I told myself I wouldn’t include students, but this was just too creepy-funny not to write.
If you never read Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” stop reading now if you don’t care for spoilers. I’m not going to baby you with extra white space or font that matches the background to hide the spoiler, but just know it’s one of “those” stories you read for literature type classes and so knowing the ending might spoil your fun but the story makes a lot more sense when you go into it knowing how it all turns out. This entry is about a moment of personal discomfort so you should just keep reading anyway.
Ready?
“A Rose for Emily” is a story about Emily Grierson, a southern belle who is the daughter of a man who discourages gentleman callers. However, when her father dies, she keeps the body for three days because she is so used to his control until she finally relents and the townsfolk take the corpse away. Later, a man courts her but there are implications that he’s not the marrying type. One major purchase of rat poison later, the man disappears and no one except a servant enter or leave Emily’s house. Everyone assumes he’s run off, even though her house stinks until they secretly run around her yard applying lime.
Silly townsfolk.
After her death, people go into her house, her decayed ancestral home, only to discover the thwarted bachelor’s corpse in her bed. And beside the corpse is a single, gray hair the color of Emily Grierson’s.
Chilling. And fun to teach.
Well, today I graded a student’s test about the material. After her explanation about how the town reacted after Emily poisoned her lover, the student included a personal message at the bottom:
Mr. F–, you are my lover.
To which I responded:
That frightens me on so many levels. Oh wait, are you comparing yourself to Emily? All is normal then.
So if anything happens to me at all in the next few years, it’s because a student has separation issues.