"A Rose for Emily"

William Faulkner's, "A Rose for Emily," is my favorite story so far this semester. I loved the way Faulkner uses the theme of death throughout the entire story to foreshadow the eerie ending. Miss Emily Grierson's denial of death is also shown throughout the story, helping the reader to better understand why she left her sweethearts decaying body live with her for all those years. Even in the opening sentence we are introduced to the idea of death. "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral" (Faulker 404). Right away it hit me, this story is going to have the idea of death throughout it. Faulkner then explained the house that Emily had lived in, with "Stubborn and coquettish decay" (Faulkner 404). I loved the way Faulkner was able to describe the once beautiful house, that was now decaying as if it were dead. Emily is treated very differently in the town because of her social status, and the townspeople do little about her house rotting away.
Faulkner even speaks of Emily when she was living as if she was dead. "Her skeleton was small and spare" (Faulkner 404). In nearly ever paragraph, Faulkner brings in the idea of death to help the reader better understand the eerie ending. Even when the townspeople worried about a "smell" that was coming from the house, they would not dare ask Emily about it. They decided to send some people over to the house to spread some lime around the outside to help the smell go away. I associated the smell with that of death and decay. Even as they went to Miss Emily's house, she was seen sitting in a chair with her, " upright torso motionless" (Faulkner 406). I loved the way Faulkner slipped these words into the story, and I tried to note each time he brought them up.
Once Emily's father had died, she had a very hard time accepting his death and would not let him be buried for three days. This was the start of Emily's denial of reality. She had a very hard time facing the reality that her father had passed on. This idea leads the story into the tragic death of Homer Barron, who Emily ending up poisoning. The two were unlikely pair, since Homer was a Northerner, and a day laborer. I believed that since Emily could not convince Homer to marry her that she had decided to poison him to keep them together. Since maybe Emily would never get the "Til death do us part" with Homer, she would make it happen for herself. Emily obviously had a hard time with letting go of the ones she loved, and this is seen throughout the story. Ironically, death was what separated Homer and Emily, but it also kept them together at the same time. I really enjoyed the way Faulkner wrote this story, and enjoyed reading it.