A Rose For Emily

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How the North and South are represented in A Rose for Emily
In the short story “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner symbolizes the north and south through two individual people. Miss Emily Grierson represents the south, and Mr. Homer Barron represents the north. Faulkner displays these traits all through the story.
Miss Emily demonstrates the characteristics of the south all throughout the story. Emily Grierson has a sense of tradition that makes it very difficult for her to accept change. In the beginning of the story Miss Emily’s father passes away. Miss Emily does not accept that her father is dead and does not let anyone into the house to get the body. Finally after three days of trying to get into the house the get the body miss Emily lets the men into the house. After her father’s death Colonel Sartoris out of pity for Miss Emily says that her father has donated so much charity to the town that she does not have to pay taxes. Somewhere around 10 years after Colonel Sartoris’s death the town tried to get miss Emily to pay her taxes, but she refused saying, “See Colonel Sartoris, I have no taxes in Jefferson”.(28). The biggest thing that Miss Emily does that lets shows how hard it is for her to accept change is when she kills her lover Homer Barron. Homer Barron was a man whose job took him from place to place, and Miss Emily knew this. So Miss Emily did what she had to do to keep him with her always even if that meant killing him. Even after she killed him, she kept his body in her house and continued to sleep in the same bed as him.
The south has some of the same problems that Miss Emily has. The south does not like change, so when they heard that the south wanted them to end slavery the south did not oblige. And even today the south still fly the rebel flag sometimes as a sort of racist remark to the blacks. The south is also very old fashioned just like Miss Emily. Miss Emily lived in a very old style h...