A Rose for Emily Antagonists
In A Rose for Emily, there are many characters that contend with Emily. These characters conflict with her on through her whole life.; because she was supposedly a woman of aristocracy, her family held her in high regards. The townspeople swallowed this idea up and looked at her as if she was aristocracy. As a woman of aristocracy, she was supposed to have been married at an early age, but her father kept men from seeing her when she was younger. That fact that she went against the norm of aristocracy leads to her insanity because she is going against the norms of the aristocratic society.
Woman of aristocracy got married at an early age, but Emilys father kept men from ever taking Emily away. This leads Emily to view her father as the only man in her life. He controls her life as if he were God, and that is all she sees him as. The townspeople remembered all the young men her father had driven away so that Emily would not be taken away from him (Guth 168). He was an antagonist because he was afraid to let Emily go, which could have lead her insanity. All she knew to do was idolize her father because he was the only man she really knew.
Another antagonist of the story is Homer Barron whom tries to leave Emily. The townspeople know that Homer Barron is homosexual, but they do not say anything to Emily. Emily thought that Homer was the one for her. Emily and Homer would always ride around town in his car on Sunday afternoons. Homer had gotten Emilys hopes up about getting married, because the townspeople had learned that Miss Emily had been to the jewelers and ordered a mans toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece (Guth 170). Emily had already prepared for her and Homer to be married but Homer had different ideas. Homer tries to leave Emily, but she poisons him so he could not ever leave her. Homers act brings out Emilys insanity because she desperately wanted him to be with her forever, so, by poisoning him he cannot leave her. Her father starts this insanity by keeping men out of her life. When Homer comes into the story she finally has a man in her life; but by trying to leave her, he takes away what she has always wanted for herself. She will do whatever it takes to keep Homer from leaving, and for her, that is killing Homer. Instead of burying Homer, she puts his dead body on her bed so that she can always be with him.
The townspeople are also antagonists in the fact that they still see Emily as a aristocratic woman. They see Emily as someone of great importance. This leads Emily to see herself as that and not transfer herself into what was then modern society. They hold Emily back in time and not into what was normal at the time. Even when Homer Barron disappears they never suspect Emily of killing him because they see her as a southern belle. As Homers corpse is rotting upstairs in Emilys house they just think it was the rats that they thought Emily was going to kill with the poison. They just try to cover up the smell and let it go.
Emilys father, Homer Barron, and the townspeople acting against Emily lead her to her insanity because they hold her back from what is reality. For her entire life she herself and others in the town see her as something that she is not. She is looking in the past and not in the present. What was normal in her past was not accepted as normal in the present; but people just accepted it anyway
Works Cited
Guth, Hans P. Discovering Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays. 3rd ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2003.
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