Theme of Isolation in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

Human interaction is an absolute necessity for the well being of a human. Despite the damage that can be done when one is hurt by another, the lack of connection is deadly. A gruesome tale that follows miss Emily Grierson in A rose for Emily by William Faulkner where the author utilizes several tools to dissect how extreme isolation and abandonment may lead a person to such horrendous crimes such as necrophilia.

In doing so, death and a resistance to modern ideas became another normality in the story which lead to the death of a woman’s humanity. All proof of how essential affection is the happiness of a person over all.

The damage caused to a person may be observed in the public’s highly judgmental,gossipy,and sometimes hypocritically attitude about her and the inability of a person to build any relationships due to the isolation. Emily Grierson is subject to the scrutiny of her whole town in several points of her life. From the very beginning at her funeral the town’s people gave way to several aspects of their home which may explain their society. The first section of the story disseminates that she is part of their oncemost select street and now, her once high class house had become an eyesore among eyesores. This rift that Emily’s family had with the townspeople led to their belief that she was an obligation to the town. Like her house and it’s unwillingness to be updated Emily soaks in her stubbornness by refusing to pay her taxes. Demonstrating the lack of respect of authority for the new leaders of the town. She treated them with a cold and dry attitude that demanded respect and patience. Emily never cared for the new authorities of the town and even indicated her alienation and isolation when she for the claims confirmation of a person that passed away almost ten years beforehand. The second section divulges into her tense relationship with the town. The town didn’t dare confront her about the taxes nor the about the odor coming from her house.A smell that serves as a foreshadow that there is something rotting away in her house, so much so the they decided to secretly spread lime all around her property. And yet, despite all the indications, all the scrutinization, and observations they make of Miss Emily they ironically fail to realise that she is deeply disturbed,criminally insane, and neglect the discovery of the murder until 40 years after.Once again proving that the drift she had with the town remained as deep and wide as before the death of her father. Despite their efforts to get close to her after the death of her father, her cold attitude and rejection of the towns pitty did nothing to better her situation. Only sunk her even deeper into her loneliness, desperation, and madness.

Her father became the trauma that set the foundation to her disturbed mind. The fact that her father was described as this looming figure that scared away any suitors explained why after he died she had kept his body. Her instability was evident when the only reason she let them take her father’s body away was due to the fact that they knew he died. Her obsession with death showed how powerless, lonely, and angry she felt towards her father. She is a psychopath driven by her extreme desperation for revenge against her father and her bitterness towards the outside world. Indicating that this is what she wanted until an outsider was let into Emily’s world. This short lived happiness was just that. Short lived. Soon their relationship crumbled. Her incapacity to hold an actual relationship with someone is very clear and amplifies her loneliness and the effects of her abandonment. He abandoned her, setting off a trigger in her disturbed soul. When Homer her dashing beau that was often seen with emily around the town after he came to the town and was the center of attention, altered her reality it was as dangerous. This isn’t exaggerated when her behavior is further analyzed. He gave her a dose of normal human interaction. Because of her past, she was deprived of this so when he took away, that she sunk into her desperation she decided to keep his company all to herself. Killing him was the only way she understood how to keep that happiness forever. Therefore , the lack of love in her life set the foundation of her instability.

Emily’s home is a mirrored image of herself with a bond that ages with her. From her beauty and prestige the house that stood proudly in the most “select street’ as did Emily’s beauty. Her purity with the years morphed into a smell of decay. In the same way Emily, once young and full of despair, has been driven into madness through the rotting of the old ways and the birth of a modern era. At the same time, her aging in unison with the house and the servant become part of her distorted view on what is love.A monster was being hidden in a rotting house. And that monster was Emily herself. She constitutes the stubbornness and refusal to change. Insisting in the old ways, in the old agreements, in an old house is the very description of her unawareness of the outside world. This type of difficult lifestyle is driven by the miserable people that know no different than their reality. Why would she alter her views when all she has seen is a town controlled by her oppressing father? This is crucial proof that people would rather wallow in their misery than to change. With a father like hers and a lack of a mother figure there is no chance she is able to be a functional adult. Despite there being no rose manifested in the story, the title introduced it as the idea of love. A rose that is dried up and conserved in the pages of an old book she is, in the same manner conserving Homer’s body in his wedding clothes inside the closed off room of the house. As a young girl, suitors lined up and yet she never was allowed the chance to accept the rose of love. This deep despair that she felt when she realized that there is no happy ending , which caused her to drown in madness. The key factor or lack of love is the effects of human warmth that she so desperately needed.

The caliber of her taste in the eye of the town is high, therefore Homer wasn’t good enough for her. Emily doesn’t care about that; she lets herself be seen with him. She actually stepped out of the house to allow everyone to determine the nature of their relationship. Her father was no longer around to say anything about it. She for that short amount of time was able to free herself from her father’s oppression and feel what a normal person feels. This is detrimental to her ability to function as a normal person. Family should be a good support system when everything is going wrong, but for Emily, even that wasn’t an option. Her two cousins from Alabama visit her and stay with Miss Emily to assure that her behavior doesn’t violate their southern society’s strict code of propriety while she and Homer are romantically involved with one another. They didn’t come around when her father died and were nowhere to be found as she grew up and yet the only thing they cared about was appearances. Family is supposed to provide support when at home things aren’t right. Yet, here they were lacking familial love towards Miss Emily. This proves that they possess similar attitudes as her father despite that they allowed this romance. She was indifferent to this, but the truth is that if she now experienced what true affection was, then she would have recognised her family had none of that for her. This is truly saddening and her familys departure is different than all of the others because she might even have been relieved that they left. Her family saw that she had no one and yet decided to leave anyways, this must have been nothing to her since all of the the other abandonments had dangers aftermath. For instance her father’s death lead to her isolation and unconventional behavior.The abandonment of Homer lead to his murder, but she was seemingly passive to her family desertion. So her issues are due to her father’s strict rule over her life.

A monster isn’t born, it’s created. In this disturbing short story A Rose for Emily is the proof that in order for a person to have a healthy morality they must have some sort of connection anything outside of a toxic home. Miss Emily isn’t a functional human because she lived in forced isolation all of her life. Inside of her house she lived in extreme despair and loneliness, slowly rotting away without any sort of human connection. The lack of affection became deadly to her and whomever attempted to get close to her. From her authoritarian father, her dashing lover, and finally her sanity all rotted away in her home. Extreme isolation and abandonment may lead a person to such horrendous crimes such as necrophilia due to the fact that going without human contact for too long may literally break a heart.