ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
All American Literature Videos 200 videos
Modernism was the happy, optimistic bandwagon that every writer just had to jump on. Okay, so only half of that statement is true. But we want you...
You might be hearing a chorus of farewells if you recommend A Farewell to Arms as the next read for your Fabulously Feisty Feminist Book Club.
This video summarizes the play A Raisin in the Sun. It discusses the Youngers, members of an African-American family trying to better themselves wh...
A Rose for Emily 20516 Views
Share It!
Description:
What? She gets a rose and we don’t? Who is this Emily person anyway? What’s she done to deserve such a delightful, aromatic gift?
- Literature / American Literature
- American Literature / All American Literature
- Early 20th-Century Literature / Early 20th-Century American Literature
- Early 20th-Century Literature / All Early 20th-Century Literature
- American Literature / Early 20th-Century American Literature
- Themes / Compassion and Forgiveness
Transcript
- 00:04
A Rose for Emily, a la Shmoop. People have different ways of coping with
- 00:10
loneliness. Maybe they carry on conversations with themselves...
- 00:14
...or sample every ice cream flavor known to man...
- 00:14
...or spend some quality time with their favorite TV series.
- 00:17
However, in William Faulkner's short story, A Rose for Emily...
Full Transcript
- 00:23
...the title character takes drastic measures to assuage her loneliness: she kills the man
- 00:29
she wants to marry so he will never, ever leave her...
- 00:32
...and then she keeps his corpse. Faulkner writes that Miss Emily Grierson <<Greer-son>>
- 00:40
has a disastrous love life...
- 00:41
...on account of her overprotective father...
- 00:45
...and, after Mr. Grierson's death, a boyfriend who doesn't want to say I do.
- 00:52
While Emily's neighbors enjoy talking about her misfortunes in the romance department...
- 00:57
...and pitying her...
- 00:58
...she has no friends, and her only relatives live far away.
- 01:02
So, here's a question: Why is Emily so very alone in Faulkner's story?
- 01:08
Maybe her loneliness is her own fault. After all, Faulkner tells us that Emily refuses
- 01:14
to pay her taxes...
- 01:15
...and then refuses again...
- 01:19
...and again...
- 01:20
...and again. No one likes a freeloader...
- 01:22
...especially one who delivers her refusal in a cold, imperious manner.
- 01:27
Perhaps if Emily made an effort to mingle with her neighbors, she would get invites
- 01:31
to all the local Easter egg hunts, Christmas dinners, and baptisms.
- 01:34
You never know what might happen at a baptism. Or maybe Emily's loneliness is rooted in her
- 01:40
inability to let go of the past.
- 01:43
After all, the only thing Emily wants to do is snuggle with the corpse of her dead, reluctant-to-wed-her
- 01:48
boyfriend...
- 01:49
...the boyfriend she killed with arsenic bought during a shopping spree at her local Jitney
- 01:54
Jungle.
- 01:57
Spending all her time with Not-So-Hot Dead Guy means Emily can't move on with life and
- 02:03
make new, still-breathing friends. Or is Emily's father to blame for her loneliness?
- 02:08
After all, Mr. Grierson was so certain that no one in town was good enough to marry his
- 02:13
daughter that Emily couldn't marry while he was alive.
- 02:16
By dominating Emily and separating her completely from the other townsfolk...
- 02:21
...perhaps Mr. Grierson shaped his daughter's personality in such a way that she is unable
- 02:26
to escape loneliness while she lives. So why is Emily so very alone?
- 02:31
Is she responsible for her loneliness?
- 02:34
Is she lonely because she can't let go of the past and her dead boy-toy?
- 02:38
Or is Emily lonely because her father made it impossible for her to live any other way?
- 02:45
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Related Videos
This video defines utopias and dystopias, and investigates how a utopia might become a dystopia. Can a seemingly perfect world actually be a dystop...
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...