Comments | ama_bookclub: Official Discussion Post: A Rose For Emily

neuroticsquirrl in ama_bookclub

Official Discussion Post: A Rose For Emily

Jan 06, 2010 17:53

Just a few questions to get the ball rolling. Feel free to either post new questions or add more to the comments - whichever you think would best facilitate discussion. This is all new to me. These questions are taken from or inspired by various study sites ( Read more... )

official discussion post, a rose for emily

Comments 15

theniwokesoftly January 7 2010, 06:10:59 UTC

I'll go first, even though I'm really bad with this kind of thing.

1. It's sad. I mean, I would never kill someone and lay in bed next to their corpse, but there's something in that kind of desperate action that evokes a little bit of sympathy.

2 & 5. Loyalty is a funny thing, but I doubt that's all there is to it. I really doubt that it was any kind of threat from Miss Emily, but then, the way he "walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again", it makes me wonder if he helped her poison Homer.

3. I was wondering the same thing! Unless HB is Emily's rose, which is kind of a squicky thought.

4. This question is way too eleventh-grade English class. I refuse to answer.

nextdrinksonme January 7 2010, 14:48:24 UTC

This story never fails to give me chills. We read it in an American Lit class I took and I fell instantly in love with it due to the disturbing and just genuinely creepy implications in the ending. Like sing118 said, there is a certain sad despiration that is shown in the act of Emily killing her lover so that he couldn't leave and then laying beside his corpse for years afterwards, unable to let him go and come to terms with his death (and her hand in it), just as she had been unable to come to terms with the death of her father ( ... )

smashionista January 7 2010, 18:01:54 UTC

I don't think Homer Barron had real feelings for Emily, but I also don't think she had real feelings for him. Her father wouldn't let her have suitors, and then the town wouldn't let her "have" her father after he died. Homer Barron gave the impression that he wouldn't let her "have" him, either (I agree with you that it was doubtful he would have ever settled down and married her), and she'd finally had enough. She wanted to hold onto something ( ... )

theniwokesoftly January 7 2010, 18:09:16 UTC

I agree that Homer never intended to marry Emily, and I also can see that she didn't have real feelings for him, or I doubt she'd have killed him. I think she was more in love with an idea of not being alone after her father died.

smashionista January 7 2010, 18:48:44 UTC

I touched on a few of these questions in my reply to nextdrinksonme, but I also wanted to remark on #5.

I think the only reason the townspeople paid any attention to Tobe was because he was close to Emily, at least physically. He was the only one who actually got to be inside of her house and, theoretically, know about what everyone else could only speculate. That gave him some level of importance. When he ceased to serve this purpose - once everyone else could enter Emily's house - they no longer noticed him. Faulkner doesn't say, "He never came back," but rather that he "was not seen again." Was anyone looking?

nextdrinksonme January 7 2010, 19:34:16 UTC

That's a really good interpretation, especially considering the historical location and time period of the piece. I had never thought about the wording that way.

brina_is_sassy January 7 2010, 22:37:18 UTC

Oh wow, that makes a lot of sense! I like that interpretation of the ending.

ms_banazira January 7 2010, 19:47:40 UTC

I remember this story from high school. I mistakenly saw it as wildly sad and romantic then. Now I see it as something much less trivial than just another southern gothic romance ( ... )

neuroticsquirrl January 8 2010, 02:34:38 UTC

I think he might have. I don't know too much about him, but I do know he was born and raised in Mississippi and had family members who were prominent in the Confederate army. You could look at this as a weird sort of victory of the South over the North - a southern lady killing a Yankee man.

eneat January 7 2010, 21:05:16 UTC

1. A bit surprised at the end but... I'm not sure how I feel about it meaning that it doesn't surprise me that she did that. So I'm not particularly shocked, nor sad but rather, ambivalent.

2. I suspect out of loyalty. Or maybe he had feelings for her (not in a romantic way, but rather a friendship) and that was part of his duty. Either way it seems he was the only link to outside of the house.

3. Probably the guy in the bed. A symbol of something she wanted and that's a lasting one, for sure.

4. I'm not entirely sure how the war in itself plays a role however it sets an expectation of the time and the culture. It helped to build that idea of something decaying while things are changing around it which alludes to the decaying body as times are changing.

5. That it was done. I think that he knew about the body and knew about her need to have it in bed with her. Maybe she held his secrets as he did of her or maybe it was out of pity. Either way, her death (to me) symbolizes the end of the agreement.