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The rose given to Emily---It is rational to exist
To see for the first time, Emily is an odd person: all her behaviors are not so intelligible in the view of persons nowadays, staying indoors, lacking of friends in life, the unusual talk and attitude. The last and the most, she loves a person but kills him in order to achieve the goal of occupying him and being together with him for ever .
To understand how to mould the figure can’t be broken away from the era background of personages. The story takes place when the Civil War is over. The impact of the northern civilization makes it not be legal to hold slaves any more. The foundation that economy depends on for existence at the plantation has been out of existence. Plantation economy moves towards collapsing. In the face of the new economic mode of the North and culture values, some people fight stubbornly with one's back to the wall. Emily is undoubtedly the models of these declining aristocrats. Southern represents decline, while northern represents rise. Between the decline and rise, there are some people who are bearing the misfortune due to defending tenaciously after all. The background of the contradiction between north and south, when it is reflected in a person's history, is namely the tragedies of love and life.
Emily was born in that stratum of that era, thus she was a guardian of that stratum naturally. If not, she had no way to make a live. What she learned is what young ladies in rich families learn for fun. She refused to pay taxes, and resisted to change, defending tenaciously the large house and antiquated life style. But she has also received some benefits from the past, such as honorable surname, people's respect from it, and some privileged treatment left over.
While at the same time, she is a victim, a convict. She is besieged by people's comments from common customs, by the suppression of her father who is the authority symbol, during the years when a na飗e little girl grows up, she has no freedom, no love. Emily’s mother is hardly mentioned in the novel. Mother is a role which symbolizes softness and warmness. It seemed that such colors never appear in her life. It lets her lack love with father's harsh and injunctive communication in life, lack training for the expression and feeling of love. It results in abnormal love finally. She has ever resisted too. She struggles in the contradiction and twists her heart finally. The only love by her, I think is from that old slave. The old slave stands fast at the southerner's life style with her, giving her defends and service closely. Or, he is a numb one. A rose, such a gentle bright love flower, versus Emily, who is lack of love and longing for love while who does not know how to love, it is a contradiction itself. This contradiction symbolizes the contradiction on southerners, who want to resist the oppression of the past, while can not break away from dependence of the past. |
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发表于 2008-8-17 08:34:48
