Miss Emily Change

710 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Character analysis of miss emily

Tradition and change are two opposing ideas that have fought each other for thousands of years. Many believe in preserving successful and effective customs, while others strive to revolutionize them and move forward to improve society. In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner writes about a woman who clings to her past in fear of the future. Faulkner uses setting, character, point of view, structure, and symbolism to expose examples of human nature, which teach us important lessons about life. William Faulkner takes us to his fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi at the turn of the 20th century, a time when the ways of society were changing dramatically. His fictional character, Miss Emily, is a prime example of one that is fearful of change and lives in the past in order to resist the changes that are occurring around her. When the Board of Aldermen met to confront Miss Emily about her tax notice, she informed them that she had no taxes in Jefferson. An agreement made about a decade ago by a mayor, now dead, was long forgotten, and no longer applied. Miss Emily simply refuses to accept the changes and sends the men away. Although this part of the story seems to be irrelevant to the plot, it is significant in understanding the nature of Miss Emily and how she responds to change. The relationships that Miss Emily has with characters such as her father, Homer Baron, and the townspeople all have significant value in the story. While there are many important characters in A Rose for Emily, it can be argued that the true antagonists seem to be time and change. Nearly every struggle that Miss Emily faces can be traced to the presence of time and change in her life. The modern customs of the town she lives in, the death of her father,... ... middle of paper ... ...er isolation. Therefore her house is a symbol of her loneliness and solitude. Finally, the most important example is the lifeless body of Homer Baron, which seems to symbolize the empty void in her life that was never satisfied. Because of the tragic life that Miss Emily lived, she used the walls of her home to live in a world where she could resist change, control the presence of time, and ultimately contain the one she loved in attempt to gain her the happiness she never had. The elements that William Faulkner uses to develop Miss Emily’s character and tell her story all contribute to his theme that resisting change can lead to one’s own isolation. It is important to accept the past and move on with the future. However when given a person’s circumstances, like those of Miss Emily, resistance is the natural way of defending ourselves when change becomes our enemy.

Show More
Related

  • Differences Between Faulkner And Ralph Ellison

    1318 Words  | 3 Pages

    Faulkner and Ellison had contrasting views on the south about how people with differences were treated and whether or not the south’s changes were positive, however they both view the changing south as inevitable. In Faulkner’s south people who are different are not punished but they are protected from the public embarrassment of their honor. In “A Rose for Emily” Colonel Sartoris forgives Miss Emily of the taxes she owes the city of Jefferson.

    Read More

  • Faulkner's Rose For Emily is a Portrait Of The Post War South

    1943 Words  | 4 Pages

    Growing up in Mississippi in the late Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century, young William Faulkner witnessed first hand the struggles his beloved South endured through their slow progression of rebuilding. These experiences helped to develop Faulkner’s writing style. “Faulkner deals almost exclusively with the Southern scene (with) the Civil War … always behind his work” (Warren 1310. His works however are not so much historical in nature but more like folk lore. This way Faulkner is not constrained to keep details accurate, instead he manipulate the story to share his on views leading the reader to conclude morals or lessons from his experience. Faulkner writes often and “sympathetically of the older order of the antebellum society. It was a society that valued honor, (and) was capable of heroic action” (Brooks 145) both traits Faulkner admired. These sympathetic views are revealed in the story “A Rose for Emily” with Miss Emily becoming a monument for the Antebellum South.

    Read More

  • Clinging to the Past in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    1553 Words  | 4 Pages

    The end of the American Civil War also signified the end of the Old South's era of greatness. The south is depicted in many stories of Faulkner as a region where "the reality and myth are difficult to separate"(Unger 54). Many southern people refused to accept that their conditions had changed, even though they had bitterly realized that the old days were gone. They kept and cherished the precious memories, and in a fatal and pathetic attempt to maintain the glory of the South people tend to cling to old values, customs, and the faded, but glorified representatives of the past. Miss Emily was one of those selected representatives. The people in the southern small-town, where the story takes place, put her on a throne instead of throwing her in jail where she actually belonged. The folks in town, unconsciously manipulated by their strong nostalgia, became the accomplices of the obscene and insane Miss Emily.

    Read More

  • The Resistance to Change

    995 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a person one might find that we follow a specific routine on the day to day basis. Sudden changes to these routines feels weird and out of place. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” based in a fictional town called Jefferson taking place during the twentieth century. The time period is indeed an important factor because southern tradition was above all of the highest importance. This short story gives the audience details of life during that time in which they followed the values of southern tradition and the importance to never stray away from those traditions. The context of the story is laced with subliminal messages of humanities resistance to change.

    Read More

  • Isolation In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Faulkner takes us back in time with his Gothic short story known as, “A Rose for Emily.” Almost every sentence gives a new piece of evidence to lead the reader to the overall theme of death, isolation, and trying to maintain traditions. The reader can conclude the theme through William Faulkner’s use of literary devices such as his choice of characters, the setting, the diction, the tone, and the plot line.

    Read More

  • A Haunting Past in Faulkner's A Rose of Emily

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” Miss Emily Grierson holds on to the past with a grip of death. Miss Emily seems to reside in her own world, untarnished by the present time around her, maintaining her homestead as it was when her father was alive. Miss Emily’s father, the manservant, the townspeople, and even the house she lives in, shows that she remains stuck in the past incapable and perhaps reluctant to face the present.

    Read More

  • A Rose For Emily And Usl At The Stadium Analysis

    1712 Words  | 4 Pages

    After her father’s death, the old town government officials exempted Miss Emily from paying taxes, but when new officials came in, they wanted her to pay. “Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying.” She did not know any different and did not want things to change, but everyone else pictured it as her being better than them. “I have no taxes in Jefferson,” is what she repeatedly told the officials that came to talk to

    Read More

  • Emily Grierson in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily,” he elaborates on the life of Emily Grierson, a white aristocratic woman from the Deep South. Faulkner uses many aspects of human life to create Miss Emily. The unique arrangement of the story in the form of flashback causes the reader to abstain from giving sympathy to Emily. As the reader begins to study Emily, he may feel less compassion for her once they realize the turmoil she experiences is caused by her stubborn attitude toward change. `In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner produces a solitary character through the aspects of Emily’s life such as the death’s of her loved ones, the theme of resistantance to change, and the different point of view.

    Read More

  • Expectations in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    Expectations are everything, which is the ringing truth in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” The short story is centered in a post-civil war setting that shows how the views and values of the southern aristocracy change over time. A single narrator acts as the voice of the fictional town of Jefferson to tell the story as a whole through flashbacks and flash-forwards that tell the life of Emily Grierson, a woman from a very rich and elevated family in their society. Through the story, we learn that Emily is never permitted by her father to marry because none of the suitors are good enough for his daughter; after her father’s death, Emily, as the last living member of her family, begins to deteriorate to proportions that are not revealed until the end of the story. The reader learns that the man she falls in love with intends to leave her so she kills him and keeps his body in her bedroom and sleeps by his corpse every night for years until her death (Faulkner 79-84). These extreme situations were not caused by madness inside of Emily; instead, it was Emily’s need to conform to what society expected of her that triggered the craziness to develop. She felt the need to go to extreme measures to keep the expected traditions of her southern family alive, in the only way she knew how too. Because of the townspeople’s expectations of Emily, their involvement to try to change her, and their blind eye to obvious signs of murder, the people from the town of Jefferson become just as guilty, if not more, than Emily herself.

    Read More

  • How Is Miss Emily Grierson And A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Faulkner writes “A Rose for Emily” in the view of a memory, the people of the towns’ memory. The story goes back and forth like memories do and the reader is not exactly told whom the narrator is. This style of writing contributes to the notions Faulkner gives off during the story about Miss Emily’s past, present, and her refusal to modernize with the rest of her town. The town of Jefferson is at a turning point, embracing the more modern future while still at the edge of the past. Garages and cotton gins are replacing the elegant southern homes. Miss Emily herself is a living southern tradition. She stays the same over the years despite many changes in her community. Even though Miss Emily is a living monument, she is also seen as a burden to the town. Refusing to have numbers affixed to the side of her house when the town receives modern mail service and not paying her taxes, she is out of touch with reality. The younger generation of leaders brings in Homer’s company to pave the sidewalks. The past is not a faint glimmer but an ever-present, idealized realm. Emily’s morbid bridal ...

    Read More

  • Examples Of Characterization In A Rose For Emily

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Faulkner used indirect characterization to portray Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted women through the serious of events that happened throughout her lifetime. The author cleverly achieves this by mentioning her father’s death, Homer’s disappearance, the town’s taxes, and Emily’s reactions to all of these events. Emily’s reactions are what allowed the readers to portray her characteristics, as Faulkner would want her to be

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In A Rose For Emily

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within the next generation, as teleology and education had increased, Miss Emily had been getting tax notices in the mail, since she would not reply to them; the mayor sent a couple men to her door to ask for her taxes, but she exclaims to them that she has no taxes in Jefferson and to see Colonel Sartoris. He uses Emily’s house as a dark, isolated setting. Making people wonder what goes on behind those closed doors. No one really knew Emily that well.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Social Expectations In A Rose For Emily

    2563 Words  | 6 Pages

    “A Rose for Emily” reads like a sad and tragic biography set in the nineteenth century. The narrator, who speaks as one representing the story from the town’s point of view, begins by narrating Emily’s funeral. As the story unfolds, the reader is taken through a grim sequence of events, some of which only make sense in retrospect upon reaching the end of the story. The narrator begins then to narrate her background since her father’s death. Emily’s father is cast as a protective figure who turns away any male suitors and keeps his daughter away from the townsfolk. When he dies, Emily refrains from acknowledging his death and for three days refuses to let his body out of the house. Eventually she breaks

    Read More

  • Rose For Emily Symbolism

    1096 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” tells the story of a woman whose freedom was repressed by her father and, after his death, disconnected herself from the community and became more isolated in her home town than ever before. The story shows Emily’s loneliness and isolation through various symbolisms.

    Read More

  • Literary Elements in A Rose For Emily

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    Through the use of setting, characterization and theme Faulkner was able to create quite a mysterious and memorable story. "A Rose for Emily" is more than just a story though; her death represents the passing of a more genteel way of life. That is much more saddening than the unforgettable scene of Homer's decaying body. The loss of respect and politeness is has a much greater impact on society than a construction worker who by trade is always trying to change things. Generation after generation Miss Emily happily escaped modernism by locking herself in her house – the past.

    Read More

More about Miss Emily Change

Open Document