A Rose For Emily Mental Illness

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“A Rose for Emily” is a short story about the life of Miss Emily, who is a well known figure in the small town of Jefferson. The story is through the eyes of her fellow townspeople as she ages and times change; it follows Miss Emily through her father’s death and her interactions with love interest Homer Barron, a northerner and construction foreman. In his short story “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner foreshadows Miss Emily’s mental instability through her relationship with her father and her family history, her relationship with the community, and her inability to distinguish past from present.

Faulkner foreshadows Miss Emily’s mental state through his details of her connection with her father and her family history. Miss Emily has at least one family member with a deteriorated mental state. When her father died, the townspeople remembered how “old lady Wyatt, her great aunt, had gone completely crazy,” much like Miss Emily herself did. Most mental disabilities are genetic, so Miss Emily could easily have her aunt’s mental illness. Her mental state is also illustrated through the way her father treated her when he was alive. Her father had “driven away” all the young men, leaving her alone once he had …show more content…
The most prominent of these ways include through her family history and paternal relationship, like how her aunt is mentally ill as well, plus through her relationship with her community and her inability to distinguish between the past and the present. All the information throughout the story builds up into the final paragraphs, where it is revealed that Miss Emily killed her love interest, Homer Barron, around 40 years prior. Faulkner was able to clearly build up to the ending, while still maintaining an element of surprise for the last paragraphs; while her mental state may have not been obvious at first, by the end of the story, her mental illness is clearly
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