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The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee -- a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face (Faulkner 53).
It is Emily's hanging onto the past that is the resounding feeling throughout Faulkner's story. The story begins where the reader learns of her death, but the reader is then taken on her journey, her slow giving in to death. In fact, Faulkner describes her as "bloated, like a body submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue" (Faulkner 49), giving the idea of a woman who has physically lived life, but yet is still hanging on, floating in life, motionless and suspended in a world that also won't let her go.
What perhaps is the most troubling about Faulkner's story, and what resounds for all readers who read "A Rose for Emily," is the way in which Emily is not only not able to move with the times, but that she is not able to let go of anything. First her father's death and then Homer's. She is responsible for killing Homer and it is her way of keeping him near her -- though...
No one is able to escape death and thus no one is able to escape time. Though Emily kept Homer in her house until he "had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay" (Faulkner 59), it was not the Homer she had tried so desperately to keep with her. The above description of Homer is a rather grotesque one, but Getty notes that it is an important as perhaps he like a rose petal, saved between the pages of a book (230).
Emily Grierson is an important literary character, and perhaps one of the most important of all time because she is the ultimate symbol of time and a person's inability to control it. It is a universal story that will forever resonate with humans because of our obsession with our own passing time and what will become of us in the distant (or near) future.
Works Cited
Booth, Alison. & Mays, Kelly J. Wm. Faulkner. A Rose for Emily. The Norton Introduction to Literature (Shorter Tenth Edition). W.W. Norton & Company; Shorter Tenth Edition
edition, 2010. Print.
Getty, Laura J. "Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'." The Explicator, Vol. 63, No. 4, pp. 23-4.
Summer 2005.
Klein, Thomas. "The Ghostly Voice of Gossip in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'." the
Explicator, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 229-32. Summer 2007.
Works Cited
Booth, Alison. & Mays, Kelly J. Wm. Faulkner. A Rose for Emily. The Norton Introduction to Literature (Shorter Tenth Edition). W.W. Norton & Company; Shorter Tenth Edition
edition, 2010. Print.
Getty, Laura J. "Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'." The Explicator, Vol. 63, No. 4, pp. 23-4.
Summer 2005.
Furthermore, Emily's inability to have a romantic relationship with Homer once again calls attention to the disconnect between Emily's south and Homer's. Instead of becoming one with Homer's new south, Emily kills him and keeps him in her own personal sanctuary in an attempt to preserve not only him, but also life as she thought it should be. Thus, neither as an institution nor as a personal refuge can
According to McDermott, this direct lineage and relationship that both novels owe to Faulkner is tremendous. The murder of Homer is a flashback and a continuation of Emily's dysfunctional relationship with her father. Just as she later holds onto Homer's corpse, she also refuses to let her father's corpse go for three days. Although both male figures dominate her, she can not let them go. Her aberrant grieving for her
Faulkner and Hemingway: Comparison William Faulkner (1897-1962) and Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) were contemporaries who chose to adopt writing style that was highly unique and totally different from many of other writers of their time. Both reached great heights of success and were awarded Nobel Prize for literature. Both Faulkner and Ernest were similar in many ways but there was something essentially different about their narration styles and the psychological influences,
" Ellison's "Battle Royal" would not have taken place in New York City or any other cosmopolitan place. A small town element is necessary to convey the idea that small towns breed small mindedness. Similarly, Jackson, Mississippi is an apt setting for Faulker to describe the townspeople's impressions of Emily. Characterization is similar among these four stories. A sense of loneliness and isolation pervades "The Lottery," as well as "A Rose
ROSE FOR EMILY'-William Faulkner William Faulkner's short story "A rose to Emily" is one of the best short stories of 20th century American literature because it contains all the mystery, drama, conflict and intensity that mark a good piece of literature. Emily the female lead of the story is an intriguing character who refuses to mingle with townspeople which gives rise to many vicious rumors about her. This story has
She does not need to be smart, only pretty and popular, and she does not play a part in decision making or political thought. In effect, she is empty-headed and boy crazy, and that seems to epitomize how these authors see the women in their stories. They are not too bright, and must leave all the "important" decisions to men who can understand them. It is not a very