What Is The Theme Of Death In A Rose For Emily

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Research Paper: A Rose for Emily William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” tells the story of Miss Emily Grierson’s abnormal life. “A Rose for Emily” contains a number of different themes, each of which can be interpreted differently between readers. Through evidence found through out the short story scholars are able to break down the story to find the primary themes. The three main themes are death, the past and the present, and community vs. isolation. According to the “A Rose for Emily” overview done by Short Stories for Students, “death is prevalent, both literally and figuratively, in ‘A Rose for Emily’”(5). The narrator of the story only mentions five deaths in “A Rose for Emily”; yet, death is still a key factor in telling the story of Miss Emily Grierson. The deaths that occurred throughout the story have some form of impact on Miss Emily’s life. The death that has the largest impact on her is the death of her father. Mr. Grierson drove away any male that had a romantic …show more content…

She was not involved with the town but they still see her as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (516). This has been the towns’ belief since 1894 and continued through the following generations. Although, the town believes that Miss Emily has still isolated herself from the town. There would be years going by before neighbors would see her leave her home. Cleanth Brooks Jr. and Robert Penn Warren propose “the fact that she cannot compete with them in their ordinary life, that fact that she is hopelessly out of touch with the modern world- all of these things make them feel superior to her, and also to the past she represents”(525). She may seem “dry and cold” (Faulkner 517), but the citizens of Jefferson find this aspect of Miss Emily fascinating, which makes her into the “living avatar of the past of Jefferson” (Davis

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