Emily's Isolation example essay topic

219 words
Emily's Solitude In "A Rose for Emily,' William Faulkner creates a lonely character, Emily Grierson, separated from her community by her wealth, her status as a single woman, and other differences. Emily's isolation played a role in her destruction. "A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight of ten years earlier,' is what the townspeople gossiped about (Faulkner, 716). "We remembered all the young men her father had driven off, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that had robbed her, as people will,' said the townspeople (Faulkner, 719). The townspeople explained to each other, "From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting,' (Faulkner, 721). This shows that most of her life Emily was alone and once she had someone the townspeople wanted her to be confined again.

This could be why she killed Homer and slept by his decomposing body for over forty years. It also shows that during this long period of isolation she must have lost her mind and that drove her to her sad and lonely ending.