Homer Barron And Life For Emily example essay topic

The short story "A Rose for Emily,' by William Faulkner presents the reader with a woman named Emily Grierson, who for the greater part of her life was not only sheltered and controlled by her, father she also dealt with the mental abuse that came with his domineering personality. The consequence of her not fully experiencing life and her father's dominance results in Emily's inability to cope with modern society and lead a normal stable life. Faulkner's story is a town's critical narration of the life of Emily Grierson, one of the town's oldest citizens, who for most of her life has been kept almost hidden from the rest of the world by her wealthy Southern father. After her father's death, Emily was emotionally unstable. She is so unstable that she would not let go of her father's dead body. Shortly after her father's death she meets Homer Barron and life for Emily begins to look up because.

The townspeople think that she has found a replacement for her father. However, she does not actually marry him, but instead buys arsenic and it is implied that she killed him with it. Emily continues to live in a further isolation from the rest of the world. It was later discovered when Emily passed away at the age of 74 she did indeed actually kill Homer and she was keeping his rotting corpse in bed with her. The damage that her father bestowed upon her by sheltering her from the rest of the world results in her incapability of coping with death, mainly that of her father.

The death of Emily's father leaves her with a sense of vulnerability. She is faced with the unknown because she has never been without her father's constant control. Her father is described by the townspeople as "a spraddle d silhouette in the foreground, with his back to her and clutching a horsewhip. ' When he died she enters into a state of confusion in which she is so afraid of being alone that the townspeople were "trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body for three days.

' Emily's inadequacy to lead a normal life and interact with society is further apparent in the way she isolates herself from the outside world after her father's death. She never truly learns how to interact with other people and protects herself by "not going out anymore. ' Emily is a recluse; her father completely deprives her of having a normal social life, considering that she "got to be thirty and was single' and "all the young men, her father had drove away. ' Emily simply did not want to interact with anyone. "When the town got free postal, Miss Emily alone refuses to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door she would not listen to them.

' As time progressed so did her complete isolation from society. Now and then she would be in one of her downstairs windows-she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house-like a carven of an idol niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. After Emily's father dies not only does she become further isolated from the outside world, but she also does not take care of any of her possessions and lets her house deteriorate. This is obvious because the house that she lives in "had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies'. The current portrait of the house was much different "it smells of dust and disuse- a close, dank smell'. The outside of the house is also very much run down.

The once prominent house was in the neighborhood "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. ' The lack of contact that Emily has with the outside world also affects her aging appearance. After her father's death she looks like a little girl "with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows– sort of tragic and serene. ' This description suggests that after her father's death she was certainly not living but actually decaying. As time progresses so does the dilapidating process "she grew fat and her hair was turning gray.

' Even though aging is inevitable, Emily grows old in an unusual fashion that was very similar to the decaying house. "She looks like a body long submerged in motionless water, and that of a pallid hue. ' Emily's sheltered life resulted in the most shocking and unusual aspect of the story. Through the isolation and lack of companionship that Emily experienced as a result of her father's control, Emily was unable to accept the disgrace and disinterest from Homer. He disgraced and disappointed her because Homer himself had remarked-he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks Club-that was not a marrying man. When Miss Emily died the townspeople found out just how much Miss Emily was unable to accept the disinterest from Homer because not only was she living with the Negro man she was also living with the dead Homer Barron, which "lay in her bed.

' It was also obvious that his body was there awhile because "what was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay Although Emily keeping the dead Homer in her house is shocking the townspeople become even more appalled when they noticed the second pillow was an indentation of a head. Lifting up the pillow they found a long strand of iron-gray hair, which belonged to Emily. In Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, Emily is a woman who could definitely be classified as insane. However, this in saneness is a direct product of her environment; she is unable to actually experience life as a result of her father's dominance and control. Her life simply has no chance of being normal.