Homer's End

The end for “A Rose for Emily” is truly frightening that I was indeed very surprise by the result. After Emily’s death, the town people found a dried mummy of a man lying on a bed upstairs in a room in Emily’s house. The room seems to be untouched for decades that the room is filled with ashes and dust. Everything in the room is beautifully decorated as if it’s a honey moon room. The mummy seems to be Homer Barron that Miss Emily probably poisoned him with the arsenic, which supposedly to be used for rat, she brought in a drug store. Miss Emily probably poisoned Homer Barron because she wanted to marry him so badly that she is afraid Homer will leave her and doesn’t want to marry or settle down. Wishing Homer can forever stay with her, Emily probably put some arsenic in a glass of wine and tricks Homer into the bed with her. After Homer is dead, Miss Emily probably decided to leave Homer’s dead body along on the bed for it to decay for a couple of weeks, which causes an awful smell described in the beginning of the story. She probably later sealed the room for some reason and occasionally come up to lie next to him which later result of a gray strain of hair on the pillow next to Homer. 

Nobel Prize

In Faulkner’s Novel Prize acceptance speech, he urges young writers to tackle the old universal truth such as love, honor, pity, pride, compassion and sacrifice. In Faulkner’s short pose in A Rose for Emily, he seems to follow the write in terms of the old universal truths that he portrays the truth of love, pride, compassion and perhaps some sort of sacrifice that involve in some eccentric actions. In my opinion, the world today, there is no stuff that is not in the field of universal truths. Everything in the world is revolved around these basic truths. Even things such as the nuclear bomb involves with love, pride, compassion and sacrifice. Nuclear bomb is used for to sacrifice millions of lives to prevent billions of life from death and the continuation of war. Nothing in literature is averted from the old universal truths. Although poetries today seem to convey not such a clear universal truth, everything in the end is still connected to it. Everything in life or I should say big important things that motivate people are connected to the universal truth. People live to find truth such as love, to achieve pride, have compassion for others and sacrifice things for a greater goal. 

Eccentric or Crazy

In “A Rose for Emily,” Ms. Emily seems to be out of situation and still is living in the past for a long time. She seems not to understand the way things work such as the fact that she needs to pay tax or just in fact that she pretends not understand in order to avoid dealing with things she finds unpleasant and probably annoying. When rich people act this way, we often called them as eccentric. However if a person with a lower rank, we will often refer to their action as crazy. In my opinion, I found Miss Emily to be a bit crazy with some sort of psychological diseases. In the story, she keeps on repeating the phase “I don’t pay no taxes in Jefferson” She refuses to get help from the community and refuses to understand the fact that she is no longer rich with a high social status. Although people respect her, people pity her as fallen nobility who is still delusional that she is still the once respected woman. I think it is unfair when people from different social castes to receive different treatment. Everyone should be equal that no one should have any more privilege than any other. 

N word

Some of the greatest literature that America has produced should as To Kill a Mockingbird contains some of words that are considered as offensive racial words. Today these books are often banned due to the racist language in them or the offensive language is simply been changed into other word that is acceptable by today’s standard. For example, the N-word in Mark Twain’s books is now change to the word slave. As in my point of view, I found changing the original text of the book to be insulting to the writer that the language is not been used for discriminating against racial group, instead it is just been used to describe how people act in the past. People can’t just deny the fact the African American were once discriminated badly against in the past that the word can never be erased from history. Although people claim that these book should be banned so that children won’t learn to use these kind of offensive terms, with teacher or parent’s guidance, students should know the meaning behind these word and let them understand why these words were bad and discriminating instead of just trying to cover it up. These words are just used to portray the reality in the past. 

Retreat

In the story “a Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the main character retreats from society in order to hid from a reality that she finds unbearable. This is what many of us have a tendency or urge to do under some circumstances. Why would people want to retreat from society? Is it something that is healthy to do? In my opinion, I found retreating society sometimes perhaps it’s a healthy things to do after an extreme traumatic experience. For example after the loss of a love one or a dear friend, one may need some time along to settle down one’s emotion by being alone for a while in order for someone to overcome the pain and move on to live. It’s necessary for one to be alone when one tries to grief for someone’s death and something unsuccessful in life. This only becomes a problem when this type of grief slowly turns into a negative virtuous cycle where one begin to trap oneself into a cycle of negative self-talk and eventually led to depression. When it reaches depression which may cause people to eventually become a recluse who hides away from society, this is when retreating from reality becomes a bad thing. 

Free Write

Mother’s day is coming up. The end of this semester and school year is also coming up. Lots of things have happen in the past few weeks. Things seem to have kind of slow down since I have finished all my AP exams. Before the AP exams, everything night and day I’m constantly worried and tried to cram AP materials in my head for AP Chemistry and Psychology. One may say that cramming isn’t a good way to learn things and it’s useless. I find that without cramming, I will probably fail my AP exams and spend the rest of my life depressed and guilty thinking why didn’t I tried to study for the test and hoping I have a time machine which can send me back and fix the mistakes. After getting the AP stuff all finished, I feel like I’m getting a bit slacking off and needed to get my focus back to catch up with the rest of my non-AP class which I usually spend less time on studying. Everyday seems as if there are challenges and works that I needed to catch up on. Never one day can I fully be relaxed and not to think about homework and studying. I guess this is the life to be a student.

I Hate Poetry

Without knowing why, many people complain, “I hate poetry! I never understand it.” I will say I was once that type of person when I’m ignorant and lack appreciation literature and artistic value behinds it. I know poetry can sometimes be so intricate and complex that people may be annoyed by the fact that it is too difficult for them to understand. They may find poetry to be retarded that none of the things make any sense and poets are just crazy to love creating this kind of literature where no one understands it. However as I grow up and come in contact with more poetry, I find poetry can actually be fun and inspiring to read. For example, Emily Dickenson poems include and inspire new aspects of life and death through the flows and intricate designs of diction. After reading the poems, it’s as if one is learning a new lesson in life that sometimes our thought correspond to the theme of the poems and it helps us express some of our inner thoughts too. Reading poem can really open one’s literature knowledge and skill. Poems may be frustrating to understand at first. However after through some deep analysis and understanding, one can find that poetry can have some curative effect like listening to a song.