James Nacua
“A Rose for Emily” is a rather interesting piece of literature. William Faulkner, the author, is giving us a rather predictable ending of a murder with hints such as a bottle of arsenic and a disappearance Homer Barron in a southern style mansion. Another is
Faulkner’s chronological puzzle layout of the story. It seems that every three or four paragraphs the story skips three decades to the future or goes to the past two decades and making the reader to assemble the pieces of this puzzle to make sure this happens first and so forth. While reading, these didn’t bother me so much, what really caught my attention were the author’s magnificent use of symbols, imagery, and how an inanimate object seem to mean much more. Most interesting was the different characters in Emily’s life. Who could possibly out of all these characters be responsible changing Emily from a southern belle to a southern murderer? Four come to mind when considering who could be responsible for leading Emily to murder; they are Emily’s strict father, the victim himself Homer Barron or is it the ever watching townspeople that drove her to kill or a farfetched idea of maybe Emily herself.
We have the father, perhaps he, always driving the boys away from Emily affected her mind to cling on to any man she comes in contact with when her father died.
He played a big role in Emily’s life in her earlier years, on a painting shows “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip”(288). This could be a metaphor of Emily’s state mind in which shows their backs to one another meaning the lack of communication with one another, Emily in white representing her purity but lurking right behind her is her father’s powerful reputation, tough and demanding control over Emily

which is depicted as the horsewhip clutched tightly probably meaning there is no getting out of this situation. By the time he finally died I thought that she would be finally relieved he had died and finally start courting to her hearts desire, but did the opposite by crying over her father passing and then became sick for a long time “she broke down…. she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (288). While the body was rotting for three days in a room, Emily’s face was of “no trace of grief in her face” (288) which is a clear indication of her mind going mad and not wanting to depart from her father alive or dead and possibly a foreshadowing of how she would react to losing a loved one.
Maybe it was Homer Barron getting personal with Emily but not knowing of her mad mind brought forth his death. It’s rather odd to accuse the suspect to be also the victim but Homer Barron is the “Yankee – a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” (289). Emily might have viewed him as an exotic piece of man she has ever seen. It’s been said that they both have been seen “...on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow wheeled buggy...” (289). This could be Emily’s effort to retaliate against her father’s shunning away of male lovers all those years before.
Although Homer has said he “liked men” (290) this seemed to not have stopped him on meeting with Emily many times and after Homer’s work paving the sidewalks many weeks earlier. Perhaps Emily might have overheard some townsfolk talk that he follows a certain “lifestyle” and in an effort to not lose him like he lost his father, would kill
Homer and keep his body locked up in a room and to do with the body as she pleases.
Possibly the townsfolk’s was the mastermind behind the death of Homer
Barron. This is in the south, just 11 years after the confederates losing against the Union.

There must have been an animosity of still strict confederate followers against any northerner to walk on their soil “of course Grierson would not think seriously of a
Northerner” (289). For this story, it is Homer Barron, an embodiment of what the civil war had achieved, a mixed black and white individual with a high ranking job. The townspeople knowing that Emily will abide to her southern routes will fulfill the wishes of the townsfolk’s and take their revenge of losing the civil war by killing Homer Barron.
Finally, we have Ms. Emily Grierson a high class woman and also…… the true culprit of murdering Homer Barron. Of course not the most surprising and climatic revelation, but it’s still the most realistic answer to the murder. One example to prove this is, the bold and demanding tone Emily had when she says “I want some poison”
(289) and not telling the purpose of the purchase. This shows Emily’s determination to grab hold of some arsenic so she could kill Homer Barron. Some would argue that she was not right in the head because of her father’s controlling hands, or the townspeople being her subconscious and telling her to obey her “noblesse oblige” and by maybe channeling their confederate revenge onto Homer through Emily’s frail little hands.
These are all ridiculous excuses, pointing the finger to everyone else except the real person responsible for killing Homer. She seem completely sane purchasing the arsenic to poison Homer and she seem completely sane planning a well thought way to kill
Homer quietly unlike the typical screaming and yelling while swinging a blunt object hoping to hit something like a mad man would. No where around it, Emily is fully responsible for the death of Homer Barron.
It’s understandable for someone to direct the blame to some other characters except poor, fragile Ms. Emily considering she had to live through a very protective

father, or even a constant barrage of townspeople gossiping. If she had an ounce of decency left she should have felt appalled for killing Homer but instead sleeps with the carcass or perhaps was repenting for her awful sin by giving china-painting lessons in the very same house Homer Barron was decaying in, almost mocking the townspeople, for a good thirty to forty years until her death at seventy-four in which she would escape for murder and free of repercussions.