" a Rose for Emliy" - the Influence of Grief in the Mind

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Victor D. Borja Armas April 4th, 2012 LIB200.1472 Prof. Kostos Journal Assignment # 3- “A Rose for Emily” – The Influence of Grief in the Mind In a Rose for Emily, a story written by William Faulkner, we are introduced to a character named Emily Grierson, who is considered to be the protagonist in the story. Emily is presented to the reader as a mysterious figure, who goes through changes of characters. We witness evident changes in Emily as she transforms from a vibrant and hopeful young girl to a cloistered and secretive old woman. The object of fascination in the story, thanks to Emily’s character, is the psychological state that we witness throughout and by the end of the story. As the story shows, we can witness the events that took place that lead to the action of Emily, dictating grief as the cause for her supposed signs of mental illness. We realize in the story that Emily, devastated and alone after her father’s death, is an object of pity for the townspeople. This uncomfortably and neglect of society towards Emily could be argued to the fact of grief and depression to have caused her mental illness at the end of the story. We can compare this to the balance of comfortable settings through acceptance and neglect. After a life of having potential suitors rejected by her father, she spends time after his death with a newcomer, Homer Barron, they are witnessed taking Sunday strolls and enjoying each other’s companies. I argue that, by this time, the chances of Emily marrying Homer, or anybody for that matter, had decreased as the years pass. Emily, now bloated and pallid in her later years, with her hair steel gray, ultimately poisons Homer and seals his corpse into an upstairs room, causing this a controversy in the readers mind. Poor Emily, it seems like she just had enough of the world and decided to let her mind take over her physical

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