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rose for emily

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“A rose for Emily” “A Rose for Emily” is a story about Emily Grierson who kills her Yankee boyfriend Homer Barron and lives with his body in her bedroom for over forty years. However, the story is not really about Miss Emily’s actions, but more about the society that made her into who she is and how it conflicted with the ever changing post southern civil war society. Miss Emily grew up as part of an aristocratic Southern family, with an overpowering father who refused to allow her to be courted by the young men of the town. It is Emily’s father who first elevated her to idol status by keeping her segregated from her peers, and giving her this ego by putting her on such a high pedestal. Emily’s father is a proud man of his Southern …show more content…

The town allows her not to conform because they someone to still hold the old values of the south before the war. Emily Grierson becomes the tragic heroin of “A Rose for Emily”. Her status as the town’s idol or monument of their past, comes with a hefty price. Emily is forced into a life of solitude, becoming sort of a hermit. The town expects Emily to behave in a certain manner, to uphold their view of her. When Emily finds love conflicting with her keeping up old southern appearances, the town intervenes. “Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer” (Faulkner 32). Both the town and Miss Emily need each other; the town needs her to remain the same because she represents their past, and Miss Emily needs the town because they allow her to keep her outdated beliefs. Homer however, is perceived by the town as a threat to that balance. He represents the industrialized North, and the town cannot allow their beloved Southern icon to fall for the ways of the North. The South had already lost the war to the North, and the town saw this as representing the same thing, and they could not allow their icon of the last remaining shred of pure southern ways to be lost to the North as well. Homer is also a threat to Miss Emily’s herself. As he had already let it be known around town that he was not looking for marriage, so there was a possibility he could humiliate Miss Emily

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