Death vs. Life Marine Bruno 12th Grade

“A Rose for Emily,” written by Faulkner in 1931, looks back at the life of Emily Grierson once she passes away and as some acquaintances and family members of hers go through her house and belongings. Faulkner uses a very detailed plot of Emily’s life and uses the deaths of both her father and Homer, her lover, to highlight Emily’s fear of abandonment and how one’s life events create such psychological issues.

The story is given from a third-person narrator, which allows for the reader to get an unbiased perspective since seeing it from Emily’s point of view might not show how strange her reactions were, and begins with Emily’s funeral, only to go back in time and talk about Emily’s life from her childhood up to her death. By going back and explaining essential details of Emily’s life, the narrator brings up possible reasons as to why Emily had such a fear of abandonment, which led her to keep Homer’s body and sleep next to him until she died. First, it seems that her mother died when she was at a young age since her mother is never mentioned and it is said that it was always just her and her dad. Growing up without a mother can be a plausible reason for a fear of abandonment, meaning that that is the first event of causation...