A Rose For Emily

Emily was never able to love like people normally do. Her relationship with her father hindered her ability to love and have a normal relationship. She was never able to experience love or experience the heart ache that break- up brings. She was not able to accept Barron’s decision to leave her. We may feel empathy for Emily because she kills Homer because she is scared he is going to leave her. She is so insecure and unstable that she cannot deal with the possibility of him leaving her so she resorts to the only way that she knows which is to kill him and make him hers forever. She killed him out of love, which is clear by her keeping the body in her home for years. If she did not care about him then she would have disposed the body, but instead she kept the body to signify her eternal love and her victory over him.

Emily did a similar thing when her father died. She kept his body in the house as if it were a normal thing to do. She could not part with the body until the townspeople intervene and try and remove the body. It seems that love and death are intricately woven together. She believes that killing is a way to show how much you love someone and ironically refuses for death to interfere with her capacity to love. Death does not separate her from her loved ones; we see this when she refuses to have her father's body removed from the house and at the end of the story when she has been sleeping with Homer's dead body. Emily kills as a result of her intense love. (Heather)