Miss Emily Throughout The Story example essay topic

This story basically highlights the power of faith, choice, and truth for us as people. Browns vision might have been all in his head about the people around him, or it may even be the truth. If it is a dream his faith is actually gone because how can he love and believe if he cant even trust. If it is reality, Browns own choices of rejecting evil make him a stronger person, and it doesnt affect the others around him. They are able to continue with their fake identities pretending to be innocent people, when they know that their comfort, support and love lie with the works of evil. The actual truth of Browns vision will never be certain to us, the reader, but its simply a matter of the amount of faith the reader has in the village inhabitants and their innocence.

This particular story to me can be categorized as one of innocence and experience, but also a timeless story. This is due to the fact that no matter when you read it, 20 years ago, or 50 years from now, we all have this faith, but in many different forms. We also all possess a certain innocence about us that we lose when the truth is uncovered and reality sits in. When a story has to do with feeling or emotion we can all relate regardless of how we think and what we do. In Faulkner Rose For Emily, the main character is Emily Grierson, referred to as Miss Emily throughout the story.

This story has many flashbacks and is told in five sections. The story starts with the death of Miss Emily and people going to her funeral. The narrator lets us know that the men where there out of respect and the women showed up to her house out of curiosity. The house is described, as once being white and decorated, set on what had once been our most select street.

(Faulkner, p. 2) Knowing this we can assume that Emilys origins are of upper-class status, which later leads to issues with her and her father. The story then flashes back to thirty years before the unsuccessful tax collection and two years after Emilys fathers death. The neighbors start complaining that there is a smell coming from her house. This smell oddly appeared immediately after Emilys sweetheart disappeared. The town reacted by sneaking around her house at midnight and sprinkling lime in the cellar and around the house. The narrator comments about the town taking pity on her because they remember her great-aunt, old lady Wyatt, who had gone entirely crazy.

This is another implication of Emilys poor psychological condition, people in her town suppose that since her aunt was psychologically unstable, she can also go crazy in the long run, since there is nothing she can do to stop that genetic disease. The story obviously goes back and forth in time, telling the story of Emilys life. The most significant part of her life is when her father dies. Emilys father plays a large role in what type of person she becomes later in life. The fact that he felt none of the men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such", (Faulkner, p. 25) foreshadows her actions later in the story. Critic Donald Akers hints, Emilys repressive life contributes to her rather severe psychological abnormality: necrophilia.

(Akers, p. 67). Later we find that Emily is in great denial because she will not admit that her father is dead. It takes three days before she lets the townspeople take her fathers body away. That is rather strange, the townspeople do not understand why would Emily want to have a dead mans body at her house, they believe that her psychological instability is in progress, however there is not much they can do about it. Then the story takes a turn and introduces her sweetheart Homer Barron. The ladies in town describe Homer as a Northerner and a day laborer.

They thought she was going out of her class by having a relationship with him. Despite the towns criticism, Emily still held her head up high. Then comes the purchase of the arsenic from the druggist. Emily acted strangely when he asked her what it would be used for. As she stared after he asked the question he backed up and wrote for rats on the box. That empty stare that the druggist noticed is still another implication of her psychological breakdown.

Emily seems to not realize what happens around her, she is not able to Thus, Faulkner, just like Hawthorne succeeded in creating the image of the psychologically instable person, who was avoided by most of the townspeople and became the central part of the towns gossips. Emilys psychological problems appear to be the major topic of the story (which I believe is quite similar to the main idea in Hawthorne's work), the author does a great job in showing how her illness progresses and makes her do things, which a normal person would never even think about. Emily is neglecting her neighbors, she does not want to communicate with the townspeople and rarely leaves her house. She does not want to accept the very concept of death, the death of her father and his disapproval of her having a boyfriend being the primary reasons for her madness. Faulkner has created a great and unique story about a psychologically instable person, although a lot of readers are shocked at various facts and conclusions he makes, the story is remembered for a long time after anyone reads it..