Tone interpretation for a rose for emily

Teegan Brock Brad Nelson Luke Ziegler Trevor Magerowski Paul Reid English Comp 2 March 18, 2013 Insane Asylum for Emily The short story,” A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner has a distinct tone that helps depict the overall theme of how a woman unloved by her father falls into the dark treacherous depths of insanity. In the beginning of the story Emily lived with her father. Her father drove away all of the men in her life so she never found love. Also her father was very overbearing and basically the only person that she ever grew to know personally.

Her father cut her extendedfamilyoff from her so she never was very social. Once her father died she was alone. She had no one except her servants and she was very lonely which probably drove her into partial insanity. She was very used to self-pity because her father was a very big man in the community so once he passed away she never had to pay taxes so she was basically exempt from society. After her father died she started to see more of people such as her cousins that her father drove away when she was alive. She found love in a guy named homer that went south after she found out about his homosexuality.

Faulkner does a good job of using a dark tone and making Emily almost seem unsociable and unlovable to a point where nobody wants to be in her life. Homer basically was the straw that broke the camel’s back and drove her deep into insanity. After Emily finds out about her sexuality she goes to the store to buy poison. The tone in the story makes it near impossible to predict what she was going to do with the poison. The store keeper asked her what she needed it for and she refused to tell him and bought it anyway. She then bought a silver toilet set with her initials engraved on it and a complete outfit including a night shirt.

This shows her insanity because she is buying him stuff when he clearly does not love her. This in turn might be the reason for her buying the arsenic because he left when the cousins came and she clearly was upset about it. Late in the story Emily’s house started to smell horrid and it was disturbing the community. Because, of her social status and her reputation for being the crazy, grumpy old lady the town refused to take action and disturb her. Thirty years passed the smell continued so the town just sprinkled lime to cover up the smell. After she passed away they went upstairs to her room and discovered homers dead body.

This story and the overall tone clearly pleads the case of Emily’s insanity because they found her hair on the indented pillow lying next to homers body. This showed that she slept in the bed with him. She hid that body for 30 years and lived with the smell. The authors tone made it easy to depict the theme that Emily was drove into insanity by her father and never being able to find love and be social with other people. To quote the great W. C. Fields “ No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it’s only a question of degree. ” And in Emily’s case it’s the highest degree.