In the short story, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, critical thinking and personal opinion plays an important role. Miss Emily is portrayed as a fallen monument from beginning to end of the story. Neighborly issues, problems with taxes, and death in the family are few a few topics as to why people think she is a fallen monument. Even Miss Emily herself, does not realize that she has become a fallen monument, because of the way her house is, how she smells, and that everyone feels sorry for her. Miss Emily’s house had been built from the 1870s. Rumor has it that it was an eyesore because it was in the most unusual place. “Only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton gins and gasoline pumps” (Faulkner 221). When one thinks of a mansion, a big, wide, white two-story house comes to mind. That was not the case for Miss Emily’s house, thus making it an eyesore. “Her house was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white” (Faulkner 220). Since it was once a white color, the new color, whatever it may be, is making it become an eyesore. …show more content…
“So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell” (Faulkner 222). Obviously there had been gossip about people from the town confronting her about the smell. “Will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad” (Faulkner 222)? People had been complaining and wondering if she or someone was going to do something about it. “Complaints about the odor emanating from her house lead Jefferson’s aldermen to surreptitiously spread lime around her yard, rather than to confront Emily, but they discovered her openly watching from an open window” (Mosby. Salem Press.). Turns out, no one knows if the smell was from her or her house specifically, it was just a bad odor coming from within her and her
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 ...
The main symbolism running throughout A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, is the theme of how important it is to let go of the past. Miss Emily clings to the past and does not want to be independent. The Old South is becoming the new South and she cannot move forward. The residents of the South did not all give in to change just because they lost the Civil War. In A Rose for Emily time marches on leaving Miss Emily behind as she stubbornly refuses to progress into a new era. In the story, symbolism is used to give more details than the author actually gives to the reader. Symbolism helps to indicate how Emily was once innocent but later changes, how her hair, house, and lifestyle, helped to show her resistance to change. The story is not told in chronological order. The events of her life are revealed slowly and create suspense over the telling of the story by the narrator. The narrator represents the town and its residents.
as a symbol for Miss Emily's change in social status. In its prime, the house
The main character in the short story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner is Emily Grierson. She lives in Jefferson Mississippi, in a fictional county called Yoknapatawpha County. The people of Yoknapatawpha saw Miss Emily as "a small, fat woman" who was very cold, distant, and lived in her past. Her home "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...”. She lived in a little community that was changing and becoming more modern unlike her house. Her house, as Faulkner describes, "...smelled of dust and disuse-a close, dank smell"; "it was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture". The look of Emily’s home bothered Emily’s community along with many other things about her. Emily has a "hereditary obligation upon the town". She is from a family of wealth that brought tradition to Yoknapatawpha County. When the town started making modern changes fitting into the next generation Emily became stubborn and showed this by refusing to pay taxes to her county. Emily repeats, "I have no taxes in Jefferson" four times before dismissing the deputation. Thomas Robert Argiro, the author of a critical essay called “Miss Emily After Dark” states that, “[Emily]… struggles with personal grief, a restricted social life, socio-economic decline, and romantic misfortune…” (par.2). Miss Emily is misunderstood by the townspeople and is resistant to the changes around her as well in her life.
In a “Rose for Emily”, Faulkner uses Emily’s house as a symbol of the barrier Emily forms between herself and society. As society moves through generations and changes over the years, Emily remains the same, within the borders of her own household. The house is described as “in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street”(125), but years passed and more modern houses had “obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood” (125). Faulkner set the house apart from the rest of the neighborhood, and Emily is described in the beginning as “a fallen monument” and a “tradition” indicating that she had not changed in an extended amount of time. The symbol of the house, remaining unchanged through the decades that passed becomes stronger when Emily does not permit tax collectors to pass through the threshold of the house, “She vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before”. Emily’s image of a “monument” to the community’s small society caused her to become exempt from the demands of the state that the rest of the population had to adhere to. Emily’s house enab...
At the beginning of the story, the reader learns that Miss Emily “is portrayed as ’a fallen monument,’… because she has shown herself susceptible to death (and decay) after all” (West 264). The house can also be perceived as a “fallen monument”(Faulkner 81) as the narrator proceeds to describe the house, magnificent as it once was, and how it has become dilapidated through the years. The same can be said about Miss Emily, as time passed she “looked bloated like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue”(Faulkner 82).
Miss Emily’s house is one of the important symbols which represent the past because it rejects updating like Miss Emily. The “… house 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” (209).Then it ages with Emily an “eyesore among eyesores” (209). She had once been “a slender figure in white” (211) and later she looks “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water... her eyes lost in the fatty ridges of her face...” (210). She represents the Old South by her actions. She avoided to believe that time were changing and did not join the new society. She even does not come out. One example of Emily lives in the past is when she refuses to pay the tax.
While she is still alive, the townspeople have a certain respect for her because she has been there so long; they do not feel a need to change what has always been. Nevertheless, once she dies what is left of her, such as her house, is a disgrace to the town. “Only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily” 119). In the same way, the people of the South followed tradition in their lifestyles.
William Faulkner begins his short story, “A Rose for Emily” with the funeral of the main character, Emily Grierson (30). Emily is a quiet woman. It is said that nobody has been in her house for ten years, excluding her servant (30). Supposedly, her house used to be the best one around. The town also has a different connection with Miss Grierson. She is the only person in the town who is not forced to pay taxes. For years the town neither makes her pay, nor harasses her with tax notification letters to pay her taxes, until now. The younger generations who work hard and remain loyal taxpayers are not thrilled by this and decide to visit Emily in an attempt to get her to pay her debt. They try to get her to believe the old plan will not work anymore, yet she blatantly refuses this idea and does not pay (30). Apparently, thirty years prior to this attempt, the tax collectors of the town have a strange encounter with the Grierson residence. Two years after her dad’s passing and the mysterious disappearance of her lover, a tax collector notices a pungent odor emanating from her home that becomes a stronger and stronger scent. This leads to many complaints from the townspeople. However, the authorities of the town do not want to have a confrontation with Emily, so, instead, “they broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings” (31). The smell eventually subsides “after a week or two” (32). People do not think anything of the smell anymore. They do not think about the cause of it either; they continue with their lives.
Symbolism in literature is using an object to portray a different, deeper meaning in a story. Symbols represent ideas or qualities that the author has maneuvered into his or her story that has meaning. There can be multiple symbols in a story or just one. It is up to the reader to interpret the meaning of the symbols and their significance to the story. While reading a story, symbols may not become clear until the very end, once the climax is over, and the falling action is covered. In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” there are multiple examples of symbolism that occur throughout the story.
In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” he uses many literary elements to portray the life of Emily and the town of Jefferson. The theme of the past versus the present is in a sense the story of Miss Emily’s life. Miss Emily is the representation of the Old South versus the New South, mainly because of her inability to interact with the present or come to terms with reality. Holding onto the past and rejecting change into the present led Miss Emily into a life of isolation and mental issues.
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a short story told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator and opens with the death of Miss Emily Grierson, an elderly woman that the reader quickly learns that the town views more as a character than an actual human being. Through flashbacks, the mysterious and haunting tale of Emily is revealed. As a child, Emily was the member of an aristocratic family, but has now long been living in relative poverty in the former grand home of her family after her father left her with no money. The product of the Civil War South, Emily never moved past the social customs of her youth, and refused to live according to modern standards. This becomes evident when she accepts the mayor’s hidden charity under the guise of her never owing taxes due to a lie that her father had loaned the town money and this was how the town would re...
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.
Miss Emily's house as the setting of the story is a perfect metaphor for the events occurring during that time period. It portrays the decay of Miss Emily's life and values and of the southern way of life and their clash with the newer generations. The house is situated in what was once a prominent neighborhood that has now deteriorated. Miss Emily's "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 of an earlier time," now looked awkward surrounded by "cotton wagons" and "gasoline pumps." The townspeople consider it "an eyesore among eyesores." Time has taken a similar role with Miss Emily altering her appearance from that of a "slender figure in white" (624) to that of "a small, fat woman in black" (622). The setting of Faulkner's story defines Miss Emily's tight grasp of ante-bellum ways and unchanging demeanor.. Through her refusal to put "metal numbers above her door and attach a mail box" to her house she is refusing to change with society. Miss Emily's attitude towards change is ...
utation came to her house for her taxes, Faulkner describes how the house and Ms. Emily looks. "only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores", this statement explains how the house gives off such a depressing mood. "Her skeleton was small and spare;", this line shows us how her appearance showcases death also.