short+stories

A Rose for Emily is a perfect example of how an author can deceive both the characters in the literature and the readers of the literature. The town’s people just think that Emily has experienced a rough life and for that reason she likes to be left alone. In reality, she is slightly psychotic.



"The day after his (Emily's father) death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom 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, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly. We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. 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 470).

This section from the story confirms the beliefs that Emily was not crazy, just sad. That is why she kept her father in the house for three days and said he hadn't died. Eventually though, she came back to reality and let the towns people take him away. The fact that she kept him is not what is focused on, its the fact that she eventually realized she had to let go. Because of this, the reader and the towns paper believe that she was not capible of killing a man and keeping him in her bed for years and years.



It is not until she goes to buy arsenic do the towns people start a question her sanity. Even then, no one believes she is going to kill anyone, everyone just believes that she want it to kill herself. "'I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said. "Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--" "I want the best you have. I don't care what kind." The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is--" "Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?" "Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--" "I want arsenic."(Faulkner 471)

"So the next day we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing."(Faulkner 471). 



It’s not until the very end that the reader finally finds out that Emily is in fact crazy, not just sad and lonely. In the end, when the towns people come after she has died. They break down a door in house, curious what was behind it. What they found answers all questions about Emily's sanity.

"The man himself lay in the bed. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. 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 cuckolded him. 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. Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair." (Faulkner 473 - 474).

The image of the first rose can be found at: http://www.rose-for-emily.com/resources/_wsb_207x174_A_Rose_For_Emily

The image of the house can be found at: http://mail.tku.edu.tw/kiss7445/KissHomePage/Literature_Intro/Emilys3.gif

The image of the second rose can be found at: http://www.pixelcharmer.com/photos/2004/07/rose1.jpg

Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." __Norton Introduction to Literature__. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. 467-474.