William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
...ad gotten married secretly because under the circumstances a big traditional wedding would be in bad taste since the story takes place in the Deep South. Miss Emily seems to have trouble letting go of the past and accepting the present. Three days after her father’s death, the townspeople finally convince her to allow them to dispose of her deceased father properly. It seems as though Emily will have trouble coping with life on her own. Her father ruled her life, especially her love life, in the sense that to her father no man was good enough for his little girl. Being a protective father is fine since society in this day and age has seen it’s share of protective fathers but not quite to the extent of what takes place in “A Rose for Emily”. Some questions come to mind once finished reading the story. Does Emily have issues with understanding time; past and present? Does she confuse illusion and reality? Her relationship with Homer Barron seems to be that sort of a gruesome one. When the townspeople see Homer enter the house the final time to never see him again, it leads to conclusions that something strange might be happening. The reader can draw this conclusion from the story when Emily purchases Arsenic from the drugstore. Why would she need this type of poison and why do the townspeople never see Homer again? It seems as if “Her passionate, almost sexual relationship with her dead father forces her to distrust the living body of Homer Barron and to kill him so that he will resemble the dead father she can never forget.” (Malin 1) Emily lives in a state of illusion or so it seems. The end of Faulkner’s story is shockingly repellent, alarming and somewhat grim. “It seems that Miss Emily has been lying in bed with the corpse of Homer Barron” (Octech 1). The ending of the story creates a realm of illusion and reality. The reader may ask themselves, “Is this possible, could Emily have been sleeping in the same bed with a dead man for thirty years” (West 5)? According to one source William Faulkner creates themes of “posthumous Motion, i.e., the idea that when animals and people die, their bodies go back to the earth, and the earth uses the body’s chemicals to create new life” (Octech 1). With this in mind, for example, if a tree dies in the forest, it eventually will turn into dirt which allows for new trees to grow, therefore, life after death. Wh...