Why Did Emily Murder Homer
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a short story that originates in Oxford, Mississippi. ... “A Rose for Emily” tells a story about a southern woman who is a bit strange. The town she lives in is a gossiping community, and the people think of Miss Emily Grierson as an outsider. ... Miss Emily had two men in her life, her father and her lover; she didn’t want either of these men to go. Miss Emily had strange, if not bizarre relationships with the men in her life, but why did she kill Homer Barron, her lover? …”Emily Grierson’s fascination for a generation of readers stems primarily form the secret gradually unfolded in the course of the narrative. ... Shocking and incomprehensible, Emily’s actions demand an explanation"(Allen 686). Many people have speculated as to why Emily killed her lover. ... The first of these is that this was Miss Emily’s way of attempting to control him because she had an unresolved oedipal complex. “Her libidinal desires for her father were transferred, after his death, to a male surrogate- Homer Barron” (Scherting 397). The third and possible the most supported explanation is the fact that Homer Barron was homosexual, and Miss Emily poisoned him to save face. The first explanation for Emily’s actions is she did not have a reality of time, death, and did not want to accept change. Dennis Allen states, “Like her manipulation of time through memory, Emily’s murder of Homer is, ironically, an attempt to forestall his loss through death. ... ” Emily doesn’t want change. She doesn’t want to lose Homer so she decided to keep him by killing him, and reserving his body. There have been a “Variety of symbolic and psychological reasons for Emily Grierson’s inability (or refusal) to acknowledge the passage of time” (Schwab 215).