They did not try and stop Emily, they just stood by and watched from afar, as she planned the murder, and even helped hide the evidence of the murder. The townsfolk actively tried to cover up the smell, they saw Emily as a curiousity, and they turned their backs instead of trying to figure out what was going on, because they attributed the smell to her eccentricity. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…” (Faulkner 309). The townsfolk built Emily up into a monument, almost like a job that needed to be done, with no one wanting to take the responsibility. She takes human life and no human law stops or punishes her for it” (Sullivan 168). “And she commits murder almost under the eyes of a town that should have known eventually why she bought that arsenic. The townsfolk keep Emily at arm’s length, which gives her the space and time that she needs in order to feed Homer the arsenic. The townsfolk are both fascinated by her, and yet, at the same time they want nothing to do with her. “The townspeople are fond of Miss Emily, they respect her and even stand in awe of her, but they are also repelled and somewhere beneath all these other feelings they harbor powerful aggressive wishes against her” (Sullivan 165). The smell from Emily’s house that was so bad, people had to spread lime over her property in order to kill the smell (Faulkner 311). They knew something was going on, but chose to treat the symptoms instead of dealing with the problem. Inherently, the townsfolk are accessories to Homer’s murder. The goal of this partial in-depth analysis is to show you, the reader, how “A Rose for Emily” has the themes of Gothic Literature woven throughout the story by examining how the town saw Emily as a curiousity and a monument to the old ways, how Emily represents the “Old South” and the way it slowly died, and even how Emily’s father represented the end of the Civil War and the changing times. ![]() In the following paragraphs, I aim to show you why I believe Southern Gothic is an actual genre within the literary aspect. It is because of this general definition that I believe the Southern Gothic genre is very much a real part of literature, even if other people do not see it that way. “Southern Gothic literature is characterized by obsessive preoccupations - with blood, family, and inheritance racial, gender, and/or class identities the Christian religion (typically, in its most “fundamentalist” forms) and home” (Bailey 271). That is to say, people who do not fit our general definition of ‘normal’. Southern Gothic literature focuses on the literary works that include, but are not limited to the macabre, themes of death and decay and even ‘broken’ people. ![]() Exploring The “Southern Gothic” Genre thorugh William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”.
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