Depth Of Emily's Madness example essay topic

"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is set in a small Southern town during the post-Civil War era. The story revolves around the strange and tragic events of Miss Emily Grierson's life. At first glance, Emily seems like a lonely woman with little self-confidence and low self-esteem that seems to stem from her upbringing by her father. There seemed to be some kind of abuse by her father and the fact that she had seemed to have lived such a sheltered life. She was brought up thinking that nobody was good enough for her. Her father had even shunned away his own family.

Emily was turned into quite an odd character due to this type of upbringing. Emily's love was controlled by her father, a man that was respected and of high class in the community. After her father passed away, Emily tried to act as if it never happened, and she was actually going to keep her father in the house. It was though she did not want to be alone and she was willing to live with her father's corpse for company. The town's people almost had to resort to law and force the issue when Emily finally broke down and came to the reality that her father had to be buried.

Emily was a reclusive woman hopelessly clinging onto the ways of the Old South but the town around her was growing with the times. One day when Emily meets a Yankee, Homer Barron, and falls in love with him. Homer was part of the construction company that was responsible for the new building and modernization of the old town. The word was buzzing around town about Emily and her new friend and what was going on between the two of them. It seemed that Homer was not a man that wanted to settle down but Emily, on the other hand, is desperate for companionship. She did not want to be alone in her old house and was ready for marriage.

Page 3 Emily was then seen around town buying things that would suggest a wedding and it seemed that people were happy for her. Then she bought something that really caught the attention of all of the town's people, arsenic. It was very strange that nobody in the town really seemed to care that she bought the poison or even stranger that they did not seem to care that Homer was never seen again. The neighbors then started complaining about the strange smell emanating from Emily's house and all they could do was to sprinkle some lime to make the smell go away. Imagine that, no investigation, they just snuck around and pretty much broke into her house just to make the smell dissipate.

From that time forward the only companionship that Emily had was in her manservant. The town's people did not see her anymore except for a shadow of her at times. Nobody realizes the depth of Emily's madness except for her manservant. This man lived with the knowledge of her murder for thirty years and never spoke up to anyone.

One could only imagine why he did not reveal what she had done to the people in the town, maybe it was out of fear or it possibly could have been out of a sadness that he felt because of her mental illness and severe loneliness. On the day that Emily died, her story came to a shocking ending. The town's people finally found out the depth of her madness as they looked upon poor Homer with his "fleshless grin". To everyone's horror and surprise, they found a long strand of "iron-gray hair" in the indentation of the pillow that lay next to Homer's head.

What a shock it was to everyone in the room to see the state of insanity they witnessed on that day. Too Page 4 bad there was nobody left to answer any questions as her manservant had walked out of the door and was never seen again. A story like this really makes me thankful for being able to have such a wonderful and stable life. The human psyche is a very fragile organ and to live in the madness that Emily did is very sad. I know that I never want to feel the loneliness that this woman felt.