Amy C's response to "A Rose for Emily"

I have grown up some since the last time I read “A Rose for Emily.”  My views of people have changed.  That said, one would think I would like the story more.  LIES AND SLANDER (yes slander, this is written)!  I found this story exactly as dull as I did the first time through.  It would seem I have more brain growth to undergo before I understand why English teachers make students read this story.  For the time being I will make up reasons as to why I have read and reread “A Rose for Emily” and perhaps by and by I will agree with one or more of them. (A few words of caution: the following probably is not what most people get from this short story nor is it necessarily true.)

First, there is a lesson to be learned from the story.  Society needs to stop trusting people.  Everyone who seems nice is, in reality, a terrible family member who will turn their posterity into crazy people who murder homosexuals then sleep with their dead bodies.  Proof: had Emily’s neighbors looked beyond the successful and respected status of her father and had courage to stop the domestic violence, Emily might not have turned out as messed up as she did. 

Second, stories don’t have to be good to be famous.  They only need be disgusting and controversial.  Proof: the plot of “A Rose for Emily” is unbelievably blegh (and by blegh I mean boring).  A post-colonial girl was oppressed by her father as post-colonial girls usually were.  She didn’t handle it well.  The oppressive father died.  The girl grew into a woman and fell in love with a gay man.  She killed the gay man.  She slept with the gay man’s body.  She grew old and died.  The town found out she slept with the dead gay man.  I have shivers of excitement just thinking about it…not.  There’s no good plot however the story has three things going for it: 1) female oppression.  We females love to complain about being oppressed and will read anything that paints us as victims.  2) homosexuality.  This is less controversial now but we know that it was unheard of in the story’s setting so we are interested.  3) sleeping with dead people.  Ew.  But ew is good.  We like to be disgusted.  Because of the controversial and disgusting things discussed the story is famous.  I’m guessing that’s because society thinks anything controversial and disgusting is important.

Third, and perhaps the most important reason why I have been assigned this story multiple times, is because I need to learn how to do things I don’t want to do.  Proof: fine I don’t have any proof for this.  It’s just a hunch. 

I am a better person for having read “A Rose for Emily.”  I have no clue why or how, but I’m sure I must be.  And if in the future I become an English teacher, I will probably make my students read this story so they can feel the same things I felt and learn the same lessons I learned and waste the same time I wasted…then again, maybe by then I will realize that the time wasn’t wasted.  We shall see.