Analysis Of Mentally Insane In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

William Faulkner, the author of the story “A Rose for Emily,” describes Emily as a very mysterious and murderous character. Towards the end of the story, the author makes it clear that Emily is mentally insane. She murdered the man she loved and locked herself away from society for many years. After her death, her neighbors found Homer’s dead body in her house. The narrator explains, “The man himself lay in bed. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin.” The narrator and the people with him were shocked from what they saw. This passage is important because it shows Emily’s mental instability and broken heart. However, Emily wasn’t crazy from the beginning. There were a series of events in her life that caused her to go mentally insane.

Emily loved Homer, but he didn’t share the same feelings towards her as she did for him. Thus, Emily became depressed and murdered Homer. In the passage, it says, “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.” The layer of dust and the rotten body represents the amount of years, Emily kept Homer’s body on her bed. The passage states that Homer’s body was starting to rot. The fact that Emily didn’t throw it away, yet again, proves her craziness. Instead of getting rid of the rotting body, she kept it on her bed until her death. That’s not something a normal person would do. The narrator is trying to show us Emily’s emotional pain. Rejection caused Emily to have severe feelings of despondency and dejection. Loneliness and the lack of emotional fluency has caused her to become depressed, which played a big role in damaging her mental health and causing her to go