An Analysis Of Insanity In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily
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“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, paints a picture of the insanity within people. Written in 1930 as a southern gothic short story, Faulkner explores the life of Emily Greierson and her descent into madness. After her father’s passing, Emily’s insanity leads her to buying arsenic to kill Homer Barron, locking his body in the upstairs bedroom, and finally, locking herself away in her home until she died, thus making her a tragic figure.
Emily’s madness led her to buying the arsenic to kill Homer. Whether it was over a bad relationship or just the insanity sinking in, she went to a druggist and bought it. People still remember it by saying “she bought the rat poison, the arsenic.”( ) She claimed saying that she wanted the strongest poison that they had and she agreed on arsenic. She was tough to persuade infact she couldn't be persuade, the druggist said that “Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up.”( ) Most people thought that she was going to use it to commit suicide but in the end she used it to kill Homer.…show more content… She locked it away in the upstairs bedroom. People who discovered the body said that “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him.” It was a horrid sight his body was decaying in a timeless room alone. They said that “One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and visible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair”( ). Most people suspected it was Emily’s hair from when she had killed him. It was a saddening and horrid sight that would be too horrible to explain in