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Jeannette Sanabria
Professor Godinez
English 102
14 May 2014
The Anguish of Emily Grierson
When individuals love someone so much it is hard to let them go. Love can easily control
someone’s common sense, body and heart. Feeling like you are in love can make you feel like
you can endear any abuse (sexual, emotional, or physical) you experience with your significant
other. This is the main issue occurring in the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William
Faulkner. This short story was the first to be published in a major magazine for Faulkner. Forum
magazine published it on April 30, 1930. Faulkner did a great job in creating “A Rose for Emily”
into a multifaceted point of view through an unknown narrator. He uses the setting, events, and
characters in his short story to generate a southern frame of mind. I suppose that he permits this
so his readers can make their own interpretations of the short story and to depict their own finale.
In the article "Emily Grierson's Oedipus Complex: Motif, Motive, and Meaning in Faulkner's A
Rose for Emily" by Jack Scherting, he discusses how readers agree that finding a motive and
relating it to the story is a hard task to do. Through the entire article Scherting is discussing the
many meanings, and motivations that Faulkner brings into the short story. Nick Melczarek’s
article "Narrative Motivation in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily” is more about finding a narrative
motivation in the short story, by using Helen E. Nebeker articles for help. He also brings in other
authors to help depict the reasons behind the incentive of the narrator. The article "Uncovering
the Past: The Role of Dust Imagery in ‘A Rose for Emily’" by Aubrey Binder helps find many
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descriptions in the short story. Binder not only gives examples of motif, but also gives examples
of many symbolisms through “A Rose for Emily”. Scherting says that incest and necrophilia are
not something that is only found in this short story that Faulkner wrote. He states that Faulkner
has brought them up before in his past stories. Melczarek argues to make easy that Faulkner
affects a further complication in the short story. Binder points out the extent of the reflections in
this short story. All three critics have valid points; however, Binder provides the strongest
interpretation of the story.
“A Rose for Emily” is not your normal children’s book love story. There is no prince
charming, no ball and there definitely was no beautiful wedding gown. This is a short story for
the adults, because it is more relevant to being real and horrifying. Yes it may start the same
way; however, the ending definitely heads into the opposite direction from a true fairy tale. The
story uses the love that Emily receives from Homer to mislead your viewpoint, “When she had
first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will marry him” (Faulkner 718).
This passage is a key example of how the townspeople are always in other people’s business.
They do not understand that for some people, privacy is what they need the most. Emily was so
heavily influenced by the townspeople’s thoughts; she could not stand being made fun of when
they all found out that Homer did not love her. So she decides to kill him and have those all
believe that they have gotten married. Years later when Emily dies, everyone enters her home
and all of her lies are discovered.
Scherting starts off with a very strong sentence that puts the readers in a position of
questioning. He has a way of making the audience question your first judgment of the short
story. Homer Barron was Emily’s love of her life; she was in love with him so much that she
literally did something very terrible just to keep him from leaving her forever. Scherting goes
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deeper into how Faulkner never anticipated for his readers to take the best guess that Homer
ended his relationship with Emily. Before Homer and the death of her father, she was not
allowed to see any men. This causes Emily to react with rage and jealousy, when Homer decides
to move on. He believes that after losing her father, Emily transferred the love and affection she
had for him onto Homer. Scherting emphasizes that “Emily, already past thirty, had been denied
normal contacts with the opposite sex” (Scherting 4). The essence of his argument is that her
father prevented her from experiencing what it feels like to be in a relationship. This did not help
her cope with his death, for the reason that she had no one to go to. Scherting observes that by
stating that his death was extremely traumatic and there was no way that Emily was consciously
able cope with it alone. He refuses to claim that what Emily felt for Homer was real love. He
insists that Homer was merely just an object, while her father was the eye of her affection.
Scherting reports that “[…] Emily’s father maintained the dominance over her sexuality which
he had established in her formative years […]” (Scherting 7). Scherting and Melczarek both have
similarities in their articles. Both of these authors examine this short story very vastly.
Nevertheless, Melczarek focused on a different aspect than Binder. He focuses more on the
narrative motivation part of this short story.
The horror-effect that takes place in “A Rose for Emily” is discussed all the way through
the article “Emily Grierson's Oedipus Complex: Motif, Motive, and Meaning in Faulkner's 'A
Rose for Emily'" written by Melczarek. How scary can it be, when someone dies inside of a
house, and once you get the chance to go inside to retrieve that body you end up finding
someone else’s remains as well. Let us not forget that it also appears as though Emily was
sleeping next to this other corpse’s body, who was Homer Barron. Horror can be found in
secrecy, for many reasons that people never know, it could be anything from the good to the bad.
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Melczarek states that "... The 'Rose' represents secrecy: the confidential relationship between the
author and his character" (Melczarek 4). He argues that Faulkner intentionally makes the short
story complicated with sequential order in which past events to occur then push back our
concluding understanding of Emily's last secret with our friendliness and admiration we get for
his character that he was able to create. Many people assume that just because the title states “A
Rose for Emily” it has to do with someone handing a rose to Emily; however, that is not always
the case especially in this short story. Just because the short story begins with such a title does
not always mean you have to go with it, sometimes it takes a little digging to get the true
meaning behind it.
Aubrey Binder is one of the great authors I choose, because her work was great in
uncovering hidden messages throughout the short story. Binder starts off right away with a great
revelation of how dust and decay are found when the people of the town discover Homer
Barron’s body in Emily Grierson’s house. Binder states that in the short story, “What was left of
him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in
which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient
and biding dust” (Faulkner 720). Basically, Binder uses this quote to explain that decay is found
in the townspeople, and in the aging of Emily. Dust in Binder eyes is use to express the means of
access of time. You can not erase your past; nevertheless you can sure uncover many things from
it. The lack of knowledge that the townspeople have does not wear away the fact that the murder
occurred. Secrets and phony assumptions are what is covering the death of Homer. Binder claims
that “like the dust concealing the truth about Homer Barron’s disappearance, the past is always
there waiting to be remembered and uncovered” (Binder 2). Basically Binder is saying that just
like the dust under your bed, once you sweep you may uncover lost things, things that were
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meant to be lost for long time. Every now and then some things are inevitably meant to be secret.
The final image that Faulkner leaves us with is “[…] a long strand of iron-gray hair” (Faulkner
720), suggesting that the townspeople will be left with a persistent consequence of Emily.
Everything about Emily was intriguing, she had secrets just like any other person does and she
did not show them to the townspeople.
Binder’s analysis of this short story is short, but well versed. She provides the strongest
interpretations of the short story. Binder emphasizes that the old-fashioned house that Emily
lives in is a symbol of the difficult to understand past events that occurred there. She states
“What has happened in the past always has happened” (Binder 5). She is insisting that there is
nothing you can do to change the past, what is meant to be will happen and when it does it will
be converted into your past. When you have been keeping secrets for far too long, it won’t be
easy to uncover them with moderate ease. Binder agrees when she writes, “[…] it is difficult to
“uncover” its secrets by means of gentleness and accuracy” (Binder 3). Basically, she is saying
that secrets are hard to uncover, sometimes it’s just easier to blurt them out all at once. I decided
to go with “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, because it has great meaning behind the
title and it brings many people to argue that it is not a love story. I believe that in a love story,
not many have a happy and pleasant ending, and this story is just one of the many that you never
really like to think or read of. The article by Binder was very well written, she pointed out two
very important symbolisms in the short story, which without the story wouldn’t have been taken
into observation the same way.
My interpretation of “A Rose for Emily” is that a love story can go wrong, people died,
were cruel and were nosey. Emily kills Homer, because she can not stand the chance that he will
leave and never come back to her. The short story states “Miss Emily just stared at [the druggist],
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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” (Faulkner 718). She is so deeply in love with him, that her she was
not thinking with her heart or brain at all. Emily’s brain was clouded with rage; she just could
not let Homer go, for the reason that she knew that if she did she would never see him ever
again. Emily may have gone a little psychotic due to her father’s inability to share her with
anybody else. My understanding of this short story is that not all stories need to be about love.
Not only is Emily the only person in the short story with some sort of behavior problem. I have
come to realize that in a way the townspeople of “A Rose to Emily” have their own sort of
compulsive and exploitation behavior. The townspeople’s compulsive behavior comes from
having the need to know everything that Emily does, sees and knows. Their exploitation
behavior comes from influence Emily into having the need to be married.
Researching Aubrey Binder, William Faulkner, Nick Melczarek, and Jack Scherting
helped me better understand the text in the short story “A Rose for Emily” by giving me a deeper
insight of what Faulkner was trying to bring out in his short story. Each author provided me with
their own explanation, one easier to understand than the others, but all great articles. This has
helped me have a deeper understanding of literary analysis. Researching these articles has given
me a deeper explanation of what literary analysis is. Now that I have done some more research
into this subject matter, my whole perceptive of it has completely changed. Maybe it is not about
love and more concerning mental abuse. Not every individual can have the privilege of a fairy
tale ending; some are just cursed to live a life of hate and sadness.
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Works Cited
Binder, Aubrey. "Uncovering the Past: The Role of Dust Imagery in A ROSE FOR EMILY."
Explicator 70.1 (2012): 5-7. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 May 2014.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Making literature matter: An Anthology for Readers and
Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford, 2012. 713-720. Print.
Melczarek, Nick. "Narrative Motivation in Faulkner's A ROSE FOR EMILY." Explicator 67.4
(2009): 237-243. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 May 2014.
Scherting, Jack. "Emily Grierson's Oedipus Complex: Motif, Motive, and Meaning in Faulkner's
'A Rose for Emily'." Studies in Short Fiction 17.4 (1980): 397. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 12 May 2014.