In a Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, we meet a young woman that is surrounded by death. As the story progresses we find more and more death and decay throughout Emily’s life. This leads to the theme of Death and Dying. Through-out the short story the theme of Death and Dying is represented through many symbols. These symbols include dust, the house and Emily herself. This essay will examine how each of these symbols represent Death and Dying.
A Rose for Emily is a southern gothic short story about an elderly woman stuck in her ways. When we are first introduced to Emily it is at her funeral where the entire town has come to falsely pay their respects. The men only went to Emily’s funeral because they viewed her as a fallen monument and the women only went out of curiosity to peer inside Emily’s house, which had been closed up to the world and shrouded in mystery for decades. Throughout the story, the narrator gradually describes Emily’s descent into madness and her unwillingness to accept the change happening around her. The central theme of A Rose for Emily focuses on the never-ending battle between tradition and change, which is expertly portrayed by William Faulkner’s use of
Faulkner then introduces someone of Miss Emily 's interest, a day-laborer in town, Homer Barron. They were seen together a lot. At first, everyone believed they were to be married, but Homer was not the marrying kind. Although Miss Emily takes a liking to Homer, he is not interested in "settling down". Miss Emily soon enters a depressive state and goes to purchase arsenic, leaving the townspeople to believe she planned on killing herself. Miss Emily found out that Homer wasn 't going to marry her and she couldn 't bear the fact she would have to lose someone all over again, putting her in the mindset that she had to find a way to be able to keep him forever. Homer Barron had been seen entering the home of Miss Emily but never seen leaving. As the story goes on, Miss Emily passes away at seventy-four. Faulkner ends his story with the way he opened it, with Miss Emily 's funeral. The town came to see her and broke down a door to a back room that hadn 't been opened in forty years. When the townspeople approached the room, they found a corpse of a man lying in the bed, with a long strand of gray hair by the
“A Rose for Emily” takes place in Jefferson, Mississippi. The time span of the story of this troubled young woman’s life stretched over forty years, from 1875-1920. “A Rose for Emily” is a fictional story, like most of William Faulkner’s works. In A Rose for Emily, Emily represents the old south. Emily had many traditional beliefs. In my paper I will be writing about how the town reacted to her keeping her father’s body after he passed away, how the town reacted to Emily killing Homer, and if they thought she was guilty of murder or insane. William Faulkner uses “A Rose for Emily” to show how the south reacted to modern times.
Although strings of complex and extraordinary symbolism are vastly prevalent throughout gothic literature, they are most stunningly exhibited in William Faulkner’s seminal work; “A Rose for Emily.” Set only a short time after the American Civil War, “A Rose for Emily” appears to be an epitaph for a respected elderly woman, beginning with the scene of her funeral. As more is revealed about the events leading up to the funeral, however, increasingly sordid details are exposed about Ms. Emily’s personal life, leading to a final, shocking discovery in the last section. Not only is there obvious surface symbolism and simple foreshadowing displayed in the story, but if each character is assigned a symbolic role, an even more poignant and serious tale is told through Faulkner’s masterfully crafted sentences.
In the story “A Rose for Emily” the elderly Emily Grierson is the subject of mystery throughout her town. She is described as a reclusive individual only having the company of her faithful butler for company. The House she lived in is depicted as a “big, squash, frame house that had once been white and decorated with cupolas and spires”( Kirszner, Mandell 220). The house symbolize the once elegance and grandeur of Miss Emily appearance that has now morphed into a “bloated body” with a “pallid hue” that resembles the big, squarish frame of her one time grand home (Klippel 175). In my opinion Faulkner's message was to show that despite the brilliance of Miss Emily's status and countenances her beauty eventually faded in the annual of time. The title of the story inflects and undertone of mystery to the story. Why would Falkner choose the word “Rose” in his title. “The “Rose” is interpreted as secrecy: the confidential relationship between the author and his character”(Melczarek 240). On a personal anecdote I see the rose as fading beauty. A rose is seen for its deep crimson petals which symbolizes the splendour and vitality of Miss Emily's youth; however, as rose pet...
Shmoop Editorial Team, “the House in ‘A Rose for Emily’.” Shmoop.com. Shmoop University.inc,”Nov 2008. Web.17 Mar 2014
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”, the reader is immediately introduced to the scene of a funeral for Ms. Emily Grierson, an old woman from a small southern town who has passed away due to old age. The narrator – one of the townspeople who remains anonymous to the reader – recounts the story of Ms. Emily’s life from a young woman to an old spinster. The narrator relates major events thematically throughout the story that have occurred within Emily’s life that have formed her into the woman she is, including the death of her father and the implied abandonment by her lover/fiancée. Through the use of a thematic storyline, the major plot points and the development of Emily’s character, the reader is shown that the power of death
At the end of a rose for Emily the reader finds themselves sympathizing about how her life ended up, and how it all could ...
Throughout “A Rose for Emily” the narrator describes his or her perception of the events leading up to and surrounding the death of Miss Emily Grierson. Interestingly enough, Faulkner writes this reminiscent story from the point of
In “A Rose for Emily”, William uses the setting to reveal the traits of Emily and the townspeople. As the setting changes throughout the story it gives the readers different aspects of everyones high expectation towards Emily and the burden that she had to go through to carry her head high. For instance, the town people never like the thought of Emily marrying Homer b...
In “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, Emily Geierson is a woman that faces many difficulties throughout her lifetime. Emily Geierson was once a cheerful and bright lady who turned mysterious and dark through a serious of tragic events. The lost of the two men, whom she loved, left Emily devastated and in denial. Faulkner used these difficulties to define Emily’s fascinating character that is revealed throughout the short story. William Faulkner uses characterization in “A Rose for Emily”, to illustrate Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted woman.
A Rose for Emily begins off telling us that Miss Emily has now died and people have come to her funeral. We see how the men have come out of respectful affection yet the women have come because of their curiosity, since no one has seen her in years
William is a productive writer with abundant well-known works, among which an instructive and thoughtful one is A Rose for Emily. Seen from the surface, it is a short story about the simple lifespan of a lady named Emily. Due to father’s rejection of her pursuers, Emily is still single in her thirty. When her father dies, leaving her only a big house, she hates bitterly for he deprives Emily of love and happiness. After that, she is engaged in the romantic relationship with a man named Homer. Homer does not want to marry her, so Emily poisons him to death. In fact, through the different personalities of Emily and Homer, it is quite apparent that these two people hold opposite value concepts. Analyzed according to character, A Rose for Emily