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A Rose for Emily 20514 Views


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Description:

What? She gets a rose and we don’t? Who is this Emily person anyway? What’s she done to deserve such a delightful, aromatic gift?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

A Rose for Emily, a la Shmoop. People have different ways of coping with

00:10

loneliness. Maybe they carry on conversations with themselves...

00:14

...or sample every ice cream flavor known to man...

00:14

...or spend some quality time with their favorite TV series.

00:17

However, in William Faulkner's short story, A Rose for Emily...

00:23

...the title character takes drastic measures to assuage her loneliness: she kills the man

00:29

she wants to marry so he will never, ever leave her...

00:32

...and then she keeps his corpse. Faulkner writes that Miss Emily Grierson <<Greer-son>>

00:40

has a disastrous love life...

00:41

...on account of her overprotective father...

00:45

...and, after Mr. Grierson's death, a boyfriend who doesn't want to say I do.

00:52

While Emily's neighbors enjoy talking about her misfortunes in the romance department...

00:57

...and pitying her...

00:58

...she has no friends, and her only relatives live far away.

01:02

So, here's a question: Why is Emily so very alone in Faulkner's story?

01:08

Maybe her loneliness is her own fault. After all, Faulkner tells us that Emily refuses

01:14

to pay her taxes...

01:15

...and then refuses again...

01:19

...and again...

01:20

...and again. No one likes a freeloader...

01:22

...especially one who delivers her refusal in a cold, imperious manner.

01:27

Perhaps if Emily made an effort to mingle with her neighbors, she would get invites

01:31

to all the local Easter egg hunts, Christmas dinners, and baptisms.

01:34

You never know what might happen at a baptism. Or maybe Emily's loneliness is rooted in her

01:40

inability to let go of the past.

01:43

After all, the only thing Emily wants to do is snuggle with the corpse of her dead, reluctant-to-wed-her

01:48

boyfriend...

01:49

...the boyfriend she killed with arsenic bought during a shopping spree at her local Jitney

01:54

Jungle.

01:57

Spending all her time with Not-So-Hot Dead Guy means Emily can't move on with life and

02:03

make new, still-breathing friends. Or is Emily's father to blame for her loneliness?

02:08

After all, Mr. Grierson was so certain that no one in town was good enough to marry his

02:13

daughter that Emily couldn't marry while he was alive.

02:16

By dominating Emily and separating her completely from the other townsfolk...

02:21

...perhaps Mr. Grierson shaped his daughter's personality in such a way that she is unable

02:26

to escape loneliness while she lives. So why is Emily so very alone?

02:31

Is she responsible for her loneliness?

02:34

Is she lonely because she can't let go of the past and her dead boy-toy?

02:38

Or is Emily lonely because her father made it impossible for her to live any other way?

02:45

Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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