FREE ESSAY ON ROSE FOR EMILY HELP

ROSE FOR EMILY HELP

William Faulkner's A Rose for Emilyis the story of a woman's reluctance towards change.
The story encompasses the entire town's unwillingness to change, while focusing on the
protagonist, Emily Grierson. Faulkner uses symbols throughout the story to cloak an
almost allegorical correlation to the reconstruction period of the South. Even though
these symbols are open to interpretation, they are the heart and soul of the story. While
the literal meaning of Faulkner's story implies many different conclusions, it is
primarily the psychological and symbolic aspects which give the story meaning. Exploring
these aspects will shed light on Faulkner's intention of A Rose for Emily.
After Emily Grierson's domineering father dies, she refuses to move on. By defining
moving on as letting go, we see that Emily is lodged in the past, unable to ameliorate as
the rest of society does. Whenever anything drastic occurs, Emily becomes reclusive,After
her father's death she went out very little... after her sweetheart went away, people
hardly saw her at all. (428), the narrator explains. She had Tobe, her butler to interact
with the world so that she didn't have to face reality. Psychologically, this is very
important in terms of how Emily views the world and why she commits murder.
If unable to change, one will die in time. Emily though was held to the code of noblesse
oblige (430). This meant that even in dire need, Emily would never reveal her true
feelings to the common folk of Jefferson. So she distorts time, refusing to accept the
fact that her father was dead: 
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence
and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no
trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for
three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to
let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she
broke down, and they buried her father quickly. (429)
Emily now clear of her father's horsewhip (429), was free to explore her sexuality. This
newfound freedom led her to fancy a Yankee day laborer named Homer Barron. Her father
would never have approved of a commoner such as Homer as the townsfolk point out, We
remembered all the men her father had driven away (429). Their relationship grew and the
townspeople suspected that they would be married, as is the southern way. They were
mildly surprise that they were not to be married attributing it to that quality of her
father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times... (432). Her father had doomed
her life, stifling any chance for growth. Not all of the blame is to be placed on Emily's
father, rather, it should be spread among the people of the town, her father, and Emily
herself. This falling out with Homer is the turning point in the story.
Instead of grieving as a normal person would, Miss Emily turns into a psychotic crazed
lover. At this point in the story she ceases to only be called Miss Emily; and the town
chooses to add poor Emily , as if a noble Grierson would need pity. Rather than sulk,
Emily goes to the drugstore to buy poison, expectedly to kill herself. She displays her
force as a Grierson to the unsure druggist when he asks why she requires poison, Miss
Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye to eye, until he
looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up (431). She used her influence
as a Grierson to get what she wanted, even though at this point, the Grierson name,
through several humbling events, was losing its vigor.
Still alive, Emily again chooses to live a hermit's life, now that Homer is gone. She
again takes refuge in her house which literally and figuratively is Miss Emily's denial
of reality and time. This is the initiation of her downfall and ultimatly her lonely
death. She refused to be accepted as what she truley was, a commoner. ...She demanded
nore than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson (430). Emily, in her
home, which for her, was functioning as a temporal shelter, was impervious to the
progression that was sweeping the rest of society. Miss Emily alone refused to let them
fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen
to them. (432). 
Emily died alone, save for her Negro man to wait on her (432). The town had forgotten
her, for she alone was in the past. Society typically doesn't look back,it instead looks
forward. Miss Emily had long since faded into the past, where no one but scholars would
think to look. However the town still respected Emily for what she was, a monument (426).
The townfolk did attend the funeral, in most part ...out of curiousity to see the inside
of her house... (426). After the funeral, the townspeople investigated the house finding
a room untouched for over 40 years. The house, like Emily, was stagnant and hadn't
succumbed to the evolution of time. Homer Barron's decayed body was found lying in bed.
Next to Homer there was an indentation of a head (433), and on this pillow lay a iron
gray hair that belonged to Miss Emily, who apparently was sleeping with the corpse for
years.
With Emly Grierson dead, the town no longer had a grasp for the traditional south. Who
else would take on the responsibilty of noblisse oblige? In essense, the reconstruction
was complete. 
Faulkner's story has serious pyschologial ramifications. In this context we see a young
girl who is forever changed by her abusive father. She then manifests her desires on an
unsuspecting northerner, who through his eyes, is doing nothing wrong. To Miss Emily
desertion is a great sin and she will stop at nothing to retain Homer and her dignity.
One could also surmise that she has indulged in necrophillia, as well. All because she is
unwilling to recognize that things change over time.
The authors consistant use of symbols throughout the story are yet another facet of the
magnificance of A Rose for Emily. For example, consider Faulkner's extensive use of color
in the story. It is not just for describing the setting and characters. It is actually
used to illustrate certain qualities that the author has deemed meaningful. For instance,
Emily's house, which is now an eyesore among eyesores (427), represents the Old South. It
like Emily, was the only thing from a dying generation left; they both were a testemant
to a bygone era. The house had once been white (427), just as Emil'y's portrait showed
her as a slender figure in white, and later the house, like Emily, deteriorates in to an
eyesore. Faulkner's description of Emily in the youthful portrait is a stark contrast to
her in her later years, ...a small, fat women in black, with a thin gold chain descending
to her waist and vanishing into her belt...She looked bloated, like a body long submerged
in motionless water, and of that pallid hue (428). Faulkner's description can be absorbed
in several different ways, but it is clear that the water stands for time and Emily has
been stuck in time since her Homer's ?DF? ?y.A;!?#u$?$?$uo?e?aU??IEA?'???,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
that when digested as a whole paint a unsettling picture. Faulkner's own distortion of
time make reading A Rose for Emily almost as, according to the author, the old do,
...confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past
is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which winter ever quite touches,
divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years(433).
Throughout the story Faulkner gives the reader glimpses of Emily's life, essentially
giving us the opportunity to draw our own conclusions based on the evidence.
The conclusion I've drawn is that Faulkner's intention of the story was to expose the
falling of a once distinguished way of life. The author also raises the question of the
role of women in Southern society. Yet another function of Faulkner's work is to make the
reader question the effects of life on all of us.