A Rose for Emily (Essay assignment)

The first thought came to me after reading the story is that William Faulkner has a quite familiar gothic writing style with Poe (I've only read The Tell-Tale Heart, To Helen, saw Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and The Fall of the House of Usher's silent short film), especially in the weird degree of characters: dark, bizarre and desolate. The very big difference in A Rose for Emily is, Faulkner kept the suspense calmly hanging there and gave a weird but vague shock at the end, while Poe likes to keep delivering tensions from the beginning and make a climax of stunning horrors for the ending.

As the ending reveals that Emily had been keeping Homer's corpse and even sleeping with the rotten smelly corpse, Necromania seems to be the subject A Rose for Emily is talking about. The commiserations for Emily are concealed in the cold depiction of Emily's long separation from outside world and her poor haggard appearance. The conflict between the South and the North and the nobles oblige pushed her hard and made her unable to do what she really wanted to, even after her tamer father's death. What's worse, the one she loves didn't love her. She fell into despair and decided to do something for herself. Viewed at the end, her inner is very sophisticated. There's little writing about characters' inner world but Faulkner's technique is so well that you won't notice it when you sense the intense overflow of Emily through the changes of her portraits. The multiple views of story-telling can also be accounted to the sophistication and mystery of Emily's character as well as the shocking ending.

Another thing Faulkner specially focused on was the various attitudes of townsmen towards Emily event. No matter how much important they thought they were, Emily or her family were only some gossips for others. And this fact is universal reflected between any famous people and their acquaintances. At most, people may shed a tear when you die. But sooner or later, you would become merely another folded part of others' memory, if they haven't any beneficial relationships with you.

The story is called A Rose for Emily, then where is the rose? It may be a symbol of a self-comfort and self-appreciation of Emily, for she slept with a corpse to fulfill her emptiness and her desire for love. Or else the rose stands for the sympathy the townsmen or even the story-teller himself/herself hold for Emily's miserable situation. They declare a rose as a tribute to Emily for her sacrifice by undeserved responsibilities that the society and family reputation lay on her. But anyway, Emily should have been happy once, when she got Homer on her bed.