William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner portrays his main character, Emily, as a young and beautiful lady with a rather shut-in life. Emily’s father kept her from the world, allowing himself to be the only relationship that she had in her young life. Once he passed on, she found it more than difficult to allow him to be gone. She was a rather mysterious character, not seen often after the death of her father. Yet, when she meets a man named Homer who came into her town for work, she eventually begins to make peculiar decisions. The life led by the main character in “A Rose for Emily” illustrates how the fear of abandonment may eventually influence a person’s actions. Emily’s reaction to the death of her father presents a rather obsessive and…show more content…
Emily met a man named Homer Barron, not too long after her father’s death. Homer had come into her town to work construction, and after a few outings, Emily knew that he would not be settling down with her (para. 31). The construction crew was in town to pave sidewalks, which meant that they would not be there for longer than the summer. This suggests that Emily would soon be left alone again, to have no one by her side. Evidently, comparing her to her past actions, one may assume that she would not be keen on being left behind by someone for a second time. In the past, she had been in denial about having been abandoned; she refused to accept that her father was no longer alive. The story goes on to tell the readers that the main character went on to purchase arsenic. During which the apothecary at a drug store proceeded to ask for what the use of the poison would be for, to which Emily signed “Rats” (para. 40-44). The people of Emily’s town assumed that she would be committing suicide with the poison, believing that the reason would be that Homer did not want to be married. If Homer had been the marrying type, then perhaps the purchase of poison would have been irrelevant to the story. However, Homer Barren, was not the type of man to settle down and get married to anyone woman as he was a young, charismatic
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