A Rose for Emily

Blake Pryor
Mrs. Rebecca Moss
Gifted English II
1 December 2011
What happens when a few of our compulsive actions turn into habits set in stone? These quirks become who we are, how we handle things, and above all, how society sees us. What say a Miss Emily in William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily succumbs to her father’s consistency to deem any man interested in Miss Emily as not well-suited enough for her? Sometime after her father’s death, she found a man that not even her deceased father could keep her from. Mystery surrounds Miss Emily when her companion Homer Barron is never seen again in Jefferson, MS. Even Miss Emily seems to lose connection to society as a recluse in her home, keeping to herself with the town curiously seeking her clandestine life. Many people question what happened to Homer Barron until his corpse is discovered in an attic bedroom of Miss Emily’s house.
As a person is suddenly free of boundaries, he or she might act ballistic with freedom, doing unheard of things as if exposed to a ‘bottle of insanity’. When Miss Emily’s father passes away, she refuses to believe that he is dead for three days. She has been bound to her father’s Grierson rules for so long, but suddenly, she is set free through her father’s death. She loses the only man in her life and almost loses her companion Homer Barron, but she attempts hold onto people who leave her.
The town of Jefferson, MS reaches a conclusion when it discovers the body of Homer Barron in Miss Emily’s house. Not long before his disappearance from the town, Miss Emily asks for arsenic. Perhaps she attempts to capture something that might slip away from her. The fact that Homer attempts to leave Miss Emily is to be concluded, but she captures him with death.
A question arises among readers all the same: had Miss Emily planned the murder of her companion or was it sudden move on her part once told bad news? Evidence supports both possibilities nonetheless. Miss Emily lives life on her terms.... [continues]

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