A Rose For Emily Literary Analysis

In “A Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner, Emily is a woman, living in a small town in Mississippi, who is held at arm’s length by the townspeople. They, the townspeople, have treated Emily as though she was a commodity that could be viewed and critiqued. Their failure to help Emily holds them responsible for the aftermath, because if they had forced her to pay her taxes, treated her like she was a part of the town, and put her in front of their reputation, the outcome of this Southern gothic would be entirely different. Their pride, sense of reputation, and judgmental lives leads Emily to be a social outcast. Coupled with her father’s control, Emily goes further down the road of madness as the town sits by and watches it unfold.
To begin with, the Grierson family have always been treated as aristocracy, and aristocrats always got what they wanted. Emily knew her family is treated as such, so when she went to buy rat poison from the druggist, she did not give a reason. The druggist neither forced her to give her reason nor withheld the poison from her purchase. Later on in her life, as society began to change, she refused a mailbox and an address number. Emily once again showed her hand when the alderman went to speak with her about her taxes, and Miss Emily proceeded to tell them to see Colonel Sartoris …show more content…
The town treated her as aristocracy, but also as an alien. No one ever spoke to Emily on a recurring basis, only sat by and criticized her actions and life. The town never treated her as one of their own, instead, they watched her fall into madness. While Emily was young, and in love with Homer with Homer Barron, the town said, “She will marry him”. After she bought the arsenic, they said, “She will kill herself”. Then the smell, originating from her home, plagued the town. And instead of going to Emily’s home and asking her about it, four men crept onto her property in the dead of night and sprinkled