Miss Emilys Rose example essay topic

Faulkner represents the modern society and lifestyle using Homer Barron and the narrator. The narrator symbolizes the town view of the mysterious Emily Grierson in the and eventually society's opinion of the mentally disturbed Miss Emily as the book develops. Homer Barron is a northerner who has come down to help build and modernize the town, and thus symbolizes the change and transition into a contemporary society. Homer probably never really loved Emily, even though Emily had a growing obsession with him.

This might have been the reason for his later bound entrapment into Miss Emilys world. Faulkner used Homer as a victim of Miss Emilys fixation with the past in showing the clash between past and present. Moreover, after Homer's death, Miss Emilys love prevents her from acknowledging his death. However, Homer does allow Miss Emily to move a step past her fathers death to find love. Thus, the clash results in Homer were becoming a part of the past, being trapped inside the deteriorating abode and Miss Emily finding someone to replace her father and alleviate the denying misconception of her fathers death.

The house even exhibited some change as the room where Homer was found, was predominantly red symbolizing her love for him. Throughout the life of Emily Grierson, she remains locked up, never experiencing love from anyone but her father. The domineering attitude of Emilys father keeps her to himself, inside the house, alone until his death. This is Emilys chance for freedom and love. She takes a lover, Homer Barron. However, Homer is not the marrying kind and may have threatened to leave Miss Emily.

In desperation, she murders him, thus ending what little life she has. Emily can never marry nor take another lover. Therefore, she clings to the corpse of her dead lover and lives as a recluse. In her dreary existence, there was only one bright spot, one Rose.

This was Homer, of whom society has robbed her. Like a wilted flower, she keeps his body, forever. Like a dried flower, it reminds her of the joy she had in her otherwise empty life. The rose is a symbol of the age of romance. Perhaps the narrator offers this story as A Rose for Emily. As a woman might press a rose between the pages of a history of the South, she keeps her own personal rose, her lover, preserved in the bridal chamber where a rose color pervades everything.

Miss Emilys rose is ironically symbolic because her lover was a modern Yankee. Emily, also could be seen as a symbol to the dying Southern genteel. She was fast becoming obsolete just as the china-painting lesson did. The new generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies magazines (Faulkner 208). The townspeople had no use for Miss Emily anymore or her Southern traditions. In fact, she is hopelessly out of touch with the modern world all of these things make them feel superior to her, and to the past, which she represents.

Finally, the whip symbolizes the strictness and control that Emilys father had over her. There are several examples of how her fathers control over her is implied. The townspeople pictured Miss Emilys a slender figure in white in the background, her father a straddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door (Faulkner 207), is a menacing dark image assuming the dominant front position. His turned back suggest a disregard for her. The back-flung door invites suitors in, but only those who meet Mr. Grierson standards.

Unfortunately, those standards are unattainable. Miss Emily is obedient allowing him to have control. Her father runs all of her suitors off that come to call. Even in his death, the power that he had over her did not go away.

She refused to let his body be removed from the house insisting that he was not dead..