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The Mind In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a story of tragedy and delusion of the mind, causing one to become lost in a time long past. Emily is physically marooned in a time and world in which her mind does not understand nor agree with causing her to become unaware of what is around her, likewise “her queerness, the fact that she cannot compete with [the new world and younger generation around her]…the fact that she is hopelessly out of touch with the world around her” (Cleanth Brooks Jr. and Robert Penn Warren 525) makes the universe outside of her own consciousness as lost to her as she is to it. Faulkner throughout the story expertly places symbols that offer deeper insight into the delusional mind of Miss Emily and into the world around …show more content…

“After her father 's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” (Faulkner 517) Miss Emily was from a time where there was an expectation of what women were supposed to do and what they were expected to do. “In this case there was a young girl [Miss Emily] with a young girl’s normal aspirations to find love and then a husband, who was brow-beaten and kept down by her father, a selfish man who didn’t want her to leave home because he wanted a housekeeper” (Faulkner 523) And this expectation that Miss Emily had for herself to find a find a husband to kill Homer Barron because she did not want him to leave, her guilt for her crime is what causes her to stay mind to stay cemented in a time before Homer Barren died because excepting the passage of time would cause her to accept what she has done. “When she lost him [Homer Barren] she could see that for her this was the end of life, there was nothing except left, except to grow older, alone, solitary; she had something and she wanted to keep it” (Faulkner 523) She imprisoned not only herself to the confines of her own home but also Homer Barron, and the house became her prison and her sanctuary. She chose her home to be her prison because in her home she was free to become oblivious to the outside world, so that she may allow herself to believe that time has stood still in her home and that the passage of time has ceased to

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