A Rose For Emily Death Analysis

In the short story “A Rose for Emily” death plays a major role in developing the story. It also shows how the death of one person can change a city as a whole. However, if you compare this story to the life of the author, William Faulkner, you can see how death in his life can contribute to why he wrote the story the way he did. The death of the people is used to add to the meaning of the work. William Faulkner’s experiences add meaning to his work, “A Rose for Emily,” through several deaths and Emily’s ultimate demise. Throughout the story, the narrator shows how Emily was holding on to the past when everybody else was moving forward in the present and she didn’t want to make changes. Even though there were many deaths that occurred throughout the story, Emily never accepted the fact that they actually died.
She was willing, and obligated, to hold onto these items from the past when nobody else would. For example, when the townspeople went into her house after she died, it was as if walking into a time portal to 40 years ago. For example, “.there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years. a thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seen to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal,” all of the man’s belongings were left as well, like his suit and tie, “as if they had just been removed” (369).
The deaths in the story can be used as a way to show how deaths and abandonment in the world are common. This could be directly correlated to William’s life, as he was a soldier in his lifetime that dealt with deaths as well. The first major hit she took was when she lost her father, which worsened when her “sweetheart” disappeared. “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (364). When her father left her, she was a lonely woman. Mr. Grierson secluded her from people for years, and once he was gone, she had nothing. She had a hard time letting go because he was all she had. Emily’s father was always the one person she counted on, looked up to, loved and adored since she had no one else. The second loss she had, was when she was left by her previous town mayor. He didn’t require her to pay taxes, due to the death of her father and all he had done for the town. “Colonel Sartoris, the mayor. remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. when the next generation with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, their arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of every year they mailed her a tax notice” (363).