A Rose for Emily 9

Many aspects of your past will and can affect your present state of mind. In A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner Emily is a middle class young lady who is well respected by her community but is also recluse from the outside world after her father passes away which causes her to be lonely and suspicious to the towns people after they notice that she has stopped coming out of her house and a strange smell coming from the house begin to pollute the air of the community. In the story Faulkner uses Emily’s family lineage, the community, and her actions to show how she can’t discriminate between the past and present in order to foreshadow her mental instability.

      As the narrator tells about Emily’s family lineage he tells the reader how her aunt “turned crazy at last” and even though he doesn’t tell exactly what has driven her to insanity it leaves the reader to infer that this can affect Emily and how she cannot distinguish between the past and present since mental instability runs in her family. Also Faulkner tells how the community remembers all the young men “her father had driven away” possibly because he didn’t think any man is “quite good enough” for his daughter and he doesn’t want her to leave which leaves Emily to cling to that which she has been “robbed” of by her father, Causing Emily to be bound to have mental issues, become dependent on Homer Baron and this causes her to never want Homer or anyone else to leave her.




      As Emily appears less and less in the community the towns people begin referring to her as “poor Emily” because she is from a well off family who is well known for their wealth and once her father passed it made her more   like everyone else. After they find out that she has began a relationship with Homer Baron they feel a sense of relief that it will bring an end to her seclusion and they believe this new relationship will bring her “out of her shell” even though the towns elders dislike the courtship since he is a...