Rose For Emily Essays (1336 words) - A Rose For Emily,

Rose For Emily William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is the story of a woman's reluctance towards change. The story encompasses the entire town's unwillingness to change, while focusing on the protagonist, Emily Grierson. Faulkner uses symbols throughout the story to cloak an almost allegorical correlation to the reconstruction period of the South. Even though these symbols are open to interpretation, they are the heart and soul of the story. While the literal meaning of Faulkner's story implies many different conclusions, it is primarily the psychological and symbolic aspects which give the story meaning. Exploring these aspects will shed light on Faulkner's intention of "A Rose for Emily." After Emily Grierson's domineering father dies, she refuses to move on. By defining "moving on" as letting go, we see that Emily is lodged in the past, unable to ameliorate as the rest of society does. Whenever anything drastic occurs, Emily becomes reclusive,"After her father's death she went out very little... after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all." (428), the narrator explains. She had Tobe, her butler to interact with the world so that she didn't have to face reality. Psychologically, this is very important in terms of how Emily views the world and why she commits murder. If unable to change, one will die in time. Emily though was held to the code of "noblesse oblige" (430). This meant that even in dire need, Emily would never reveal her true feelings to the common folk of Jefferson. So she distorts time, refusing to accept the fact that her father was dead: The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly. (429) Emily now clear of her father's "horsewhip" (429), was free to explore her sexuality. This newfound freedom led her to fancy a Yankee day laborer named Homer Barron. Her father would never have approved of a commoner such as Homer as the townsfolk point out, "We remembered all the men her father had driven away" (429). Their relationship grew and the townspeople suspected that they would be married, as is the southern way. They were mildly surprise that they were not to be married attributing it to "that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times..." (432). Her father had doomed her life, stifling any chance for growth. Not all of the blame is to be placed on Emily's father, rather, it should be spread among the people of the town, her father, and Emily herself. This falling out with Homer is the turning point in the story. Instead of grieving as a normal person would, Miss Emily turns into a psychotic crazed lover. At this point in the story she ceases to only be called Miss Emily; and the town chooses to add poor Emily , as if a noble Grierson would need pity. Rather than sulk, Emily goes to the drugstore to buy poison, expectedly to kill herself. She displays her force as a Grierson to the unsure druggist when he asks why she requires poison, "Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye to eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up" (431). She used her influence as a Grierson to get what she wanted, even though at this point, the Grierson name, through several humbling events, was losing its vigor. Still alive, Emily again chooses to live a hermit's life, now that Homer is gone. She again takes refuge in her house which literally and figuratively is Miss Emily's denial of reality and time. This is the initiation of her downfall and ultimatly her lonely death. She refused to be accepted as what she truley was, a commoner. "...She demanded nore than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson" (430). Emily, in her home, which for her, was functioning as a temporal shelter, was impervious to the progression that was sweeping the rest of society. "Miss Emily alone refused

Up From Slavery Essays - Slavery, American Slaves, Abuse

Up From Slavery Essays - Slavery, American Slaves, Abuse Up From Slavery Up from slavery Chapter I 45Sl2 Slavery A slave among slaves. Chapter I. I WAS born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads post-office called Hale's Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins. My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many others. I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free. Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery not very much attention was given to family history and family records that is, black family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of a purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. Her addition to the slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new horse or cow. Of my father I know even less than of my mother. I do not even know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that he was a white man who lived on one of t he near-by plantations. Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time. The cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which let in the light, and also the cold, chilly air of winter. There was a door to the cabin that is, something that was called a door but the uncertain hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very uncomfortable one. In addition to these openings there was, in the lower right-hand corner of the room, the cat-hole, a contrivance which almost every mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the ante-bellum period. The cat-hole was a square opening, about seven by eight inches, provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and out of the house at will during the night. In the case of our particular cabin I could never understand the necessity for this convenience, since there were at least a half -dozen other places in the cabin that would have accommodated the cats. There was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the centre of the earthen floor there was a large, deep opening covered with boards, which was used as a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter. An impression of this potato- hole is very distinctly engraved upon my memory, because I recall that during the process of putting the potatoes in or taking them