My initial personal reaction to Faulkners' "Rose for Emily" is that emily was diconnected from the town. She was locked up more or less by her father who was overly protective and he didn't believe any of the men were quite good enough for his daughter. I agree with the towns people who thought the Griersons held themselves a little too high and mighty for what they really were. Emily was caught up in her On the other hand the town seemed to be over stepping some personal boundaries by intruding on her land when trying to mask the smell of her property and by everyone being nosy about what her house was like since she hadn't been out and no one had been into her house in many years.
Literary element/thematic analysis: Faulkner uses foreshadowing, when the towns people went to her house to offer condolensces and aid miss emily had told them that her father was not dead, she went along with this for three days. The minsters and doctors were trying to persuade her to dispose of the body, she finally broke down and her father was quickly buried. The towns people did not say she was crazy then ,since they believed she had to do that because he was the last part of a life that she used to know. There is a sense of mystery created when Emily's house is described as having an odor, it creates a situation for the reader to wonder about the possible reasons for the stench, which comes back around at the end of the story, with an answer of Homer's decomposing body. The fact that she was able to live with her fathers dead body, leads to her mindset of being able to live with Homer Baron's body for forty years.
questions/comments: Did Emily's father and his protective ways contribute to the acts that his daughter commited and the way she shut out the world in her later life?
