A Rose For Emily 5 Essay Research — страница 2

oblivious to the smell, while it continues to bother the neighbors. These town’s people are intimidated by Miss Emily, and have to sprinkle lime juice on her lawn in secrecy. They are afraid to confront her, just as the next generation is afraid to confront her about the taxes. Her strong presence is enough for her to surpass the law. Homer Barron, a symbol of progression and alteration, comes around to pave the town’s sidewalks and construction modernizes the town. He starts courting Miss Emily, and the reader thinks that perhaps he can put an end to Miss Emily’s hallucination with time. Homer Barron is a cheerful character and an outsider. “Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer would be in the center of the group.” However, he is a

bachelor who does not want to settle down, and the town’s people don’t approve of him marrying Miss Emily because of his class. “Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people.” Once Homer Barron enters Miss Emily’s house and her life, he is bound to her forever without escape. “So we were not surprised when Homer Barron-the streets had been finished some time since-was gone. She murders him and preserves his body like one would preserve a dead rose. Once again, time stands in her house, while the rest of the setting, the town, changes. Years passed and the “newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town.” The new generation makes Miss Emily feel even more isolated. “When the town

got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it.” Miss Emily refuses to let any change affect her life and her house. “Thus she passed from generation to generation-dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.” “And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows.” Miss Emily dies in this decaying, old, creepy, house which is located in a bright and rising town. The final stage of decay in her house is revealed to the reader. Not only is she dead, but so is Homer Barron, of whom only a decaying corpse remains. “A thin acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal.” The details of the setting throughout the story

foreshadow this dramatic conclusion. The decay of the house, the dust and the cracks, Miss Emily’s refusal for change all lead up to her death and that of Homer Barron. As soon as an outside force, Homer Barron, enters this creepy house, he disappears in time. “He had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.” The scrambling of time throughout the story is a great demonstration of the scrambling of time in Miss Emily’s mind and in her house. As the town changes and progresses, grows and modernizes, Miss Emily’s “stubborn and coquettish” house remains the same. Perhaps if the story of Miss Emily had been set in a different place, her life would have turned out

differently. With all the pressures from her father and the town’s people, she became a very closed up and rather frightening person. There were too many expectations of women in those days and Faulkner demonstrates the consequences of such a life through Miss Emily. By setting the story in an upscale, post Civil War town, he uses both the details of the setting and time to show what happens women such as Miss Emily, the “tragic monument.” Miss Emily’s world was always in the past. When she is threatened with desertion and disgrace, she not only takes refuge in that world but also takes Homer with her in the only manner possible–death. As a final conclusion of Miss Emily’s life and the story, her position in regard to the specific problem of time is suggested in the

scene where the old soldiers appear at her funeral. “The very old me-some in their brushed Confederate uniforms-on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as is she had been a contemporary of their, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression.” These men have lost their sense of time as well as Miss Emily. The hallucinate; they imagine things which never occurred; there is no sense of time in their minds. Faulkner presents a very horrifying picture in this story, and he does this by playing with the chronology, using symbols and foreshadowing and presenting a detailed setting.