A Rose for Emily Theme

Brannon Roberts

Mrs. Lancaster

Course Number

17 February 2017

Writing Assignment #1

Despair is a prime motive that drives Emily to kill. In Williams Faulkner’s shorty story “A Rose for Emily” the theme is despair and despair. Some people have different ways of their dealing with their emotions, in which led her to killing someone in the story. The beginning of the story is taking place at Emily’s funeral, because she has died. In the middle of the story she remembers back when her dad passed away. Throughout the story a body is discovered which seems to be her lover, she was supposed to marry.

The death of her father was very traumatic to Emily’s health. However, people think that her dad was very over protective and Emily never had a childhood. “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner 34).  She kept She was well off in material things, but was not emotionally well off. The unstable state of her emotions led many to have concern for her. This didn’t help her cope with the loss of her father. Her father’s body stayed in the house for a couple of days in which she was not able to let him go just yet.

According to the citizens, Emily had found happiness again stating that soon one day she would marry him. In the fourth part the story states, “Then we said she will persuade him, yet because Homer himself had remarked- he liked men. Which led to her purchasing Arsenic poison and Homer coming up missing. Everybody thought that she was finally going to be at peace with herself but whenever she found out that he was gay that drove her into a deeper melancholy stage.

After they lowered Miss Emily’s body into the ground, there were people waiting anxiously to enter the house that only her former slave Tobe had access to. The upper region of the house was not usually entered upon, but it was the reveal of everyone waiting to see what was up there. “ The man himself lay in the bed.” Stated in the (Faulkner 35). Mrs. Emily had killed.

The narrator compares her to a drowned woman, a bloated and pale figure left too long in the water. Emily went through tough times; found love, lost love, and she had health challenges. Death and despair is the theme of the story because that is what everything correlates to.

Works Cited

Meyer, Michael. Resources for Teaching: The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, and Writing. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1996. Print.

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