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William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” was originally published in the April 30, 1930. An unnamed narrator describes the strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her strange relationships with her father, her lover, and the horrible mystery she conceals. The action takes place in the town of Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is a critical setting in much of Faulkner’s fiction. The principal themes of the story are: bitterness, resentment, generation gap, disillusionment and suppressed forbidden love. The story helps understand the human psyche. The author touches various issues connected with dark aspects of human life. In Faulkner’s position I cannot find absolute evil or good. Both those aspects form human soul. Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” tells a reader how a spinster is hoarding the body of the killed lover. The story deals with a murder caused by possessive love, showing the face of death which results in repulsion and compassion. The woman not only took away her lover’s life, she also kept the dead body in her house. As a result, I understand that she punished him by eternal life …show more content…

And then, the unknown narrator comments: “We didn’t say she was crazy then” (669). The author alludes to the tragic end when Miss Emily purchased the arsenic, she looked through her “cold, haughty black eyes…” (Faulkner,670). In conclusion I may say that Emily was not afraid of dying. She was not understood by her contemporaries. Her father was a stubborn man who thought that no one was good enough for his daughter. He drove away all the young men who were interested in his daughter. And when Emily fell in love with Homer Barron, later she found out he liked men and was not a “marrying man”. All these factors resulted in Emily’s decision to choose death as the only possible means.

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