Reading this atypical piece of work entitled “A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner encourages a sense of thrill and stimulation within. Since Mr. Faulkner resided in Mississippi most of his writings reflect his home state, as does “A Rose for Emily”. The first person minor point of view is being told by the townspeople. The main character, Miss Emily, in this short gothic story that took place during the early 1900 hundreds demonstrated a conflict she was having with herself. I think that it is well known that our parents are the backbone to each person’s existence.
Knowing this, William Faulkner managed to include through the events in the plot an underlining message mixed with a little flowered mockery. Although, Ms. Emily committed murder, she was a victim of her learned environment because of her father and the citizens of Jefferson. This story revolved around one town and one main character. The beginning of this woman’s well to do life in a poor southern state consisted only of herself and her domineering father living in the same house until the calling of God summoned her elsewhere.
Miss Emily managed to make it to age thirty still being single with only the help of her father and “she would… continue to cling to that which had robbed her”(472). The town’s people assumed that “none of the young men were quite good enough for Ms. Emily and such”(471). When the only person in Emily’s life passed on, she stood in denial and refused condolences an aid to bury her father from the town ladies. The damage that her father had bestowed upon her by sheltering her from the rest of the world was starting to emerge at the time of his death.
By over-protecting Emily and “clutching a horsewhip”(471) to control her life, caused her to become hermit-like in the town she grew up in and knew very well. This creator of Emily must have lead her life for her in every way, fore when he exited the earth, he managed to take a big part of her with him. I believe this caused a confused state in which Emily really didn’t know herself, causing her to be so afraid of being alone that townspeople were “trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body… for three days”(471). Emily came upon and involved herself with a second male figure that turned out to be her lover.
In the end Emily poisons her lover to keep him from leaving her. The fulfilling plot is retold by the townspeople as if they were all reflecting upon her life and the things they remembered. By the author reflecting back, using the whole town, it gave the story a sense of upcoming purpose. The climax continued to climb starting “when the smell developed”(470) to Emily purchasing the arsenic and finally the very end when the realization was put forth by “a long strand of iron-gray hair”(475) implying that she really killed Homer.
The author’s tone carried sympathy for Emily as stated by the townspeople, when they said “poor Emily”(472) several times. The characterization of Emily was also provided by the description of her house that had once been white, decorated with a nice roof, steeple, and “scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies”(469), compared to the current portrait given of “an eye sore among eyesores”(469).
The townspeople who “had begun to feel really sorry for her”(471), along with her father, all provided an external unhealthy motivation that is responsible for her unthinkable actions of murdering Homer. A mixture of simple to read sentences along with minor dialog made the story easy to understand. I felt the style of writing provided a spirited suspense by not letting on that Homer was dead until the closing paragraphs. For me, stories like that keep me reading until the very end.
