A Rose for Emily

Emily’s Troubles

In “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, an anonymous onlooker of the town of Jefferson narrates Miss Emily Grierson’s unusual life style. Known as a woman of nobility, her odd ways are often overlooked by the under class citizens. Throughout the story Miss Emily is faced with three different types of conflicts such as Man vs. Society, Man vs. Man, and Man vs. Self.

The first conflict that Miss Emily approaches is Man vs. Society. The people in the town of Jefferson all have a high respect for Emily and her family. Even though they respect her they attend to many different problems at her residence. One of the main complaints of the town is that Emily steadily misses her tax payments to the city. Her reasoning for saying she has “no taxes in Jefferson” (358) is that her father had basically started the town with his donations and she felt that it was the towns way of paying her and her family back. Another dispute between the town and Miss Emily was the horrid smell coming from her home. No one was certain what or where the smell had came from but knew it had to be taken care of. “Four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn” (358) after no actions were taken by the law and broke into the cellar to sprinkle lime in her basement to rid of the smell. The smell went away for a little while but just like the conflicts in the story it came right back and stunk up the place.

The next conflict with Emily is Man vs. Man. Miss Emily finds romance in the most unlikely character in the story, Homer Barron. Homer is “a big dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” (360). The first conflict that arises between Miss Emily and Homer is that they come from two different backgrounds; Homer being from the North and Emily from the South. It was even unheard of that a Grierson would be at all interested in “a day laborer” (360) like Homer. One of the things that bothered Emily the most was the fact that Homer never intended to marry. It was even known that “he was not a marrying man” (361). The love affair lasted up until Miss Emily grew tired of waiting on him to agree to marry. Shortly after she decides to take things in her own hands and purchases a bottle of arsenic which foreshadows to the reader that she plans on marrying homer or killing him!

The most important conflict in this story is Man vs. Self wherein Miss Emily has many disturbing issues. One of the first conflicts she has is when they have to take her fathers dead body away. Emily refuses to let her self believe that her father