Rose for Emily William Faulkner

¶ … Rose for Emily William Faulkner presented his writing art "A Rose for Emily" with a spice of mysterious suspense and uncovered some of the hidden controversial issues occurred in those days. This piece of fiction art was first published in 1930 as his first short story with a fictional city Jefferson, Mississippi in a fictional county Yoknapatawpha County. William tried his best to expose social and political issues held at that time which contributed in creating racial discrimination and hype among different regions of the same land.

Some of his obvious statements would later be discussed in this paper where one can easily conclude that racism was at its peak and the finest example lays within the story with a pejorative term "negro." This kind of humiliation had poised people's psychology to a greater extent. For more to discuss in this essay is a Protagonist, Emily as the most static character in the storyline drawn by William. This story revolves around one lady who is a victim of social pressures and prejudice of her time.

Emily Giererson presents her identity as a Southerner rooted with major conflicts like prejudices (Clay). On the other hand, we can predict that Emily's psychological suppression was more or less from her father's ideology of keeping her isolated from the society and finding the best man for her which he couldn't make it up. This unusual bounding never let Emily to socialize or let her understand the changes occurring in the society which could have taught her to accept different behavioral approaches of each individual towards life.

She never had a friend to whom she could speak to or any male fellow to satisfy her sexuality. Mr. Giererson was considered as one of the finest man with a strong family stature and believed on transferring his traditions to his next generation but it did not last after his death. To maintain her integrity she kept herself secluded from the society.

Emily is also shown resistant to change in almost every way but the most challenging part of her behavior was her denial to natural cycle of life and death. CRITICAL ANALYSIS: In this part of the essay I would discuss about Miss Emily a protagonist, who proved to be the most static character of Faulkner's story which was only because of her attitude towards life.

The story begins with a trauma of Emily Giererson's death who suffered the pain of denial throughout her life and fought against the universal fate of death in quite a weird way (Werlock). Emily was characterized as a "Fallen Monument" and the whole town came on her funeral out curiosity to observe her left out house which nobody had seen since last 10 years and was considered as an eyesore among eyesores because she did not change an inch about it. It was just decaying as she was growing old.

To prove her as the most static character of the story, I would follow up with the specific details, "She met them at the door" (Faulkner), when her commanding father passed away, defying all the visitors as if he were still alive. She was in her routine getup with no shade of grief and people had a hard time while convincing that her father is no more alive and his corpse could not be kept for a long time.

She wasn't convinced with the decision until she broke down and felt helpless about it and later she isolated herself in retaliation. Despite of the fact that Giererson was a rigid man and controlled Emily to an undue extent which made her psychologically imbalanced, she owed him a great love and attachment. Treating her father's corpse as alive was her first strange impression shown to people and that could have taken seriously by the town.

On the other hand Emily had also felt the insecurities about racial discrimination and social pressures in her childhood that had strongly gripped her personality. So a reader must not miss the height of pressures she suffered till her father's demise which continued till her own death. All her hard sufferings had developed an imbalance mental state in Emily's Personality. Furthermore, "Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them" (Faulkner).

It was bizarre for people but she tried her best to keep townspeople away from her and her house which gives a clear idea that she wasn't rational and was extremely hesitant of changes around her. Along with her psychological behavior, her social behavior was also completely absurd and she proved this when she poisoned Mr. Homer Barron, a Yankee with whom she started dating after Mr. Giererson's death.

Faulkner has emphasized on racism and addressed Homer as "a big, dark, ready man with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face," in other words he was a nigger. Emily was aware of the fact that Homer Barron who didn't meet up the measure of her father's expectations and society could feel bad about it but still Homer was her obsession and she couldn't think of letting her love go for any reason.

People were surprised to see a man in her life and considered a disgrace for town as she was openly dating with him. They were curious about the deal Emily would make with him, either she would marry him or he would leave Emily and soon Emily realized that Homer would not marry her. Instead of going for a wise decision that any women would have gone about letting him go or convince him to marry her, she touched the height of insanity by poisoning Mr.

Homer and keeping his dead body in her bedroom. It wasn't enough for her desires and she slept with a corpse the rest of her life. It was horrifying for people to know that she bore the deadly smell and slept with his body just to satisfy her obsession of love that remained constant (Abby). "Coating of patient and binding dust"(Faulkner).

"Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface, a pale crescent in the dust"(Faulkner) these statements tells that Emily was not only hesitant in socializing but was reluctant in keeping her place clean. She was so scared of change that she avoided cleaning her place and stayed there in dust and dank smell. One can quickly perceive the severity of Emily's possessiveness about her love, Mr. Homer and his things.

CONCLUSION: Emily in Faulkner's story was no less than a social stigma (Ruthman). The story is written as a narration and 'we' as readers can only conceive according to what townspeople fabricated about her. In the whole story, there was no comment about townspeople by Emily. It is not impossible that all her acts like stubbornness, seclusion or rigidness were in reaction to what townspeople had treated her like. There are two possibilities for her foolish behavior, either she was medically ill in some sort of psychological or.