How Does Homer Want To Pass In A Rose For Emily

What would it take for you to turn your back on your heritage, your history and your life? To what lengths would you go to escape crippling poverty? To shield yourself from ignorant discrimination? To have the ability to live your life free of the fear of violence? Would you leave your family behind to protect your secret and obtain these things? Many African American people in the South in the early twentieth century “passed” as white to assimilate into the community and live their lives free from fear. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, Homer Barron is a mixed race man who “passes” himself as white to succeed in society, which leads to his demise when his companion Emily Grierson kills him to avoid scandal.
What is “passing”? To understand why Homer Barron would want to “pass” one must first understand what it means. Passing is: “an opportunity to gain
The Elks’ Club was not racially integrated until the mid-1970s. Where better to hide but in plain sight? “Another odd factor about Homer is that following his ‘disappearance’ no outsiders ever come to seek for him” (Argiro n.pag). While it is possible that he has no family, it seems far more likely that he was indeed passing and therefore had cut himself off from his family. Often individuals who chose to “pass” as white would cut themselves off completely from their families so they would not be found out. “Passing required life-altering changes…[many] severed ties completely from their black family to live a solitary white life” (Johnson n.pag).
Additionally, when Homer’s body is found it is clothed in the nightshirt Emily bought for him and he is lying in bed in a lovers pose. “The body had once lain in the attitude of embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him” (Faulkner 98). This implies that he and Emily had been intimate before his