My favorite line of the story:
"...to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches..." (BL, 2010, p. 40).
To me this means that the past is more than somewhere we have been, it makes up the life we currently live. Winter being the means that destroys all that is beautiful; if winter is unable to touch it then our past cannot be destroyed.
Ms. Emily thought of everything as temporary, and death being the only thing in her life that is permanent. When he father passed away for three days (I think) she told them that he was not dead. For H.B. when he died, or when I believe she poisoned him with arsenic, then he became permanent in her life. When they found his body they also saw that the was a pillow next to him with an indentation in it, along with a long grey piece of hair. That means Ms. Emily was still sleeping with H.B. even though he was dead for quite some time. To her he was still there for her, and he was the only thing that made her feel alive.
From Rachel:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you how the details and imagines described by the author were so real it was scary. I was able to envision Emily and think of what a sad life she lived and how confused she must have been to perform the actions that she did. I wondered if the things she did and the way she behaved were because she so greatly lack affection in her life. Maybe all her life all she longed for was love but it would never come to her. Maybe that is why she did not want to let her father go and why she killed H B so that he could never leave her. With him always beside her she would never be alone and could imagine his love toward her as long as she lived.