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William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
Emily Grierson, the main character in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," is portrayed as a woman who, over time, slowly goes mad. The tragic heroine is described by Faulkner as a "fallen monument." She is deeply respected by the community she resides in, despite the fact that she is exceptionally eccentric. As a young lady her father denied her the right to date men. With her father dead, she becomes so lonely that she begins to see a Yankee railroad worker named Homer Barron. When it becomes apparent that Barron is going to leave her, this is the event that, in the words of Kurtz, destroys Emily's fragile equilibrium. Emily goes to the local pharmacy and purchases poison. The pharmacist is at first reluctant to sell it to her, but finally gives in. He assumes, like everyone else, that she is going to commit suicide. But nothing of the sort happens; Barron disappears and life goes on as normal, only with Emily refusing to see anyone, or, towards the end of her life, even leaving her house. When she passes away, the neighbors unbolt the door to an upstairs bedroom, where they find the rotted corpse of Barron in bed, with a head print in the pillow next to him.
Faulkner's story is meant to expose the great lengths that people will go to in order to hold on to love. Emily has never experienced love from a man - she has only gotten a small taste from an ultimately insincere, disinterested party. Still, the prospect of going without love, which she figures will be her destiny if Barron leaves her, frightens her to such an extent that she is ultimately driven to the extremes of madness.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Retrieved 30 January 2008 at http://www.ariyam.com/docs/lit/wf_rose.html.
Kurtz, Elizabeth Carney. "Faulkner's a Rose for Emily." Explicator. Winter 1986: 40.
Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. St. Lucie County Library, Ft. Pierce, Fl.
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