Rose for Emily in William

Rose for Emily

In William Faulkner's story, "A Rose for Emily," the action centers on Emily Grierson and her presence in the town of Jefferson. Though the story is not told entirely in the order that the original events occurred, over the course of the tale the reader learns that Emily had been from a rich and proud family, and had never been married due to her father's pride. Some time after his eventual death, which Emily refused to acknowledge for three days, she began to be seen about town with a lower class man named Homer, which created quite a bit of gossip and horror in the other people of the town. More time passes, and Homer disappears right when everyone thinks they are going to be married. Emily withdraws into her house, refusing to pay taxes on her property and altogether shutting herself off from the world with only her servant for company. Eventually Emily dies, at which point the townspeople discover Homer's long-dead body an upstairs room of the Grierson house, lying on a bed with evidence that Emily had slept by this body for many years.

What I liked most about this story was the different ways I felt about Emily as the story progressed. The way everything is described makes you feel very much what it was like to be Emily, even though she is seen through the eyes of the townspeople. At the same time, there are many surprises -- especially the discovery of the body at the end of the story! -- that made me rethink my attitude about Emily. She is a very sympathetic character, but she is also more dangerous and more secretive than I expected during most of the tale. The ability to make everything seem real even though it is so fantastic is also a good aspect of this story.

I chose this story to talk about because in some ways I can relate to how Emily Grierson must have felt. Though my loneliness certainly isn't as extreme as Emily's, and I do not think I would want to sleep next to a corpse for years instead of finding people to interact with in the outside world, the sense of being cut off from those around you and kept in a separate bubble is something I can relate to. There are times when I have exactly this feeling as a student in a foreign country -- no matter how nice and understanding people are, there are certain moments where I just don't fit in or I have no idea what's going on, and I imagine that Emily must have felt this way a lot, too. It would have been much worse to feel this way in your own town, full of people from the same place as you and that you had known all of your life, and the powerful level of emotion that Emily Grierson must have felt in this regard is a very big part of what drew me to this story in particular.