Emily's Enemy

A detailed Summary of Emily's Enemy

William Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" portrays Emily Grierson's decline

into insanity. Emily lives in the small town of Jefferson where the people of the town have

the need to peer into her life with a magnifying glass. Despite their insatiable curiosity

about her life, they don't know as much as they think they know about Emily. They seem

unaware of her desire to make time stand still in her life and how her attempts to do so

Emily first shows signs of this obsession and hints that she is crazy when her father

dies. For three days she denies that her father has died, but finally gives into persuasion

and allows him to be buried. He was all she had and so she wants to keep him there with

her. Her father kept her isolated from others in the town and even her relatives, making

him the only person she really knows and loves. In order for her not to face the fact that

she is alone, she tries to keep his body . She would try to stop time itself to keep from

the body over the years. Emily had killed Homer because she knew, despite what the

It wasn't until Emily's death, when the townspeople could thoroughly examine

and how very unused everything in the house was is an indication how much she believed

hopeless. She drives herself to insanity by these attempts to do so because time was her

Emily's house, belongings, and the everyday movements of her servant reveal her

To keep time from invading her world, Emily refuses to keep up with the real

mailbox, threatened her world so much that she refused its installation and postal delivery.

world. The visit from the aldermen reveals how out of touch she really is. They visit in

destroy her plans for their life together. When her relatives were in town she had bought

her house. The detail given about how much dust had piled on the furniture in the house

Jefferson,' even though he had been dead ten years. Also, minute details such as a

Approximate Word count = 690
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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