My initial reaction to "A Rose for Emily" was what just happened? I read the story numerous times, and finally understood just how creepy the story really is. The story took me through a woman just trying to find love, and when she fell she didn't want to let go.
Faulkner is trying to show how some woman are desperate to fall in love. When her father died, she didn't want to bury the body, she wanted to hold onto it. She didn't want to let go of the one man that she had loved. Her father seemed to be very protective of her, and she seemed to have only loved her father. Which sets up, for the events to come.And showed just how much she had loved her father, the theme of the story seems to be death. Her father was controlling of her, and when he died the only one she has truly loved died. She finally found love again with Homer Barron, she had her life ahead of her. She wanted to settle down and have a family- but Homer Barron didn't he was leaving her. She didn't want him to, and so she killed him? After killing him, she keeps his body and sleeps next to him until the day she dies. It is too creepy and weird for me to comprehend. If you love someone, you let them go and if they love you, they will come back. She could have taken her chances. Would you kill for love?
Comments/Questions: The whole story was pretty understandable after reading it a few times. But I do have a question. What did the taxes have to do with anything? They are mentioned throughout the first half of the story, but I don't see how they relate to Miss Emily? Or the story in general.
I believe that the taxes were simply used to show Emily's character and how resistant to change she was. Though the changing society believed that her immunity from taxes dies with the old mayor, she was defiant and with each generation trying to persuade her to pay taxes, she resisted till death.
ReplyDeleteI was right there with you with the whole tax story. But after rereading a few times, I think the relevance of it was to foreshadow how she didn't want anything in her life to change, since her family was wealthy, taxes probably didn't apply to them, and also showing that when homer tried to leave and change her life for the worse, she killed him and kept him in her life.
ReplyDelete