENGL-1301-566 September 20, 2017 In A Rose for Emily written by William Faulkner, the story of Miss Emily is told through a very loose format. Through this narration, there is a long and drawn out suspense built up through little hints left by the reader without fully giving away the dark truth behind Emily and her house. Until the end of the story, the narrators ambiguity cleverly points the reader towards the climax of the story where Emily is discovered to be Homer Barron’s killer. This ambiguous element is important to the quality of this short story as it drives it forward and keeps the reader interested.

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In the 1930’s, as many of us may know, this was around the time of the Lost Generation and flappers who changed the country’s idea of acceptable morals. The south, being religious, it is common for many families to want their children to stay away from this form of corruption and stick to the idea of marrying and creating a family in God’s light. In most religious communities, then and now, it is almost taboo for a woman to be single or to be without children, through marriage of course, by the age of 30. This fear is what caused Emily to become assertive in her endeavors with both her father and Homer. You don 't hear of any other family members that had a strong influence in her life.

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Not only that, as Homer becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, it scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. Even though Emily is from the high class family, it does not mean that she is living up to the pleasant lifestyle. As a matter of fact, she is actually living a gloomy and desolate life, which is essentially the opposite lifestyle expected for Emily's rank in society by the townspeople. Although Emily once represented a great southern tradition centering on the landed gentry with their vast holdings and considerable resources, Emily's legacy has devolved, making her more a duty and an obligation than a romanticized vestige of a dying order.

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1. The dominant atmosphere of the story is sad, depressing and isolation. It is established right from the beginning of the story where the story starts with, “when Miss Emily Grierson died.” This statement gives an idea that the story will surely have tragic events. It prepares for the story’s conclusion that the events of the story will lead to Miss Emily’s death.

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“A Rose for Emily” is a unique short story that keeps the reader guessing even though its first sentence already reveals the majority of the content. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is the epitome of a work that follows an unconventional plot structure and a non-linear timeline, but this method of organization is intentional, as it creates suspense throughout the story. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” follows an unusual plot structure, which creates an eccentric application of suspense to a short story. Throughout the story, there are no clear indications of standard plot structure in each section, such as intro, climax, and denouement. Instead, there are sections, which are not in chronological order, that describe a particular conflict or event, which in turn creates suspense, as each conflict builds upon each other to make the reader question the overall context and organization of the story.

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Throughout the story, the main character, Miss Emily Grierson, shows signs of what appears to be some form of mental illness. Although Faulkner never states that Miss Emily has anything wrong with her mental health, he does provide enough evidence to support that she is not psychologically stable. In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner portrays the main character as a mysterious icon of the small town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the story states, Emily’s father is an admirable figure in the city of Jefferson. After his passing, the townspeople show the same respect for Emily, as well.

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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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Analysis of “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is the best short story because its plot, setting, and symbols are well formulated and incorporated into the story to effectively convey the themes of death and change, race and gender. A Rose for Emily is a short story regarding the life of Emily Grierson as told through the perspectives of the townspeople in a tiny old town in the South. The story begins with the awkward relationship between Emily and her dad, pre and posts his death, and further explores how Emily gets secluded after poisoning her “Yankee” partner Homer Barron and concealing his remains for more than a decade in her bed. William Faulkner exploits various literary devices to create various themes.

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Miss Emily Have you ever felt like you can’t let go of the past? In the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner Miss Emily struggles with letting go of the past. She cannot let go of her loved ones. Miss Emily is far from okay with losing loved ones and is in denial that they are dead. She doesn’t want to let go and move on.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

The value of romance and mortality resembles the theme of obsession, and is shown throughout the plots, and the characters in, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Birth Mark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Firstly, Faulkner illustrates obsession of romance through mortality. In addition, Emily’s obsessive illness of love over death it often seen throughout the plot. Lastly, Hawthorne demonstrates the obsession of mortality thorough romance, through the main protagonist, Aylmer in “The Birth Mark.” To compare, Emily and Aylmer believe their obsessive consequences was from the heart, despite their obsessive disorders.

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1425 Words | 6 Pages

In this story, the ending was extremely ironic because the reader is thinking of one ending, but the actual ending ends up being totally different, and a complete surprise. At the end of the story, it was surprising for the reader to read, “She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped up on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight” (826), because one was not expecting her death. Also in this quote the author describes her hair as being gray, just as he did later on when the narrator found an “iron-gray hair” (827) upon the pillow next to the murdered man. That was an unexpected event that was extremely ironic. At this point, the author is insinuating that Emily had to do with the death of Homer Barron.

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William Faulkner is a complex writer who knows how to set a great pace in his stories. He is also a very flexible writer which allows the openness of many topics to write on because of his unconventional style. In his short story, "A Rose for Emily", you can interpret how times are so different from today. Although it was not during slavery times, things were not much more advance than that. The dominance of gender or social roles shown on women, particularly Miss Emily, may be seen as harsh or unfair.

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Meeting Homer Barron was her biggest change from her old self, because her father did not allow her be in any relationships, but she went out in public with Homer “driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable” (454). Consequently, this was only because she was living in her own reality and believed that Homer would be the one to marry her. Homer was “not a marrying man” (454) and would not marry Emily, but she refused to accept the denial of marriage from him, so she killed him to keep him with her forever. She stayed within her house to keep herself in the Old South. When she told the men to see Colonel Sartoris, she was not aware that “Colonel Sartoris had been dead for almost ten years” (452) at that point.

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The story is set right after the civil war. Emily and her father are high class people who owned slaves to do all the things around the house. Because of her social status everyone in the town would never think of Emily as someone who would sleep with a dead body. When everyone found out about Emily’s secret it was a shock to everyone. Necrophilia is not something someone who was first class would do.

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