A Rose For Emily Parallelism Essay

A motif is any element in a story that is repeated and as a result of that repetition takes on some added significance. One motif in William Fulkner’s short story, “A Rose For Emily” is the townspeople’s view of Miss Emily appearing to be like a statue. This creates the idea that she is an idol throughout the town rather than a normal human being. Throughout her entire life, Emily is watched by the people in the town where she lives. Instead of making a real relationship with her or trying to make a deep connection with her, the citizens of the town watch her from a distance, making up their own interpretation of who Miss Emily really is. They think they know her personality and ways of life, but at the end of the story, the townspeople discover

they really did not know Emily at all. While she seemed cold and hard—like a statue—she actually had dreams and hopes for what her life would be like. These aspirations turned Miss Emily insane and led her to commit and dark and twisted crime, which she kept a secret for years. Though the town saw her as a rich and stubborn idol, Emily was no more than a lonely and grotesque criminal.
Parallelism is elements that are structured into a story in such a way as to suggest comparisons and/or contrasts between them.

One major example of parallelism in “A Rose For Emily” is the comparison between Miss Emily and the house where she lives. The house is described as “a big squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street” (131). Like the house, Emily could once be described as a nice, sophisticated, and put together lady. She was “a slender figure dressed in white” (133) with short hair “making her look like a girl” (133). However, through the years, both the house and Miss Emily seemed to disintegrate with age. While the house was falling apart physically, Emily was falling apart figuratively. They both became gray and unkempt, with Miss Emily even being described as “a small fat woman in black…bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water.” (131). Towards the end of the story, the house was like an abandoned trap which no one was allowed to step inside of for years, much like how Miss Emily felt as though she was trapped and abandoned in her own right, never letting anyone inside of her mind or

heart.