A Rose For Emily

Two Different Worlds

What people on the outside of a situation perceive and what truly goes on behind closed doors can be two completely different worlds. Public and private lives no matter how interesting or enviable have some kind of flaw. The prefect atomic family does not truly exist. Ones psychic can be irrevocably altered because of this one flaw. I William Faulkner's, A Rose for Emily, He uses an odd chronological order to show there is always a dark cloud in a perfect would. Faulkner also shows through vivid imagery and symbolism that Emily is a prisoner of two worlds, the public and private life. This shows how poor Emily is never able to cope fully with either one because she was never shown how.

Emily was looked upon in public throughout the novel in many ways. She was once the bell of the ball. Through out time she slowly faded just like the house she had lived in her whole life. When she was alive "Miss. Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care...". Which basically, when she was younger the town took care of her. For instance when her father died the mayor took away her taxes because her father had lent the town money when they needed it. The town figured that this would be the best way to respect and repay her father back for all the good he had done for the city.

Her father was a dominant man who didn't think that any man was good enough for his little girl. That man ran off every person who would try to court Miss. Emily. She was basically not aloud to use her mind unless she was told to do so. Because of this and her being secluded away from everybody she did not really have the social skills to carry on in every day life. Well after her father died, she had a chance to get out on her own. That is when she met a Yankee man named Homer Barron. This was kind of a shock to the town's people. When they saw them in public they started thinking that they were going to get married some time. Then comes the twist, what could be looked at as slight mental illness or an actual critter problem, Emily went to the store and bought some poison. She didn't say what is was for when asked, but all the people knew that she bought arsenic. This of course spawned more gossip of how she was going to kill herself and so on. The sad thing was is they really hoped she would.

When Emily and Homer first started dating he was herd saying "that he was not a marrying man." So naturally when his work in the town was done the people figured he had left. But, a couple weeks later he was spotted being let into Miss. Emily's kitchen door. That was the last time they saw him. The next time they saw Emily she had changed over a long time, she had gotten old, gray-haired and a little heftier. The town's people just figured that her seclusion was what was left in her from when her father had passed.

Then one day she finally died in one of the broken down house's bottom level rooms. After she was buried the people whom all these years had watched Miss. Emily grow old in the house she grew up in got to see what really happened in that home. They walked into the room that apparently had not been seen in quite some time,

"A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie every where upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things back with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured.".

This to me symbolizes the broken dreams of Emily. It seems that she wanted to marry so that she would not be alone and would have something to hold on to the rest of her life. And once the rest of the room was examined they found a dead mans corpse. The pillow beside the body had the imprint as if some one had been laying next to it. They also found a strand