A Withering Rose for Homer

The Yankee outsider, the new center of attention Homer Barron without notice disappears. This representative of “mechanical progression” is forced down the “diminishing road.” It sounds like the entrails of a mystery, a web of virtual gossip and inevitable investigation amongst the old southern society and guard. Yet no one came, no search party is dispatched. The only constant left is Emily’s continued existence, her clenching to a “rose tinted” past separated by an …

…public. And though Emily fought valiantly against time, she eventually meets the same fate as her father, her house, and Homer Barron. “Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery,” to lay there now forever the past (15). The reasons behind Homer’s disappearance going unnoticed elude the work and have no definitive answer. Yet, just the mystery adds to the textual richness of Faulkner.