Culture and Identity in “a Rose for Emily” Essay

Littered throughout the story is evidence that the murder took place. When Emily takes up with Homer Barron, a man whom the narrator makes clear was not the marrying kind; rumors start to fly about the two at a time when it was not considered proper for a man and woman to live together. The town, her relatives, and the Baptist minister disapproved of the relationship, and Emily was in danger of loosing Homer. A year after the relationship begins, and the pressures to either marry

This is evidently on the grounds that the character of Homer Barron is a Yankee and Emily slaughters him. Nonetheless, it is hard to contend that Emily's inspiration in dating Homer is to slaughter him on the grounds that he is a Northerner. The most evident clarification for her eagerness to date a man outside of her social rank would be that she is essentially a forlorn lady. A more subtle, however in any case sensible, clarification for her association with Homer would be that is her method for opposing her dead father. Amid his lifetime, her dad kept her from having an "adequate" suitor. In this way, she revolts by connecting with a man her dad would have considered an outsider: a Yankee day-worker. There is truly little to propose that the story is a moral story of the Civil War other than the way that a Yankee is executed by a Southerner. Faulkner himself, in his address on the story at the University of Virginia, denies such an elucidation. He said that he accepted that an essayist is ". Excessively caught up with taking a stab at, making it impossible to make fragile living creature and-blood individuals that will stand up and cast a shadow to have sufficient energy to be conscious of all the imagery that he may put into what he does or what individuals may read into

            Emily chooses a lover that resembles her father in many ways;  Homer is big, strong, outspoken, and domineering.  Initially, the townspeople are happy to know that Emily is dating Homer.  "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer."  When they realize that Emily is serious about him, they have a change of heart.  "Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reigns and whip in a yellow glove."  Emily does not care about the people's reaction toward her affair with Homer.  Emily's affair with a "day laborer" is an act of defiance, toward her father and perhaps, even the toward the townspeople.  She wants to show everyone that she is in control of her life and will do as she pleases.

When Miss Emily finds somebody, though, it quickly pushes her to desperation. Her relationship with Homer Barron is a result of the life and death of her father. Ironically, he is a northern, roughneck Yankee, the exact opposite of any connection a Grierson would consider. Unsuspectingly, Emily is attracted to him, which is an oddity itself considering her lack of personality and his obvious charisma, for “whenever you [hear] a lot of laughing...Homer Barron [will] be in the center of the group” (560). He is also the first man to show an interest in her without her father alive to scare him off. The town is doubtful that the pair will remain together, but Emily's attachments are extreme, as seen when she would not surrender her father's body. The circumstance exhibits how her feelings are greatly intensified towards Homer. However, he is “not a marrying man” (561). When it appears as though he will leave her, she kills him with poison. While seemingly the opposite effect of love, killing Homer is quite in line with her obsession. If he is dead and she keeps Homer all to herself, Emily will never lose him; he can never leave her. Other such details that express her extreme attachments appear as she buys him clothes and toiletries before they are even considered married. There is also the revelation at the end of the story that she has been keeping his body for over thirty years and sleeping with it, clearly demonstrating her overt desperation

Emily’s father, as well as the people of Jefferson, had always pressured Emily to marry. Her father was never able to find a match for her though, and he eventually passed. Emily then met Homer Barron, a contract worker for the town. They begin to see each other more often, and the townspeople are shocked that Emily would lower herself to being with a man of low class. This shows a bit of irony, in that there has always been pressure for Emily to marry, yet when she finally meets a man she loves, people think she is wrong in her decision. Another piece of irony in this relationship, comes after Emily dies. The body of Homer Barron is found in the attic of Emily’s home. Next to the body are signs that Emily had been sleeping next the corpse. It can be assumed that Emily did murder Homer with the arsenic she had purchased earlier in the story. It

Homer entered her life by courting her publicly; by not wanting to marry her, he would have robbed her of her dignity and high-standing in the community. The ladies of the town felt that Miss Emily was not setting a good example for the "younger people" and their affair was becoming a "disgrace to the town" (75). The traditions, customs, and prejudices of the South doomed this affair from the beginning. Emily could not let Homer live, but she could not live without him. He was her only love. When she poisoned him with arsenic, she believed he would be hers forever.

Miss Emily was a dynamic character because she changed and became withdrawn from the people in her community over the course of the story. In the exposition, she is a prominent and active figure in her community. Her character changed as she encountered the tragedy of her father’s death. However, she still was spotted occasionally by the townspeople. Faulkner shows this by declaring, “She carried her head high enough- even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness” (Faulkner 36-37). After Homer’s disappearance, Miss Emily became a true introvert. The author supports this idea when he states, “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (Faulkner 34). The townspeople noticed changes

When the town called in a construction company from up north to pave the sidewalks, they brought Homer Barron with them. He soon met Emily and they started spending some time with each other. The towns people were startled because he was a Yankee construction worker but happy because she had possibly found someone. In Faulkner’s version, after seeing the two around town, gossip started to form about the two lovebirds. The narrator described it as, “Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to call upon her. “(Faulkner IV). It was not socially acceptable to spend so much time with someone if they were not going to get married. It was against the social norm of the community. The pastors’ wife wrote Emily’s family in Alabama and once the cousins left Emily’s house, the rumor was that they were married. Then Homer left town, then returned to Emily only never to be seen again. In the movie adaptation, there was no pressure from the community to marry Homer. It was not made apparent that it was against the social norm to spend extended amount of time with someone without being married. After Emily purchased the mans silver toilet set and monogramed under shirt for Homer, they assumed they were married, The narrator described him like,

Emily is destroyed by her father's over-protectiveness. He prevents her from courting anyone as "none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such" (82). When her father dies, Emily refuses to acknowledge his death; "[W]ith nothing left, she . . . [had] to cling to that which had robbed her" (83). When she finally begins a relationship after his death, she unfortunately falls for Homer

Her relationship with her father is a total mystery, however it’s well implied that their relationship was more than the typical normal father and daughter relationship. For this reason the community wasn’t at all shocked that Emily was single and turning thirty. In denial about her father’s death, she refused to le the townspeople remove the body for three days. Once she met Homer Barron, Emily begins an undesirable affair. Many of the town people were happy she was with someone. Though it is soon found that Homer played for the other team, Emily goes to the pharmacist for poison, it is then that the townspeople think that she will kill herself. After buying the arsenic, the next time they see her it’s stated, “she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray” (Faulkner 521). This perhaps the result of Homer Barron’s murder and the loss of her dad. At seventy four years old, Emily died in her home “She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight” (Faulkner 521). The major plot twist is that the townspeople find Homer Barron in a bedroom upstairs, lying in a lover’s embrace, with the indentation of a head upon the pillow next to him and one “long strand of iron gray hair” (Faulkner 522). Ms. Emily is “jilted” by the death of her father and Homer Barron leaving her. Since her father isolated her so well

She knew Homer was homosexual and still flaunted him throughout town like an accessory in trying to convince both herself and the townspeople she could move on from her father’s death. However, her relationship may have got into deep with Homer and she had to kill him to make sure he didn’t leave her side as her father did. After Emily kills Homer, “a window that has been dark was lightened and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her” (p.395). This image shows Emily has now become her father in a way and took dominance in her life by murdering someone else, which causes an internal self satisfaction. She keeps the corpse of Homer almost as the resemblance of a trophy for her work. Emily was wealthy woman who appeared to have it all however, she never accomplished close to anything in her life except for taking the life of Homer. The lost of her father signified the lost of herself, in an attempt to find herself emerged a dark character who became mentally and physically consumed by her pain that she was left to fight alone.

Miss Emily started to live with memories of her late father ,one day she looks out of the window of her imaginary world and sees something that she might like about the change or the new south. The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks .Along with the construction company ,riggers and mules and machinery a foreman also comes as a fresh hope of life for Emily, his name is Homer Barron, a Northern laborer symbolized development or change. Homer is “a Yankee- a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” (Faulkner 31. Emily deeply needed to “become humanized"(471) and love someone and to be loved since the passing of her father "left her all alone and a pauper" It was as if she demanded more

Again, the idea of the townspeople looking to Emily, as a Grierson, to uphold their Southern pride shows up; they could not believe that she would associate with a Yankee. Further, being with a Northerner, Emily struggled to maintain her role as a dignified southern woman as well as the other issues in her life, and consequently, she ends up poisoning Homer. Faulkner tells how Emily passes away and her two female cousins go through her house and find what was left of Homer rotting in the bed (100). If this story took place outside of the South, Emily would not have had to deal with the pressure of the town looking to her as aristocracy of sorts, and she might not have killed Homer. It is easy to see how absolutely necessary the setting is in this short story.

Her interest in the new south is seen when she lays eyes on Homer Barron, “a Yankee” (227). Faulkner stereotypes him as a Yankee because the people of Jefferson are still hurting from the Civil War. It is almost shameful for Miss Emily to be seen with a Yankee. Miss Emily and Homer’s relationship is the blending of old south and new south, and their relationship is symbolic of Miss Emily’s advancements into the new generation.

All of which were brought upon her because of her father’s high standings in the town. Emily’s father was an authoritative man, who was proud of his southern heritage and of his family’s status in the town. As a result, the residents of Jefferson held her to her father’s heritage. When Emily first began her affair with Homer the people of Jefferson were baffled, “how could she- a well-bred Southern lady- abide an intimate relationship with a day laborer,” (Scherting 401). The women of Jefferson, stuck in their old ways of thinking, believed that Emily was setting a bad example for the children and that she was disgracing the town with her untasteful relationship. In order to preserve tradition the women of Jefferson did what they could to end this debauchery.