Essay 2 . A Love the Never Perishes

Desmine Roberts
Mrs. S Aiken
English 1102-45
October 4, 2009
A Love That Never Perishes
On cold, dreary night, a young, lively Emily Grierson stares down at the peaceful face of her beloved Homer Barron. She traces the outline of his features with her eyes, before wiping a strand of hair away from his forehead. Sighing with relief, she ponders on how wonderful her life has become with him. Resting her head upon his breast, she drifts off into a sweet, blissful, dreamland. “This time,” she chuckles “this time, will be different, we have a love the will never perish, a love the will always last forever.”
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the adoration for the beloveds of Miss Emily Grierson is painted as that of constant and eternal. Her love and attachment for such is so deep that she goes as far as murdering the man who she comes to have romantic, extensive feelings for. Armed with only a pack of arsenic and an urge of desperation that often drives one to make unwise and uncommon choices, Emily Grierson makes a positive assurance that she will be neither left nor forsaken a second time around. Killing Homer Barron marks the loss of any remaining sanity possessed within the broken Emily and opens the door to a decrepitating mind of the figure that becomes known as the “fallen monument” in the town of Jefferson.
When the only male figure, her father, the late Mr. Grierson, to occupy the life of Emily Grierson dies, she refused to believe that the man who had been the up bringer and enforcer in her life could perish and leave her alone.
Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief
on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for
three days, with the ministers calling on her and the doctors trying to
persuade her to let them dispose of the body. (Faulkner 529).
The townspeople find the reaction not surprising and distasteful but view the action as accepting and expected. “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that….. we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” (Faulkner 529).
Emily is raised up with only the allowance of contact with one male, her father. “We remember all the young men her father had driven away.” (Faulkner 529). Emily’s mindset is to that of finding a replacement link to the one she used to have and she finds that connection of authority like her father within Homer Barron. “A big, dark, ready man, with a big voice….the little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers.” (Faulkner 531). Because he has the same qualities as her father, Emily’s feelings and emotion grow deeper and more desperate as time passes. Emily does not want Barron to leave her unaccompanied and empty as her father has done so. Her lack of male contact and the townsfolk’s words of Barron leaving serve as major responsibility in her decision to murder Homer Barron.
Emily Grierson, the “duty and tradition” of the town of Jefferson because of her extensive history within the community, is a victim of worship and a prisoner of loneliness. She single-handedly kills the man with whom she begins to form an attachment with and with that deed, is everlastingly at peace. No more can the clutches of dark vacancy occupy her life as he father had forced upon her. The great momentous figure, once seen as an obligation for the town, perishes. She is the “fallen monument” that never once lost sight of loyalty and faithfulness in the diversion of life.