The Influence Of Power In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

Power. It is the idea that one holds a certain level of influence. That one is able to affect something or someone else by simply having dominance over it, even if it is through illusion or deception. It is a title given to those with confidence or respect, constructed by society through generations and generations of violence and prejudice; power is not only a great virtue, it is also something that carries great destruction. “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner, illustrates the idea that oftentimes we attribute power to control, influencing the manner in which we treat those who surround us. He creates a character who had been under her father's rule all her life. After his death, Emily Grierson was left to make sense of the remains

Through time, Emily came to develop her own methods, one that was parasitic and necrophilic, as an attempt to fulfil what her childhood lacked. The viewpoint of a story is often plays a large role in what the reader interprets from the story. Faulkner used shifts in time and a diverse narrative perspective to build an illusion of an eccentric timeline. The story, although about Emily, never actually took place from her perspective; it is written from the perspective of the townspeople through a single individual, one that is not specified. The narrator articulates the community’s opinion on Emily who was viewed her as someone who was unapproachable, of high standards, someone who was merely talked about. They came to know many details about her and still carried a dogmatic view on Emily and her lifestyle, thinking of her as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town”. Believing that Colonel Sartoris, her father, had built an unnecessarily high reputation, the townsfolk thought her father should have wed her off to the first proper suitor. Emily, in a sense, had been left to uphold to his actions

This was not the case for Emily, though, because she lacked the figure or family who would teach her of integrity. Instead, her mindset was fueled solely by those around her, and she was able to transfix herself into working with her mentality. Emily, who was left with her father's corpse, found her method for power. With tangible control in her arms, she fulfilled her need for power over her father. She kept his corpse in her home for three days and denied her father's death when mentioned, as she found power in knowing her father couldn’t tell her how to live anymore. Emily was now able to do whatever she desired, which continued to fuel her sense of power. It influenced the manner in which she treated her father - instead of remorse, she felt freedom, as her father's memory was one of cruelty. However, her desire for control did not end here. A few years after her father's death, Homer Barron captured her attention and Emily’s necrophilic behaviour had acted as a harmful propensity towards him. With most of her life given to her father to decide, she craved whatever control she had grasping onto whatever she could in her adult age. Emily’s attraction towards Homer was more of a challenge than genuine love or lust, thus leading to her murdering Homer in order to achieve her satisfaction. Her power and position made her harmful, as her