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Reflection: a Rose for Emily

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A Rose for Emily
A critical reflection

Controlling and limiting the town’s knowledge regarding her real identity by remaining hidden, Emily is the typical outsider. The narrator portrays Emily as a testament—irritating, but pitiful. She is the subject of chatter and rumor, the townspeople gossip due to the fact that she agrees to accept Homer’s romantic behavior with no fixed wedding plans.
It is said that Homer is not a “marrying man”. Because of his dedication to his single status and uninterest in marriage, it can be assumed that the narrators view him as either a homosexual or simply an eternal bachelor.
In Chapter 3, Emily purchases the Arsenic, with the townspeople thinking that she will kill herself. The adjustment due to Homer entering Emily’s life as her first real lover, is equally as insightful and seals his forbidding fate as the victim of her plan to keep him permanently by her side forevermore. Emily’s uncertainties, however, lead her in a dissimilar route. By the end of the story suggests,it hints that she is a necrophiliac, a person having a sensual attraction to corpses.
In a wider sense, the word also defines a powerful longing to control another, most common in the circumstance of a romantic or deeply personal affiliation. Necrophiliacs tend to be so controlling in their relationships that they eventually recourse to connecting with dead people-- unresponsive beings with no resistance or will. Emily was controlled by Mr. Grierson, and after his death, Emily momentarily controls him by not giving up his carcass. She finally transfers this control to Homer, the object of her liking. Because he is unable to find a traditional way to prompt her yearning to possess Homer, Emily takes his life to attain power over her fiancée.

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