A Withering Rose for Homer
The Yankee outsider, the new center of attention Homer Barron without notice disappears. This representative of "mechanical progression" is forced down the "diminishing road." It sounds like the entrails of a mystery, a web of virtual gossip and inevitable investigation amongst the old southern society and guard. Yet no one came, no search party is dispatched. The only constant left is Emily's continued existence, her clenching to a "rose tinted" past separated by an unchangeable fate. Because Homer Barron represented a threat, and a constant reminder of change, the community not only failed to recognize his disappearance, they ignored it.Emily's character is consistently seamless, as if existing outside of time. Her behaviors are exemplified in the text. For example, by the time the representatives of the new, progressive Board of Aldermen waited on her concerning her delinquent taxes, she had already completely retreated to her world of the past. She declared that she had no taxes in Jefferson, basing her belief on a verbal agreement made with Colonel Sartoris, who had been dead for ten years (16). Just as Emily refused to acknowledge the death of her father much earlier, she now refused to recognize the death of Colone
The role of the narrator in this story is quite a major one. Despite all of this, Emily was still able to conceal Homer's corpse from those who had entered her house. This allows analysis of the relationship between Homer and Emily. All of this helps to typify the story, it is the past pitted against the present, tradition verses progression: the past with its social decorum, and the present with everything set down in "the books. It is a wonder that his bodily fluids did not eventually find their way from the upstairs room where he lay down to the rooms below. During the seven or eight years that she had the china painting lessons in her house, no word of Homer Barron was mentioned. The new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron (the representative of Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and thus toward the entire South), and in what is called "the next generation with its more modern ideas" all represented the present time period. Rotting flesh is known to entice many rodents and insects to the scene to help the decomposition process. Assuming she killed Homer with the package of arsenic that she received from the local drug store, it should have only been a matter of time before his body started to decompose. Also, this technique coupled with hard to follow notations of time by the narrator creates an intentional ambiguity on the time lapse between key events of the story. It is intriguing why exactly Emily had bonded so well with Homer when she rarely spoke to any others in town. She was a "monument" of Southern gentility, an ideal of past values but fallen because she had shown herself susceptible to death (and decay). With the scene set, it should be pointed out that Emily's concepts of love, life, and death were misconstrued in her mind letting the blame to her strict father. This technique permits many unresolved issues in the story to remain reclusive until further readings. The omniscient power of the narrator, arguably the townspeople, is in control of what information we know and do not know in the story.
Common topics in this essay:
Homer Barron,
Miss Emily,
Homer Emily,
Despite Emily,
Colonel Sartoris,
Board Aldermen,
Construction Company,
homer barron,
,
Miss Emily's,
colonel sartoris,
homer emily,
antisocial lifestyle,
board aldermen,
kept secret,
miss emily,
|
Acceptance Essays
