Barely Human Emily

         The short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner was a very disturbing story, I thought. In the end of this story, you find out that this lady, Emily, sleeps beside a dead man (that she killed) every night and she enjoys it. By enjoys I mean she is not, or does not seem to be, creeped out by the fact that a corpse is her nightly companion, considering she has him there by choice. This makes you think "what is wrong with this disturbed lady?"

         We have just finished learning about feral children in Sociology, and I cannot help but to compare Emily to a feral child. Feral means to not have traits of normal humans and to act animal-like. One Sociologist said the two traits necessary to be considered human are the ability to know language and empathy. Of course, Emily is not feral. She can communicate, though she does not often do it. And she does have mainly human traits, but it seems that she cannot feel empathy. I say this because of what she did with her father in the beginning of the story- how when he died she kept him in the house as long as she could before the authorities made her give him up. This is completely selfish from a religious standpoint. Most people would want their loved ones to have a nice, respectful burial, but not Emily. To me, this makes it seem as if Emily does not possess the trait of empathy because she is thinking only of herself when she keeps her father. Emily also kills her “lover” and retains his dead body in her house. Unfortunately, no one knows of this incident until Emily dies and the people search her house. Also, Emily is like a feral child because she does not really have human contact. I mean, yes, there is the servant man, but who knows how much she actually converses with him, and besides him, her father, and Homer Barron, she does not talk to anyone unless they are complaining about something to her. This is exactly how feral children come to be- they have no human contact, so their traits can sometimes be described as barely human. Wouldn’t you say keeping corpses for companions and not having real conversations with anyone after your father dies aren’t normal human traits? So from these characteristics, I think it would be safe to say that had Emily been as secluded and selfish as she is now, her whole life, she would have been on the verge of, if not completely, feral. This makes me feel empathy for Emily. So I must be pretty much normal, right?