William Faulkner’s A rose for emily

Miss Emily, the lead character of William Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily, fails to find her place in the world. There is no way that ‘A Rose for Emily’ is a tale of mental and physical loneliness. William Faulkner depicts the mechanism by which individuals become alienated as a result of their tradition, the rules, and their own decisions and behavior. Their relatives and the society in which they live often separate them in a way. In this novel, the author takes a stance against those ways of alienation, as well as all those that exclude others in any way. This story creates a vivid description of modern society. My personal impression after reading this story is that some people tend to isolate themselves from the society just to have time to themselves, this is because most people feel left out of the rest of the people in the society mainly because of stigma. The modern society judges one from different angles whether you doing good or bad, funny thing they even judge according to race and body size (Polk and William 51).

In section two of the story the author states ‘After her father’s death she went out very little after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.’ This is just one of the many quotes where the author portrays the various acts of isolation that Miss Emily faced. Her father contributed mainly to this isolation by isolating her from all the potential suitors that wanted her hand in marriage. Her father dead and her sweetheart deserted her making her isolate herself from the society and people hardly saw her at all. Miss Emily didn’t even receive phone calls from the few ladies who called.

In my view, I think the author’s intention in writing this story is to educate the masses on the effects of preventing one to make his own choices and making them feel inferior by not involving them in making such decisions and then judge them negatively. According to the story if the father had allowed her to date or even go out with the many suitors that had wanted to marry her, then she would have been free, friendly and very socially due to a positive self-esteem mostly in the days when women were viewed as a wife and mother. She had come of age and the number of suitors after her was almost none and when her own sweetheart that people thought could marry her left her. To make it even worse her father had passed on, she felt out of place and decided to isolate herself from the society (Polk and William 78).

Even though the main theme of the story portrays itself around isolation the author successfully brings out the concept of compassion and forgiveness and the various aspects of reality that were ignored. In section two the author perfectly draws a picture of how the house of miss Emily used to smell and the neighbors had to complain to the authorities. ‘Dammit, sir,’ judge Stevens said, ‘will you accuse a lady to face of smelling bad?’ While one of the members had suggested that word is sent to her to clean her house. It is clear that covering the smell wasn’t the best was off covering up a crime was it that the judge knew the true and didn’t want to follow up the matter?

Reading this story made me so emotional and feel I have a role to play to make the world a better place. I decided to take a walk around just to clear my mind and as I walked around I manage to notice that we all come from different religions and cultures. We just have to peacefully coexist with each other in order to make everyone feel comfortable and accepted. Do on to others as you would want them to do on to you, we all need to respect other people freedom and rights mostly the less privileged (Polk and William 92).

Miss Emily did not want to accept the fact that her father had passed on and when the neighbors came to give their condolences, they were received at the door and were not given the chance to bury the deceased. It’s after the law was forcefully used that she allowed her father to be laid to rest. Miss Emily level of isolating herself was so high that even the letters that were sent to her, she received them. The author tries to bring out some warning to the society that must be received by everyone. Isolation brings about low self-esteem and lack of confidence and even if one feels that he/she is isolated they should try to find help since this will led to one being depressed and even cause mental illness or even death in some instances.

I know of an African lady who was married to an American and they both loved each other dearly. The husband decided to support the wife by financing her support her people and even decided to build a house for her in her ancestral land. They both lived in the United States, for the period they were married. The wife was responsible for undertaking the building of the house and the husband financed. The wife hired a contractor and they agreed on the structure of the building and also the date of compilation of the project. To the shock of many the money, the wife had been sending to cater for the expenses involved could not be accounted and the project was half done (Polk and William 102).

This made the husband very annoyed and decided to divorce his wife on grounds that the wife had misused the funds given to her. They were blessed with four kids and all of them refused to go stay with their mom back in Africa. The woman was left with no finances to take care of her needs and the only possession she had was the poorly completed structure of a house. She is now said to be insane since she talks to herself and can get very violent if provoked. All she hopes for is one day she can get her family and the love she used to have back. My view is we should try and reach out to one another just to know what one is going through and help them overcome every challenge in life.

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Work Cited

Polk, Noel, and William Faulkner. A Rose for Emily: William Faulkner. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000. Print.