A Father’s Role Essay, Research Paper

A Father s Role After Miss. Emily lost her father and her love in her younger years, she regressed into a state of fantasy, longing for times gone by. This fantasy world allowed her to keep Homer for all times in a room of roses, where she preserved him, as one does a rose. Emily was a very lonely woman and that was due to her father. He sheltered her and did not let her get close to other people. Her father made himself her world and he was all that she knew and when he died the world that she knew had been destroyed. Miss. Emily did not have anyone to fill the void that her father had left. Even when the ladies of the town came to visit and pay condolences she met the women at the door and showed no signs of grief and she told them that her father was not dead. She loved her father and the world that he had built up for her so much that even with his death she would not let him go. Miss. Emily s father was portrayed as a man of prestige and power: her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip. This passage is a prime example of her father s aristocratic position and control over his own fantasy world. This fantasy world inevitably became the only world Miss. Emily knew. The whip was also significant in the representation of her father s protectiveness for Miss. Emily. He is protective of her he wants her to find a suitable suitor, someone who is of social standings.

When Homer came to town he was Miss Emily s replacement for her father. She became focused on him. Homer was someone Miss. Emily hoped would become her world and someone that she could focus her existence around. Miss. Emily s father would not have approved of Homer because he was a commoner. Homer only dated Miss. Emily because of her social standing, not because he was interested in her, Homer himself had remarked-he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks Club-that he was not the marrying man. This was a contributing factor to Miss. Emily s motive for killing Homer. She knew that he was going to leave after he was finished with her. Also, Emily s father had driven away lots of young men including her sweetheart and then he died. She needed to secure that no one else would leave or abandon her. So her motivation for killing Homer was to keep him with her forever. She would rather have him dead and by her side than not have him at all. All in all this story paints a very sad but realistic picture of how a person who has been cut off form others can escape into a fantasy world. I don t blame Miss. Emily, it was her father that introduced and circumstantially held her captive in his fantasy world. I blame her father for her ultimate downfall, which lead to Miss. Emily killing and preserving Homer, her rose.