Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Fishbowl: A Rose for Emily

Voice your opinion but stay respectful of others' opinions. Remember that we argue with an idea, not a person.

Also, bring a passage from the story into at least one of your comments.

65 comments:

  1. Do you think that Homer was gay or just a mans man?

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  2. Why do you think Emily was the way she was? Do you think it was her Dad who made her want to only stay at home and not see anyone? Or was it something else?

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  3. I think that when she found out that he was gay she might have been really hurt by it and it wasn't as innocent. (she's not as crazy as we think) I think she was mad that he was going to leave so she killed him out of anger, then she felt guilty and kept him around so she wouldn't get caught. Yes, she is kinda crazy and I think that's why she was okay with keeping him like in her bed. But what I mean is maybe she had anger behind this, not just craziness

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  4. I don't know that was kinda a hard thing to read. I think it just depends on how one wants to look at it. Me I'm on the fence it's too hard to tell.

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  5. I think she wass afraid to be alone so she killed him so that he would stay with her forever. I think that is also the same thing that happened when her father died.

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  6. I think that homer was just a mans man

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  7. What are your thoughts on the line "Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it [this lie], and only a woman could have believed it." Faulkner 1. Do you think this is about women being gullible in general, or only about this particular character?

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  8. I think that after her dad died she felt very alone, because she was obviously very close with him. So once he was gone she no longer had any male influences in her life. So since she was being deprived of men in her life she probably felt that she needed Homer to complete herself since a big person in her life was missing. When Homer told her he was only interested in men she didn't want to lose another man from her life so she thought that killing him would keep him from leaving her.

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  9. I Think Emily lived a simple life because thats all she knew, she was a very sheltered child growing up.

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  10. Karly-

    I don't think that Emily chose to stay in her house and away from all the boys. It was her dad's choice for her because he was overprotective. She also may have just developed some sort of xenophobia because of her dad's rules.

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  11. When I read this story I didn't catch this. Looking at it now though I think he was just a man's man and a traveler and didn't want to settle down with her. I don't think he was gay.

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  12. i dont not belive homer was gay it says that he liked to drink with younger men at the" Elks club". that means he likes to hang out with them not have a relationship with them

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  13. I think that Emily did not ever want to be alone and she always wanted someone to be with her so i think she killed Homer so that he could never leave. I think she was so messed up in the head that it didn't matter if Homer was dead or alive she just needed him around at all times.

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  14. I agree with you Angelica I made the connection with how she kept both bodies with her for awhile. I think that she became so attached that she couldn't let go.

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  15. Why didnt her slave do anything about Homer being killed?
    Do you think he helped her kill him because that could explain why he left as fast as he could when the people were let in for Emilys funeral.

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  16. I don't think she was crazy, I think she has unhealed wounds from her childhood.

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  17. It seems like emily has problems with denial. "she told them that her father was not dead. she did for three days..." (Faulkner 4). this shows how she wasn't able to accept the death of her father. "we noticed in the second pillow was the indentation of a head... we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair" (Faulkner 8). She was sleeping next to the dead corpse of Homer, the man that she loved. "Homer himself had remarked- he liked men...that he was not a marrying man" (Faulkner 6). This shows how he had no intent on marrying her, giving her a reason to be angry with him. "'Arsenic,' Miss Emily said. 'Is that a good one?'"(Faulkner 5). This is when she purchases the poison with which she poisons Homer. She didn't not look at death like the "end of time." This relates to the idea of temporal distortion, where most people would view death as the end of time for someone's life, she used death to keep Homer around since he wouldn't marry her.

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  18. Casey-

    I agree with you. So do you think that she just continued his rules after he died or do you think it was there something else?

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  19. I don't think Homer was gay at all. She might have been too controlling for him, so he wanted to do things with all of his guys friends. He gambles and drinks a lot and I think he was leaving Emily just because of her psycho nature.

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  20. Emma I think that Homer was just a mans man because on page 4 it says "The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the niggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would bee in the center of the group." This shows that he just likes to have a good time and be around everyone rather than a gay man. Homer could have been a man that didn't want to be died down, and jusst wanted to have fun.

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  21. I agree with angelica
    It said in the story "She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for 3 days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose the body" page 4. I think Emily is afraid to be alone and couldnt let go of her father and when she met Homer she tried to "holdd on" to him as well. She killed him so she wouldnt be alone forever.

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  22. I agree with Angelica i think that she was all in her own head so she did something that didn't look right but in her head she felt it was right to her because he would be with her forever.

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  23. Her servant didn't do anything about his mistress killing Homer because he probably would have been killed as well. Or perhaps he pitied Emily and didn't want her to get in trouble, and he may have felt some responsibility for her since she had such a poor father figure.

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  24. Karly:)
    I think you're right because this makes everything make more sense. If he was gay, they wouldn't have said that he spent time at the bar. (it wouldn't have been a line in the story) They basically just said that he wanted to be single and that's okay but she freaked out and killed him because she was afraid of being alone.

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  25. I agree with Chris. If he resorts to drinking he doesn't like what goes on at home or like Chris said she is too controlling. And thats why I think he was going to leave and when Emily found this out she went crazy because she didn't know how to live with out him

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  26. I think that women could have believed the lie because of their nature of being kind and accepting peoples opinoins

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  27. I think that Emily was a little insane. A person would have to be at least a little insane to be able to keep a dead body in her bed. But I think the events that occurred in her life and childhood play into her insanity.

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  28. I think she was mentally insane because if you can go out and buy poison and give that to the person you love there has to have something wrong with you.

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  29. i believe it is a little bit of both because craziness was in her family, and her childhood parent relationship was messed up and she became needy afterwards

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  30. Trace so do you think that the physical presence of having Homer in her house made her more comfortable? Or do you think that Homer was replacing her father in her mind?

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  31. I think Emily stayed in her house even after her father died because that was the only safety she had ever known, and she probably didn't feel comfortable around people.

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  32. What role did taxes play in this story? It seemed like a motif that kept popping up. "I have no taxes in Jefferson" (Faulkner 2). She repeats this four times. Then again "Meanwhile her taxes been remitted" (Faulkner 7). It seems like it has a significance that may have been a cause to her behavior.

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  33. Angelica, I think that the slave was very loyal to Emily because it was just the way things were. I don't he helped her kill him, I believe that reason he left so fast was because he was free now. The whole time she was living he probably knew that she would not be living much longer and as long as he was loyal to her and pleased her, then eventually he would no longer be a slave.

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  34. Emma---
    I think that she was going crazy slowly over her life because of everything that had happened to her and like they said her aunt went crazy so it runs in her family as well.

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  35. Why were people so interested in Emily's life? It seemed that through out the whole story everyone was constantly gossiping about what they saw her do and where she went and who she was with. What was it about Emily that was so interesting to people that made them want to know everything about her?

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  36. Andrew-- They used the taxes to show that she was going crazy and that she had been sheltered in that class for a long time. She asked the people to go talk to some guy who had been dead for years.

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  37. I think that she was going a little crazy because of all the things that she went through

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  38. Why do you think people are so afraid of change?

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  39. I think Emily has a lot of repressed emotions which drive her actions. I think she kills Homer because she cannot mentally cope with losing another significant man in her life.

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  40. "When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skulls and bones,'For rats.'"(Faulkner 6). Could the "rat" in her life be Homer? Is the motif of rats that shows up so many times like a connection to him and how he hurt her?

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  41. Karly-

    It looks more like she just developed her own set of pre-developed rules because of what had happened with her father. He just drilled those ideas in her head so much that there was no other way for her to think until she meets Homer.

    I'm a little curious as to whether or not there was more than a father to daughter relationship going on and if there was any lust of romance. It almost seems like they had some other secret going on that no one knows about. Yes, I'm hinting at incest.

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  42. Ya I agree with Brian because her family life was very isolated because of her father. He didn't want to lose her so he made it so she was alone and attached to him. So she developed this need for male attention no matter what kind of attention.

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  43. Beau that is a great question!! I think people are so afraid of change because with change can come discomfort and when you change people see it more as a risk rather than a chance to better themselves.

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  44. Because the host is always out-casted from the surrounding community so they feel as though they have 'shelter' them selfs from the other people around them.

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  45. People are afraid of change because it is the unknown. People form a routine around their lives and when things change, it can sometimes scare people because it is not what they are used to. Kind of like the uncanny in a way, people like things that they are used to and familiar with but when something changes or becomes different it can scare them.

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  46. Andrew- I don't think that a rat is a symbol for Homer. I think that she wouldn't have been hurt as bad as she was if she wasn't so crazy. She wasn't able to deal with the loss because she had already been through so much but if he was gay, or if he was just a man's man, he had every right to want to get out of that relationship. She was kind of crazy anyway so there are a bunch of reasons. Rats may be a motif but I think it is for something larger then just a person. I think rats are a motif of pain, and how pain can come at any time and people respond a lot differently to pain then others may.

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  47. I think authors of gothic stories show their main characters as highly secluded to show the darker aspects of humanity, (such as fear, judgment, abuse, anger) and how the root of humanity is in our want for acceptance and love. Gothic stories show what happens when we are denied that which gives us a reason to survive.

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  48. I think that it's interesting how the house is her box as in the lottery and the village. No one in the town knows what is going on in it, but they all pay very close attention. Her and her house did not go through her life unnoticed, I think it may have been a warning to all of the people of what could happen to them. Her house is full of secrets and everything she holds near to her.

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  49. I don't understand what Morgan is saying. The town was giving her chances to be social?

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  50. Dana-- I see where you are coming from. Hearing that makes me think that the taxes were brought into the story just to show how isolated she was from the rest of the world. "(Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.)" (Faulkner 2). And as another example of her isolation, "people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received..."(Faulkner 3). This shows how she was even inclined towards isolation when other people even wanted to help.

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  51. In this story when Homer gets Emily out of the house, that shows how love has to power to draw us willingly out of our comfort zones.

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  52. Homer probably wasn't gay if he was alone with Emily so much. Also I agree with Jake in the inner circle. Homer helped complete Emily. He was everything she wasn't. social, friendly, happy, etc. So having him there with her made her feel complete.

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  53. i strongly agree with samantha
    i think homer made emily forget the emptiness she was feeling about her father being gone.

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  54. Angelica- Homer did help completely her and I think he did more then that. She was so attached to him and he just wasn't as connected.

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  55. I think that because everything has gone wrong she didn't want anything else to do with whats goin on

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  56. Corbin - I think that Homer was replacing Emily's father in her mind. On page 7 it says, "Then we knew that this was to be expected too: as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die." I think this is saying that her fathers protection and strictness over her was to implanted in her mind to go away when he died so by Emily keeping Homer in her house it took the place of her father in her house

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  57. On page 1, paragraph 3 there is a quote that says, "Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town..." This shows how people were interested in her. They refer to her as a "tradition," they are so curious and interested in her life that they look at her as a tradition to gossip about.

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  58. I agree with angelica that Homer wasn't gay and completed Emily. Like the black veil completed Mr. Hooper in the Ministers Black Veil.

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  59. Casey, I think that a romantic relationship between her and her father is plausible. It seems that the only people who come anywhere close to her in her life are men (her father, Homer, and her slave). I think she may have discovered a sort of twisted love from her father and may have acquired a desire for this sort of love from other men.

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  60. Natalie so in Emily's mind was Homer replacing her farther in her life?

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  61. I think she could have been abused by her father because of how she acts and thinks towards me

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  62. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves." Emily said this and I believe this exemplifies her personality. She is an overall cold and rude person. She didn't even let the two men in which gives off a suspicious vibe. I was not surprised when Homer was murdered and his body was found in her house. I did not like Emily from the beginning all the way to the end.

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  63. I feel that time is a repeated motif throughout the story. The author uses the temporal structure to mix around by not telling the events in chronological order. Also, the watch, and the hair are used to show the amount of time events took.

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