A Rose for Emily
A Rose for Emily is a novel written by William Faulkner in which he uses the title "A Rose for Emily" as an allegorical heading. Miss Emily, the heroine of the novel, goes through such a calamitous occurrence that Faulkner hands her a rose. The word "rose" seems to have several meanings to the reader. According to Alhaj, “the rose can be shown as Homer, reading the rose as a dried rose” (Alhaj 13). Alhaj postulates that Homer's body may be a dried rose, such as the one seen in the novel, pressed inside the pages and kept in good condition, as Homer's body was with Emily. Besides, the other meaning relates to secrecy as a rose is typically implied in Greek to mean a symbol of confidentiality and secrecy. Therefore the book does make an introduction that rose is a sign of silence that exists between Miss Emily and the narrator who keeps her secrets silent till Emily dies. The book does discuss the darkness that is characterized with the Old South and how Emily clings to the old traditions shown when she sleeps next to the corpse.
Analysis of Miss Emily
Miss Emily is a character who presents to be an outsider that controls and limits the town’s people to have an access to her real identity. The character of Emily does remain to be hidden to the entire town. Notably, the house which she lives in isolates her from the world. The house also makes a suggestion of the mind of a woman who lives in it. The house is described as dark, dusty and shuttered. According to the town’s people, Miss Emily presents to be a character that attracts attention due to her mysterious and muted nature. Alhaj reports that “Miss Emily does exhibit the qualities of the stereotypical southern eccentric unbalanced, excessively tragic, and object to bizarre behavior” (Alhaj 28). Interestingly, Emily decides to enforce her sense of conduct and law in her life. For example, she does refuse paying her tax and states the purpose of buying poison. Besides, she goes against the laws of the town when she says that she does not want her house to be attached with numbers when the town institutes the federal laws for mailing services. Notably, in her move to dismiss the town laws, it culminates into more menacing results. Miss Emily ends up taking the life of a man who had refused to abandon her.
The characterization of Miss Emily
The characterization of Miss Emily is also presented as monument. Nevertheless, she is pitied at some point as she tries to initiate and demand to live her own life using her own terms and conditions of life that does not fit into the town. Certainly, the underlying subject that is behind the town’s people speculations and gossip drive at the fact that Emily accepts the attention of Homer without any form wedding plans. In purchasing the poison, the people of the town were quick at concluding that Emily is going to kill herself. However, her unpredictable and instability nature makes her to go into a different direction as oppose to what people were thinking. This drives the “final scene of the story suggests that she is a necrophiliac” (Alhaj 29). According to Alhaj, necrophiliac is described as the sexual attraction that somebody has towards the dead people. Evidently, the word can be described in broader terms to mean the desires that are powerful in controlling a person particularly in the context of deeply and romantic individual relationships. Due to necrophiliac, Miss Emily feels bonded to Homer. She controls Homer’s body and refused to give up his dead body. Faulkner describes that “Unable to find a traditional way to express her desire to possess Homer, Emily takes his life to achieve total power over him” (Faulkner 31). Homer did control Miss Emily before Emily murders him and after he is killed, Emily controls his body. She ultimately does transfer the control through the affection that she develops from dead body.
Miss Emily is truly a tragic character
Miss Emily is truly a tragic character. She is a southern individual who has old school reasoning and heavily trapped in the ways of the society which forces her to keep herself away from town and people. The tragedies come as a result of her clinging nature to the old ways of thinking. The writer does present her to be on the road that leads to misery such as the house she lives in which is dark (Faulkner 17). At the age of thirty, Miss Emily is already a killer adding to her tragedy. Notably, Miss Emily is impervious and she cannot be penetrated and understood by the audience. She decides to detach herself from the town and goes into living in a house that drives her into tragedy. Her entire life is described to be a tragedy and through this, she developed the plot of the novel.
Conclusion
Indeed, Miss Emily is a character who is used by the author to develop the storyline. She is a significant character that is full of mystery and tragedies that follow her in the entire book. She is typically frozen in the past and bears herself to be an isocratic after controlling the death of Homer. Her feelings and thoughts are not penetrated and is a subject that remains to being mysteries in the entire book. She faces intense gossip and scrutiny from the tow’s people who also fail to correctly understand her motives.
Works Cited
Alhaj Ali. William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily. Anchor Academic Publishing. 2015.
Faulkner William. A Rose for Emily. Perfection Learning Corporation, 1990.
