Was It Love or Necrophilia?

Was It Love Or Necrophilia?

Emily is best described as the classic outsider or recluse whom controls who she allows into her world of loneliness. She controls and limits the town's access to her true identity by remaining hidden and removing herself from social circles. Emily home is almost a mirrored reflection of the person she is. The house that shields Emily from the world is suggestive of that belonging to a person who is closed off, neglected and lonely. The homes physical appearance by an outsider would be best described as shuttered, dusty, and dark. In essence it seems that her home was her closest sympathizer to how she must have felt after so many years of being an outsider. The object of the town's intense scrutiny and rumor mill, Emily is a silent and illusive figure. On one hand, she displays the qualities of the stereotypical southern "crazy": unbalanced, tragic, and subject to bizarre behavior. Emily has her own way of enforcing what she wants or doesn't want to do. For example when she refuses to pay her taxes or state her purpose for buying the poison. Emily also prevents officials from numbering her residence when federal mail service is instituted. Her dismissal of the law eventually takes a more serious turn with heavy consequences. The narrator portrays Emily as a masterpiece, but at the same time she is pitied and often demanding to live her life on her own terms. She is very often the subject of loose talk and speculation. Sometime after her father's death Emily meets Homer who becomes a focal point in her life. As the foreman of a company that has arrived in town to pave the sidewalks, Homer is an ornament of the North and the changes that once gripped the once detached and pretentious world of the South. With his machinery, Homer represents modernity and industrialization, the force of progress that is upending traditional values and provoking resistance and alarm among traditionalists. Homer brings innovation to the rapidly changing world of this Southern town, whose new leaders are themselves pursuing more "modern" ideas.

The deviation that Homer brings to Emily's life, as her first real romantic partner, is equally as meaningful and seals his grim fate as the victim of her plan to keep him permanently by her side. Homer like Emily shares a common interest in the sense that both are considered outsiders to the townspeople. He too becomes the subject of gossip among the locals however not in the same manner Emily is talked about. Unlike Emily, Homer swoops into town brimming with charm, and he initially becomes the center of attention and the object of affection. The local's gossip is further heightened after she accepts Homer's attentions with no solid wedding plans. Some townspeople began to distrust him because he is both a Northerner and day laborer, and his Sunday outings with Emily are in many ways controversial. This being because the locals consider Emily from higher social

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