Analysis of Miss Emily in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” comparing her actions, motives, and psychological state to other literary murderers like Montresor, the Misfit, and the Tell-Tale Heart killer. This essay explores whether her crimes are sympathetic, insane, or cold-blooded, providing comparative insights and textual evidence for students studying literature, character evaluation, and literary analysis.

Miss Emily in “A Rose for Emily”: Sympathetic Murderer or Cold-Blooded Killer?

The killer from “The Tell-Tale Heart” was a more cold-blooded murderer than Miss Emily. The killer murdered the old man even though there was no insult from the old man. The old man was murdered because the murderer found one of his eyes unpleasant. The fact that the old man’s murder was planned for days and the murderer seemed to enjoy the activities leading to the murder makes Emily’s case sympathetic as she tries to hide her case from the rest of the public. Emily’s action of keeping the body can be based on a psychological problem she suffered from, as she had also refused to come to terms with her father’s death. The murderer from “The Tell-Tale Heart” had committed similar murders before. The murderer states, “I knew the sound well”. The sound the old man made during his death was not new to the murderer. On the other hand, Emily used rat poison to murder her partner, indicating she was more sympathetic than the murderer from “The Tale-tell story”.

In comparison to the other murderers, Emily’s motives were more sympathetic. She chose to use rat poison to kill her victims, unlike the other murderers’ more hostile methods. However, Emily’s choice to keep her victim’s body in her house tends to be insane rather than cold-blooded. The body decayed in her house for decades, meaning she lived with the bad smell all along, an action normal human beings would have avoided. However, keeping one’s dead body in the house is more frightening when compared to the murder case of “The Cask of Amontillado,” as the murderer did not live with the victim’s body in the same house.

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