The Significance Of A Title In A Rose For Emily

A Rose for Emily. When I first read the title I expected that it was going to be a sweet and emotional love story filled with romance. But that wasn’t the case as the story went on to prove otherwise. The story tells us the tale of Miss Emily Grierson and that she suffers from the fear of change and how drastic it can be. Emily’s father dies of old age, for a large period of time the only male human she ever knew, and her lover Homer tries to leave her because he isn’t the type of man who wants to be married and settled and we later find out he actually prefers men. What I was able to analyze the most about this story were the events that were centered around the characters, the hidden messages and the point of view of the story.

I felt somewhat connected to the character of Miss Emily Grierson because I know what it’s like to lose someone you love or look up to. When someone we love or really care about dies, we tend to go through some sort of denial because it seems fake and not real and you just want the dream to end. Personally, I wasn’t able to process the recent death of my favorite basketball player and my number one role model and idol in Kobe Bryant for three days because I just couldn’t believe the fact that he died; he was just one of those people that made my life better just by being there. The same thing happened in the story where Emily wasn’t able to accept her father’s passing for three days by keeping the corpse with her “while ministers and doctors of the town are constantly persuading her to let them dispose of him” (Faulkner 27). But she doesn’t listen because she can’t quite grab hold of reality yet. I think Homer leaving her just added more salt to the wound. She just wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening.

Another thing that really caught my eye was the hidden meaning of love and how impactful it would’ve been in this story. Emily grew up in a basically male-only household with her father. He didn’t let her experience love with another man when he was alive and often chased the suitors that would come forth with to try and mate with her met the end of a horsewhip (Faulkner 25). And then when Homer came around, all the people thought he was the one and said “she will marry him” (Faulkner 43) and that can’t work out for two reasons: he’s into men and he’s not the marrying type. She didn’t take the events lightly and was afraid of losing a man she loved again and that results in the murder of Homer. This also goes to show that again, she doesn’t take change well.

The narration of the story was a little weird in the sense that it was narrated by a bunch of characters in the story but it mainly revolved around Emily for the entirety of the story. The story was told in a unique first-person narrative point of view because we don’t follow the thoughts of one person, we follow a lot of different minds and feelings, almost gossip like. After reading the story, I certainly think that the story would’ve been received differently by us readers if the narrative was more centered around Homer. I think Faulkner wanted to emphasize the difference between men and women and how they see the world. Women tend to care a lot more than men and a huge example of that is when Emily is in denial and broken while Homer is out in bars with younger men.

In conclusion, I was able to make some connections that helped me understand the story a lot more and I like the twist the title had because I genuinely thought at first it would be a rather romantic story based on the title itself. I like the take that Faulkner took to highlight an issue of the male and female genders and how they both overcome problems because it’s essential to what the story’s about and that made it all the better.