The Meaning of the Title in A Rose For Emily Essay

THE MEANING OF THE TITLE A ROSE FOR EMILY

The victory of the American Civil War ends glory days of the South. Many southern people refused to accept the changed situation and had kept cherishing their precious memories. They showed a strong attachment to old values and traditions of the faded past. Miss Emily, who is the main character in the story A Rose for Emily, is typical of those Southerners. Throughout the story, the word rose rarely appears, but trying to interpret it helps readers have a deep understanding about the story.

A Rose for Emily is Faulkners white rose to Emily, his way of expressing condolences to Emilys death. He sympathizes with her loneliness and her imagination about her status. People in the town respect her but they are one of the main reasons that make her have too good opinion of herself. They do not dare to force her to pay taxes, they do not dare to question her when she buys poison, they are more embarrassed of making remarks about the smell and do not dare to find out the truth about this terrible smell. I have the feeling that they consider her as holy idol. They treat her as if she was beyond the law.. If only they forced her to obey the law, she would be more conscious about her real status and integrated into a new era.

The rose is also a comparison to Emilys life. She grows up in a comfortable environment and has everything a child wants. This caused Emily to be very self centered and thinks of herself as superior to everyone else in the town even when her father dies. Like the most beautiful rose in a garden, she is too proud of herself to leave a normal life as other people and deny her high status which only exists in her thinking. She refuses to pay taxes, ignores town gossip that she is a fallen woman. In my opinion, she is a victim of the circumstance because she suffers from a lack of genuine love and care, and her stubbornness is caused by her fathers overprotective treatment when she is young.

Rose symbolizes love. In her life, she lacks love and desires to have one. Emily wants to be loved, and she is determined that Homer is her true love to rescue her from her fear of being alone. I think Emily sincerely loves Homer, but his feelings about the relationship are different because he does not like marriage. The only true love she has ever known now leaves her. Her deepest feelings and hidden longings for love result in her murdering of Homer Baron. She does not realize that he is not a deserving man but desperately clings to that blind love. A rose is what her searches for in her life but till the day she die, she never has one.

The rose is Miss Emily herself. In her heyday she was a high rank beautiful girl, however when she grows up, she has a lot of thorns that can cut and wound. Her personality prevents everyone from getting close, even to those who are attracted by the fragrance or beauty of the rose. She frames herself in her house like a rose in a protected garden far from the reach of outsiders. Emilys rose only bloomed for Homer in a short time and then it faded and died as she does.

The rose here refers to the colour of Emily life in her viewpoint. Miss Emily herself, I believe, is completely incapable of realizing what happens outside her closed front door. She prefers living in her isolated and protected world inside her house and believes it is a rosy world. She acts like a innocent child because she loses the concept of time. She is both indifferent and unconscious of the crime she committed. She even does not bother to conceal her crime. Instead of taking the reality as it is objectively, she keeps thinking of the past and imprisons herself in her imaginative rosy world. Sadly, it is the people in the town that make her misperceive the real world around her and pride too much on her isolation and independence. For example, when she shows no grief at her fathers death, they interpret her action as an example of pride and strength, why dont they talk to her, comfort and sympathize with her true feeling? . They also make up a romantic story about her relationship with Homer Barron. When he disappears, they assume that he has left her with a broken heart, and this gives them another reason to pity the poor lady. However, when they see her walking with even straighter back and keeping her head even higher with dignity, they seem to admire her even more. She is a strong woman with a great sense of tradition but at the same time she is the victim of misperception of the world. The way the town admire her heroic characteristics never rescues her from the imaginative rosy world. As a result, her misperception about herself and her real world around continue till the end of her life.

A Rose for Emily is a commentary on love in her life. The author tells us about her fathers love and her true love. Her father loves her so much, he protects her and cares for her, but drives all the men in her life away. Homer, the man she sincerely loves, does not return the love she gives him. The 2 men she loves most leave her but her pride keeps her from socializing with other people in the town and reinforces her loneliness. Her desire for love and companionship never satisfied.

In the story A Rose for Emily Faulkner chooses to use town peoples point of view as a narrator because it gives the readers a positive and objective view on Miss Emilys life. While recalling past events taking place in the town, the narrator gives the reader insights into Miss Emilys problems, which in turn helps the readers form their own different but suitable interpretations about the title of the story.