Robert Kluzinski
English 102, Introduction to Literature
Fall 1996

As an author writes a story, he does his best to capture the audience, to entertain the reader. The reader must be drawn into the situations of the story and be able to form opinions as he goes along. The author wishes to evoke certain emotions from the reader, certain feelings and understanding for the characters of the story. As the author establishes the characters and their predicaments he simultaneously attempts to develop the theme of the story, Meaning the author uses various elements such as point of view, the setting, symbols, etc. to work toward the expression of one central idea or statement. In looking at "A Rose for Emily." a short story by William Faulkner, it is evident that Faulkner successfully carries a main idea throughout the piece, the idea of being isolated, the isolation of Emily Grierson.

One of the most effective elements that Faulkner uses in his development of this main idea is the uses of imagery. He portrays the father of Emily as a looming possessive figure, a figure of total control and dominance. Emily has no say about what goes on in her life. The narrator describes the image of the two.

We had long thought of them as tableau, 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, the two of them framed by the backflung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

The description in this quotation leaves to conjure up the image of the father keeping Emily down and at home with him. Through his selfishness he isolates her from the rest of "normal" society, separating Emily from other girls her age, denying her of the joy and pleasures experienced by most of her peers.

Faulkner uses the death of her father as a symbol to bring to the forefront a harsh realization for Emily, the fact that she was now truly alone. This has come about through no fault of her own, but because it was the will of her father. She was now completely isolated from all others except for her servant. This reality sends panic and fear through her because now she has nowhere to turn and no one to tell her what to do, no one to command her life. Not only is she stricken with the loss of her father but now she is cut off to the outside world, because her only link has passed on. Emily immediately goes into a state of denial; to her, her father could not be dead, he was all that she had and she would not let him go.

"The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer their condolence and aid... Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days... Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly." Without her father, she had no one to put any order in her life and wasn't going to let anyone else try. "We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and knew with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which robbed her, as people will."

Another symbol Faulkner unobtrusively introduces is the crayon portrait of Emily's father looking down at her during the funeral. Throughout her whole life and even now in death her father had been and always would be there, watching, judging and influencing her life, knowing she had been daddy's little girl to the end. Taking some perverse pleasure in having destroyed a young girl's normal aspirations to find love and then a husband and a family, dependent to the end on his wishes and left isolated from the rest of society.

The character and fate of Homer Barron is introduced as yet another element to illustrate Emily's attempt to break free of this isolation bred by her father. Homer may have been portrayed as a typical suitor of Emily's, one of many she may have had in the past which were quickly chased off by her father. Only this time, since her father was not physically present, Emily finally felt that she had a chance to find someone to bring her out of that isolation, someone with whom she could share her loneliness. Though Homer was capable of bringing her this unfamiliar feeling of belonging she could never escape the presence of her father's will embedded on her persona like a scar on her cheek.

Emily attempted to find a medium between the two, so she took Homer's life by poisoning him with arsenic, and kept him for herself by keeping his decaying body in her own bed, sleeping next to this rotting corpse night after night, reassuring herself that he father would not be able to chase this suitor, ever.

The man himself lay in the bed... 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 cuckholded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay.

Though Faulkner has brought other elements together working to show Emily's isolation into the story, these four in my opinion best display his attempt at expressing this theme. Emily's life was wrecked from the beginning. There was a constant conflict within her between the duty of obeying and honoring her father's will that she remain isolated from society and her longing to live life on her own terms and to play a part in normal society no matter how small that part may have been. Unfortunately for Emily, that conflict was never resolved. Even in death her father was pleased that Emily died a lonely and withdrawn frail woman, just as he taught her to be.