A Rose for Emily: A Character Analysis Essay

Nobel Laureate William Faulkners petty story centers on a ludicrous character Emily Grierson mirrored in the fish -eye vision of the townsfolk of Jefferson. Miss Emily was a celebrity in her own right, with her sense of haughty lineage and her mysterious closeted life. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care a sort of hereditary financial obligation upon the town (Faulkner, 1970, p. 9). The authors way of story-telling to and fro on the rails of metre helps the reader glimpse Emily from diverse angles at different ages.The final depiction of the corpse in the contribute gives an insight into the disturbed psychological fix of her mind. Physically, Emily has distinctive features a small, fat woman in black, with a subdue gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an pitch black cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare She looked bloated, handle a consistence long submerged in motionless water, an d of that disturbed hue.Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of char pressed into a lump of dough (Faulkner, 1970, p. 10). She was a living will to the bygone days of noble rule, and even the decayed depressing house reflected her spirit. The fathers horse-whip dominance and restrictions compelled her to slowly turn away from the orb even his demise failed to liberate her from the caged lonely existence. Later she proclaimed her sovereignty by cutting her hair short like a girl and having a secret affair with the Yankee foreman Homer Barron. at that place is a stream of subtle insinuations about her mental state queasy (Faulkner, 1970, p. 11), sick (Faulkner, 1970, p. 12), impervious. When she bought the arsenic, her eyes looked like the haunted watching stare of the beacon light keeper. Emily was placed on a pedestal of awe and notoriety, curiosity and doubt by the townspeople. She maintained that image of cold hauteur throughout her l ife, dismissing the bureaucratic officials as well as gossiping public alike.New rules of touch or tax did not permeate her world. Emily is characterized by her ability to run across and utilize the power that accrues to her from the fact that men do not keep in line her but rather their concept of her (Staton, 1987, p. 274). Desperate for love and passion she claimed ownership of this dysfunctional love forever by killing him- as the decomposed body was found, with all the material belongings, in a pose of embrace, and the startling demo of her iron-gray hair on the adjoining pillow.Her lifetime grandeur paralleled with the mordant evidence of her necrophilia and self-imposed solitary imprisonment makes her a unique character of Faulkners creative imagination.ReferencesFaulkner, William. ( 1970). A Rose for Emily. In M. doubting Thomas Inge (Ed. ), A rose for Emily (pp. 9 -17). Columbus Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company Staton, Shirley F. (1987). literary theories in praxi s. Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press.