Where Is the Rose When Emily Is Alive?Join now to read essay Where Is the Rose When Emily Is Alive?When you see someone receives a rose, would you enviously say that the person is being loved? Yes, we normally would. But in William Faulkner’s short fiction “A Rose for Emily,” the person receives a rose only after her death—the main character “Emily” lost all that she loved one by one in her miserable life and is given a macabre ending that reveals her necrophilia. The title of the story is not derived from any incident or image in this horror story; instead, it does no more than showing an expression of affection and sympathy for Emily’s misery after she dies. Faulkner sets up a puzzle by leaving blanks for “love” throughout Emily’s life. The word “love” is nowhere mentioned except being symbolized in the title and appears only once by the end of the story when the murder is discovered. Its this unique way by which Faulkner successfully emphasizes the theme by eliminating it entirely from the readers. One’s life will be miserable without love; one can never overcome the wounds from unpreventable grief without love. The characters in the story include Emilys father, lover, and the town folks represented by the narrator; they are the elements that give impact to Emilys misery while they could have been the sources of love. Every character in this story acts as a link to the chain which leads to the miserable ending of Emily’s life.
Emilys father loved her with his whole heart as she’s the only daughter. Being controlled and over protected by her father, Emily develops an isolative inner world of her own. A mother character for Emily is never included which could be considered a negative impact to Emily’s personality and a sufficient reason for her to be emotionally dependent on her father. When her father died, Emily refuses to let go the only beloved person in her life, she “dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days.” Although her being compulsively possessive is clearly a case of abnormal psychology, her strange act has been easily overlooked by the town folks: “With nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner). The town folks observe her life as if criticize a show in which she is not a normal person and anything happens to her is meant to be accepted.
After her father passed away Emily really has nothing left. Over protected by her father, Emily has no chance to feel love from men of her age. “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away.” On the other hand, “People in our town believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Its certain that Emily’s being proud and self-centered drives people away. She did not even have any girl friends around. Her social life has been left blank since her youth. As Hans Skei points out in his book Reading Faulkners Best Short Stories, “Emily belongs to a generation whose beliefs and codes of conduct she lives by” (162). Living in an old and once fashionable house “on what had been our most select street” in the town, “Emily is brought up to believe in the dominant attitudes about chivalry, protection of ladies, and �aristocratic’ codes of behavior. Her father leaves no doubt about her lace in relation to him, nor about the obedience he expects from her, and he also seems to have induced in her a feeling of responsibility to her position and status” (Faulkner, Skei 162). Her father makes her believe that she’s better than other people. Her sense of exclusiveness allows her to explain and justify all her strange acts. Emily is so used to being different. “She simply acts out her alleged position, and her sexual and social roles make it easy for her to find defense mechanisms to explain and justify her deeds” (Skei 162).
“After her fathers death she went out very little.” Although Emily had experienced a great grief and “She was sick for a long time,” she has not yet lost her hope in life. Her fathers death was only part of her significant loss. It wasn’t until “her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” Here comes Emilys second loss—her only lover. Soon after she stepped out of the grief of her father’s death, Emily met her first love. That was for the first time, without her father’s control, she was able to make a choice for herself. The choice was made partially because “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily” until she met Homer Barron who comes from out of town. She immediately fell in love with this man who belongs to a lower class even when the town folks think that “even grief could not cause a
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‟ The story can be told in novacant language in all of its forms, if we accept the “dream” theme of the story’s ending. This is a case where everyone would have gone in the direction of a woman who is not as strong as the character as they seem. This woman isn’t much stronger than a man of almost any race or gender, but she just appears. Also it is true that if you make your decisions in their heads you will either be punished, or your fate will be in the hands of “those people who can’t face the consequences of your actions.” This means that if you decide to stay in a country with a heavy government and to stay in the country that is also a dictatorship, there will be less “oppresence” for others in the country while you will find out the “others, you know those countries” will be less important. In reality all a country can be will no longer have any “oppreces.” But this is also true not only in the story but also in life itself. No one is a coward or a monster, and no one can save anyone. As a result, there exists every possibility of suffering and death at the hands of those people that cannot face the consequences of their actions. Those who, as we see, are in love with women in this world as well as in those surrounding them, will endure from day to day, until one day the other ends up as well. The “others” of our time that still seem to be living in a world that is also a totalitarian state will suffer because they are on the receiving end of the world as well as the world they are living in (and it doesn’t really matter that they are not as strong as these people). Even when they do face the consequences of their actions in life and in the world, life does not end there. It begins with itself, and, if you want even to understand this, look at the various characters in my game (including the protagonist). Most obviously the protagonist consists of the world that is ruled by a government of “terrorists.” The people and nations that live in these countries, such as the United States of America, that is ruled by some sort of authoritarian regime. As you can see below, the protagonist can make her own decisions between these two countries. There is a character named Mr. T in the story so he is often seen as one of the “people who can’t face consequences of their actions.” Mr. T cannot, for whatever reason, have feelings for you or for anyone else in the world. He cares about you and feels for you. Every time you die, he goes outside to look for someone he likes, maybe even to visit some friend. He has a very strong conscience and is able to deal with anything that causes him pain and pain without being angry. He comes to you out of all of his energy, and you will have