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    A Rose For Emily

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    Denz Mark Lenon
    Emily was a lonely woman in William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" who fell in love with a man named Homer after her father passed away. A scholar named Dilworth analyzed the story and argued that Emily and the townspeople had a symbiotic relationship, and that the townspeople were aware Emily had killed Homer but kept it secret to preserve the honor of their Southern society. However, Dilworth's argument lacks direct evidence from the story that Emily felt remorse or that the cause of Homer's death was specifically poisoning. While some of Dilworth's logic is sound, other parts of his analysis could benefit from stronger support from the text.

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    A Rose For Emily

    Uploaded by

    Denz Mark Lenon
    42 views3 pages
    Emily was a lonely woman in William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" who fell in love with a man named Homer after her father passed away. A scholar named Dilworth analyzed the story and argued that Emily and the townspeople had a symbiotic relationship, and that the townspeople were aware Emily had killed Homer but kept it secret to preserve the honor of their Southern society. However, Dilworth's argument lacks direct evidence from the story that Emily felt remorse or that the cause of Homer's death was specifically poisoning. While some of Dilworth's logic is sound, other parts of his analysis could benefit from stronger support from the text.

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    Emily was a lonely woman in William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" who fell in love with a man named Homer after her father passed away. A scholar named Dilworth analyzed the story and argued that Emily and the townspeople had a symbiotic relationship, and that the townspeople were aware Emily had killed Homer but kept it secret to preserve the honor of their Southern society. However, Dilworth's argument lacks direct evidence from the story that Emily felt remorse or that the cause of Homer's death was specifically poisoning. While some of Dilworth's logic is sound, other parts of his analysis could benefit from stronger support from the text.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    42 views3 pages

    A Rose For Emily

    Uploaded by

    Denz Mark Lenon
    Emily was a lonely woman in William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" who fell in love with a man named Homer after her father passed away. A scholar named Dilworth analyzed the story and argued that Emily and the townspeople had a symbiotic relationship, and that the townspeople were aware Emily had killed Homer but kept it secret to preserve the honor of their Southern society. However, Dilworth's argument lacks direct evidence from the story that Emily felt remorse or that the cause of Homer's death was specifically poisoning. While some of Dilworth's logic is sound, other parts of his analysis could benefit from stronger support from the text.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    A Rose For Emily

    Emily was a lonely woman who went through a lot in William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose
    for Emily” in order to find love. When Emily is thirty years old, her father passes away. Shortly
    after, a man named Homer moves to the area, and Emily ends up falling in love with him. The
    red color of the lover’s rose, which has many meanings, represents enduring passion. Yellow
    symbolizes friendship and joy; white represents modesty and innocence. While orange signifies
    zeal and desire; pink signifies thanks, appreciation, and admiration. The symbolic meaning of
    white lilac and purple flowers is enchantment and love at first sight (Teleflora). In “A Rose for
    Emily,” the rose represents and expresses the adoration and love Emily was never given.

    Dilworth sees the existing relationship between the narrator and Emily as largely symbiotic. This
    means that Emily and the society represented by the narrator can only exist mutually with each
    other. To reinforce this argument, Dilworth argues that the traits and behaviors of Emily are
    creations of the narrator thus implying that he presents Emily as the symbol of communicating
    what he believes to be the cultural values of the society in which he lives. Arguably, therefore,
    the actions of the main character such as killing followed by evading justice and failure to pay
    taxes without any legal action being taken upon her are depictive of the eminent shortfalls of the
    white society of the south during the time of writing of the short story. For instance, quoting a
    critique of the short story (Helen Nebeker), Dilworth affirms, “the narrator’s awareness of events
    implies long held knowledge of murder which the narrator has kept secret to preserve the honor
    and myth of the south” (p.253). Arguably, therefore, this means that the society was aware of
    certain atrocities that were committed by certain highly profiled persons and yet they could not
    be brought to book.

    One of the central concerns of Dilworth entails placing a logically substantive argument about
    the townspeople’s knowledge of homicide. In particular, Dilworth argues, “on the basis of the
    evidence, it is inconceivable, I think, that the townspeople did not know early on about Emily’s
    killing Homer Barron” (Dilworth, 1999, p.257). Dilworth assumes that Emily must have
    expressed the guilt of her sins among the townspeople even though they may not have talked
    about it amongst themselves. In this argument, there is a breach of one element of logical
    argument. There lacks a direct evidence from the story depicting Emily in any state of remorse or
    any other form of emotion that shows her feeling for being sorry for either killing her lover or by
    denying her father’s death for four days.

    Dilworth supports his claim, however, by using details from the narrative to tie Emily to
    Barron’s passing. He argues out that “they knew that her lover was last seen entering at the
    kitchen entrance at dark one evening,” citing the townspeople’s knowledge of the last time they
    saw Barron enter the residence of his sweetheart (Dilworth , 1999, p.258).

    There are many ways of interpreting or attaching meaning for any literary work. One way is to
    interpret it from the context of its setting. Historically, racial discrimination, denial of certain
    rights to women, and even belief in the superiority of persons in the high-class social group were
    issues that had to be dealt with in the early 20th century. A Rose for Emily seems to be set within
    this chronological period. Consequently, it is possible that, through Emily, Faulkner actually
    portrayed the differences among people in relation to their social status. This means that the
    society may have known about the evils committed by Emily. However, because of the fear
    associated with her social status, they could not have confronted her. From the arguments raised
    by Dilworth implicating Emily with the death of her lover, it is arguable that Emily’s failure to
    respond to the druggist about the purpose of the arsenic is an evidence of suspecting her to have
    poisoned her lover. Otherwise, from the story itself, the reader is only told that the status of the
    corpse by the time it was found was in the last stages of decomposition. Nothing shows that the
    cause of death was through poisoning. This makes it hard to determine whether Emily actually
    poisoned rats, just as the arsenic was labeled ’for rats,’ or her lover.

    A Rose for Emily is a short story written by Faulkner. It attracts valid interpretations. In this
    paper, the focus was to analyze Dilworth’s article ‘A Romance to Kill For: Homicidal
    Complicity in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” who provides one of the ways of interpreting the
    short story. The concern was to scrutinize the logic of the arguments presented by Dilworth. The
    paper has argued that, while some arguments are logical, others lack adequate evidence to
    support them.

    Reference List:

    Dilworth, T. (1999). A Romance to Kill For: Homicidal Complicity in Faulkner’s A Rose for
    Emily. Studies in short fiction, 36(3), 251-264.

    https://ivypanda.com/essays/critique-for-a-rose-for-emily/

    https://interestingliterature.com/2022/02/william-faulkner-rose-for-emily-summary-
    analysis/amp/

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