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A Rose For Emily Self Preservation Analysis

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Often times, when one visualizes a Southern town, he imagines a picturesque scene filled with ladies adorned with pearl jewelry and men with a suit and tie. The picture tends to have a certain atmosphere around it: a sense that everyone in the scene knows what is expected of oneself and the pressure to uphold that tradition. This element of respectability is integral to Southern culture, especially after the Civil War as the South was struggling to retain its honor. It is no wonder, then, why William Faulkner so deeply incorporates the theme of preserving one’s nobility into A Rose for Emily. The themes of self-preservation and respectability are defining characteristics of Faulkner’s fictional town of Jefferson, much to the detriment of Miss Emily and the townspeople. The culture of preservation in Jefferson is a component of the motivation behind Homer Barron’s murder. Homer first meets Miss Emily and they both become increasingly attached to one another, so much so that Miss Emily buys him silver toiletries because she assumes that he will ask her to marry him. However, when it becomes clear to her that he has no intention of marrying at all, she poisons him with rat poison. She murders him because she realizes that if he rejects her affections publicly, she will be accused of being unable to retain a relationship and the town will regard her as …show more content…

The people of Jefferson are so afraid of being isolated from the majority that they refuse to fully incorporate Miss Emily into their community. Miss Emily’s own desire to conform leads her down a dark path, one that includes murdering someone she loves. Ignoring someone else’s problems in order to be seen as respectable ultimately leads to the deterioration of oneself and the community that is pressuring him to

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-“So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily 's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork,” (Faulkner II). -“When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad,” (Faulkner II). -“The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid,” (Faulkner

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Imagine being in a situation where there are a limited number of options and your life can only go in one direction. Has this ever happened to you? Either way, this is the predicament that the character of Jefferson faces in A Lesson Before Dying, who is sentenced to death for crimes that he did not commit. Although Jefferson has only thirty days left to live, he learns three valuable lessons that he carries with him into his final hours. This includes learning to open up to the people closest to him, showing kindness and love to those who have shown kindness to him, and finding self-worth in the age of Jim-Crow.

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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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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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1451 Words | 6 Pages

From that point on my doors started to open more, with the two frequently going out together. It was relieving to see Miss Emily finally leaving her room and getting out and around the town, I was hopeful that these two would stay together and that maybe I my respect from the town folk will return and I will once again be considered an iconic house hold of Jefferson. This belief was not long lived, women of the town continued to whisper this time regarding the love affair between Miss Emily and Homer. Due to Miss Emily’s age many wondered if the two would marry and again this became talk of the town, Even the local minister came to speak with Miss Emily, although he left quite swiftly and was never to return. Soon after that visitors from Alabama came to stay, from what I could understand they were relatives of the Griersons, and had come to visit.

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After reading A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, many people initially wonder why Miss Emily would murder Homer Barron. When reviewing the events of the story, it becomes apparent that she displayed symptoms, manifestations of her mental state in her behavior, of being socially inept and thus capable of this heinous crime. These symptoms are unsurprising, as her father represses her, withholding her from the public. Emily accordingly displays symptoms of this repression by evading authorities and the townspeople. Faulkner is trying to get the reader to go back and review this problem-the cause of Homer’s murder- by identifying the signs that this crime occurred and Emily’s symptoms of mental instability.

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By using unconventional plot structure, Faulkner has created a complex method of storytelling to explore the moral shortcomings of Southern values and ethics during the American Civil War through the means of Emily, a character who is socially and mentally trapped in the old

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The story, "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner, is about an old woman, Emily Grierson, who lives in the South post-Civil War. It details her life and how the town of Jefferson sees her. Faulkner expertly uses symbolism to develop his characters and the plot. He uses Emily to symbolize the South and its resistance to change, the town to represent new ideas, and a rose to symbolize love and decay. One of the story's draws is the mystery surrounding Miss Emily and her odd behavior, and Faulkner's use of symbolism adds to the uncertainty and strengthens the themes of change and decay.

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As the story advances, Emily translates her life through types of control, and this plays into her cooperation with the town, and even more particularly, her association with her suitor Homer Barron. She is prideful and isolated, driving the townspeople to theorize on her life and to judge her considering how she connects with Barron and how she keeps (or doesn 't keep) her home. Emily in the long run secures herself away in the dusty, rotting house while she becomes more seasoned and feebler.

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Homer Barron is described as “a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” (Faulkner 4). No woman wants to feel as if they’re unattractive, especially when it comes to someone they like in an intimate way. However, Emily’s problem wasn’t that she was unattractive because according to Faulkner, she was quite beautiful in her youth. The ultimate issue did not lie on Emily, but on Homer Barron because of his odd remark that he liked men. Emily must have been confused and a tad bit sad to find out that the man she liked didn’t like her back.

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806 Words | 4 Pages

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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862 Words | 4 Pages

She is mentally disturbed, and driven to her act by insanity. Miss Emily kills her victim, Barron, to keep him around because she truly loves him and she does not want to let go. Both protagonists have a distorted perception of

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584 Words | 3 Pages

Homer worked for a construction company with niggers while Miss Emily came from a fortunate family. The reaction of the community is that she is better than him, not realizing that they should be able to love whoever they want, without any rules or social

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1078 Words | 5 Pages

The titled short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is set in the post-civil war era in a southern town named Jefferson. The story discusses the themes of race and social class through the characters, Tobe and Miss Emily. Miss Emily Grierson is a distinguished woman in southern society while Tobe is her black manservant. Tobe stays with Miss Emily until her death and suddenly disappears afterwards because their relationship is a remnant of the race relationship in the antebellum South: master and slave. He no longer has any obligations to stay in Jefferson because his duty to Miss Emily is no longer needed since she died.

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“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is written about the change from Old South to New South and Emily refuses to accept the changes by living in her own version of reality. An analysis of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” will explain how Faulkner portrays the change in the social structure of the American South in the early twentieth century as a change from Old South to New South by showing the Griersons no longer hold power, the changes in the town, and Emily’s denial to change. In the New South the Griersons no longer hold power. Emily believes that her family still holds the power that they had in the Old South, so she never payed her taxes.

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