A Rose For Emily Theme Essay

1439 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: What are the cultural influences in a rose for emily

I will be analyzing three concepts/themes from the short story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. The first theme I will go over is the ever-present notion of death throughout the story. We learn from the beginning that Emily has experienced the death of someone dear to her at a young age. Glooming over Emily for a majority of her life. For some reason though Emily feels that she can overcome death in some weird way. By refusing to let go of the corpses of both her father and Homer. As if she can through sure will bring life into them by being alongside them forever. With this plague of death hanging over Emily the town describes even her physical characteristics to be unliving. With descriptions such as "drowned woman, a bloated and pale …show more content…

Seeing that Homer wasn’t the "settle down marrying type.". Due to this she may have potentially saw Homer breaking up with her and moving away. Thus, in her mind the only way that he would be with her until the end was to kill him. Even though in her eyes she is not killing him, but just giving him true life with her. Emily sees this as victory over death. While in reality death has already prevailed in taking Homer away, but just without Emily's acknowledgment. Another theme in "A Rose for Emily" is this rooted tradition. Both with the town and for Emily. The biggest way we see this tradition with Emily is her refusal to pay taxes since she didn’t have to pay before. Going off the declaration of Colonel Sartoris as if word was law for all of time. Showing that Emily does not care what changes go on around her, and she will carry on doing whatever she wants to do. Sticking to her old ways like a unmoving boulder. As a relic for the towns people to look back at and see how things use to be. Which is shown when former Confederate Soldiers gather in uniform for her funeral. Both seeing the positive and negatives

Show More
Related

  • Isolation in “Yellow Wallpaper”

    1263 Words  | 3 Pages

    The “A Rose for Emily”. Literature: Prentice Hall Pocket Reader. Third Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2005. 1-9.

    Read More

  • The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    never ending denial that there is any man suitable for his daughter. Emily was left

    Read More

  • The Storyteller's Poem In 'A Rose For Emily'

    1041 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the story “A Rose for Emily,” The reader learns about Emily in an interesting way. Emily is painted as an aristocratic woman who feels she is above the law, though people seem sympathetic to her. The storyteller wants us to know Emily in a certain way. The storyteller wants us to feel compassion for Emily due to the fact she grew up with a very controlling father. The narrator goes back and forth between sympathy and slight criticism. She was driven to mental illness and a life of seclusion. Love and companionship is all she really desired. The rose symbolizes the telling of her story and the ending of an era. She is the last Grierson to die. The storyteller wants her story to be a legacy. The story is then told and handed down through the generations.

    Read More

  • Self Identity Characters In Abc's TV Series Pretty Little Liars

    1500 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the beginning Emily deal with self identity issues and that we can see from the first episode because she is having trouble with her boyfriend. They break up and Emily reveals that she is attracted to the same sex. She tries to hide this from her friends, but “A” doesn’t allow that to happen. Emily also has to be strong because she deals with her father being away from home because he is in the Army and all her mother does is worry about

    Read More

  • How Does Emily Change In Our Town

    687 Words  | 2 Pages

    This goes to show that Emily is a determined person and her strong willed personality helps her change throughout the

    Read More

  • Alienation and Isolation in William Falukners "A Rose For Emily"

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    Emily attempts to recapture her past by escaping from the present. She wants to leave the present and go back to a happier past. Miss Emily wants to find the love she once knew. “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (243). Emily alienates herself from everyone when the two people she has loved most in her life go away. She becomes afraid to grow close to anyone in fear of losing them again.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Plot in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “A Rose For Emily”, by William Faulkner, plot plays an important role in how

    Read More

  • Examples Of Characterization In A Rose For Emily

    839 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Isolation And Loneliness in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

    799 Words  | 2 Pages

    nothing after her father dies. “We remembered all the young men her father had driven

    Read More

  • Examining Conflict in I Stand Here Ironing

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the beginning of Emily's life she is separated from those she needed most, and the mother's guilt tears at the seams of a dress barely wrinkled. Emily was only eight months old when her father left her and her mother. He found it easier to leave than to face the responsibilities of his family's needs. Their meager lifestyle and "wants" (Olsen 601) were more than he was ready to face. The mother regrettably left the child with the woman downstairs fro her so she could work to support them both. As her mother said, "She was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes" (601). Eventually it came to a point where Emily had to go to her father's family to live a couple times so her mother could try to stabilize her life. When the child returned home the mother had to place her in nursery school while she worked. The mother didn't want to put her in that school; she hated that nursery school. "It was the only place there was. It was the only way we could be toge...

    Read More

  • A High Wind In Jamaica

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the beginning of the story Emily is just an ordinary little girl, but as the story continues she begins to feel herself changing. By the end of the story, Emily has gained self-consciousness and thinks of herself not as an ordinary little girl but as “Emily”.

    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

  • Theme of A Rose for Emily

    318 Words  | 1 Pages

    The theme of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner is that people should let go of the past, moving on with the present so that they can prepare to welcome their future. Emily was the proof of a person who always lived on the shadow of the past; she clung into it and was afraid of changing. The first evident that shows to the readers right on the description of Grierson's house "it was 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." The society was changing every minutes but still, Emily's house was still remained like a symbol of seventieth century. The second evident show in the first flashback of the story, the event that Miss Emily declined to pay taxes. In her mind, her family was a powerful family and they didn't have to pay any taxes in the town of Jefferson. She even didn't believe the sheriff in front of her is the "real" sheriff, so that she talked to him as talk to the Colonel who has died for almost ten years "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson." Third evident was the fact that Miss Emily had kept her father's death body inside the house and didn't allow burying him. She has lived under his control for so long, now all of sudden he left her, she was left all by herself, she felt lost and alone, so that she wants to keep him with her in order to think he's still living with her and continued controlling her life. The fourth evident and also the most interesting of this story, the discovery of Homer Barron's skeleton in the secret room. The arrangement inside the room showing obviously that Miss Emily has slept with the death body day by day, until all remained later was just a skeleton, she's still sleeping with it, clutching on it every night. The action of killing Homer Barron can be understood that Miss Emily was afraid that he would leave her, afraid of letting him go, so she decided to kill him, so that she doesn't have to afraid of losing him, of changing, Homer Barron would still stay with her forever.

    Read More

  • Theme Of The Past And Present In A Rose For Emily

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    Miss Emily’s refusal to change all started when her father had passed away and when asked about it she was in denial and “she told them her father was not dead.” She didn’t want to come to the realization that the only person in her life that loved her and protected her was gone. The fact that he was so controlling of her life and how she lived made Miss Emily afraid of what was going to happen next. She wasn’t used to making her own life choices.

    Read More

  • Literary Elements in A Rose For Emily

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.

    Read More

More about A Rose For Emily Theme Essay

Open Document