Killing out of Love

Hollie Cropp

Mr. Melvin

English 101

September 10, 2015

Killing Out of Love

Have you ever loved someone so much, that you would rather them die than leave? Well that is how Miss Emily Grierson feels in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”. All she wants is feel whole again after losing her father. And she does when she meets Homer, until she hears that he is going leave. But she could not let that happen so she kills him. No one knows what happened for forty years at the day of Miss Emily’s funeral. They break down a door and find Homer’s dead body and beside it on the pillow is a strand of iron-gray hair. Faulkner’s story debates if she is a killer or is she mentally insane by refusing her father’s death, cutting her hair short to resemble a young girl, and sleeping with a dead body for the last forty years.

The first sign that she is going insane is she refuses to accept her father’s death. For days she does not let them take body she says “My father is not dead” (42). She completely breaks down when they finally take the body. But no one in town can blame her, he is the only person she has in her life. The years before her father’s death he would drive away any guy who tries to get with her and he disowns the rest of their family. She does not know how to live without him, she has never been alone before. After her father dies, she snaps which is when she makes the dramatic decision to cut her hair.

The town has been going months without seeing Miss Emily. It is when they do see her again that her hair is cut short “making her look like a young girl, with the resemblance to those angels in colored church windows” (50). She cut her hair to remember the days when she still had her father. Ever since she was younger her father has been pretty much her everything. He is a rich man and that makes her a “tradition upon the town” (13). When the town sees her they do not think much into her cutting her hair, they do not see it has her going insane. She just wants to make herself believe she is a young girl again. Then they finally realize she is going insane when they find out she is sleeping with a dead body and has been for forty years.

No one in town thinks they are good enough for Miss Emily. Then Homer comes along. Homer is a carpet-bagger from up north, who begins to spend a lot of time with Emily. Everyone thinks they are going to get married, until rumors that Homer is going to leave spread throughout the town. But Miss Emily could not let that happen, she goes to the store and buys some arsenic. With the respect she has no body in town ask any questions. And then Homer disappears. The town does not find out the truth until the day of Miss Emily’s funeral. After they have her services, they go into the old house and go to a room that has not been open in decades. They break down the dusty old door not expecting to find a decaying body lying on the bed. It is Homer. The most disturbing part of it all is not the body, but beside it on the pillow is “an indention of a head” (60). And on it is a strand of iron-gray hair. That is when they piece together the puzzle. She is past the point of insanity to where she is sleeping with a dead body. The twisted part is she does it out of love. She loves Homer and could not bare him leaving her. Since she loves him she would rather have his dead body than not have him at all.