A Rose For Emily

3 Pages 830 Words

In the short story “A Rose for Emily” Emily, an old spinster, has difficulty acknowledging that death and change are inevitable. Emily’s reluctance to let go of the past is a representation of the “dying south”. The author, William Faulkner, is able to reveal the story’s theme through various forms a symbolism.
Faulkner begins the story with the narrator describing the funeral of the aristocratic Miss Emily. Faulkner mentions:
”our whole town went to the funeral with a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument” ( p.28).
By characterizing Emily as a “fallen monument” Faulkner deliberately makes Emily a symbol of the south’s transition from grandiosity into a modernized less refined society. . The choice of the word monument reveals that Emily was the last of her kind and that with her death, the past that she represented will only be a memory of a dying institution.
“ …The ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men…confusing time with its mathematical progression… to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided to them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.” (p. 34)
Emily surrounds herself with reminders of the past as if surrounding herself with old things will prevent the years from passing. Faulkner gives this impression by pointing out that Emily looks like someone that has been submerged in “motionless water”. This evokes in the reader a feeling of stillness as if time were stagnant around Miss Emily.
“She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.” (p. 29)

After Emily’s father died his portrait was given prominence in her home. This symbolizes Emily reluctance to let go of the past. Her father’s portrait hangs as if he was still watching over her.
“On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace...