Jacqueline Carlos
Option 1, "A Rose for Emily"
On the surface, William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” seems dark and bizarre; the story of a recluse who had an odd obsession with death, however, a closer look at the story's characters reveals a deeper meaning behind his work. Emily Grierson, the protagonist is established as an important testament to the town's tradition early on in the story, despite the fact that she is already dead. The disharmony between traditional values and acceptance of change proves to be a recurring theme throughout the story, and Emily's actions, words, and overall appearance are expertly used to exemplify this point. In fact, in the first paragraph, the narrator expressed that the men at her funeral were there, "Through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument" (91). But what did Emily do throughout her life to be considered monumental? Faulkner interrupts the chronology of the story, going back and forth through time, exposing her insanity and resistance to change bit by bit.
Option 1, "A Rose for Emily"
On the surface, William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” seems dark and bizarre; the story of a recluse who had an odd obsession with death, however, a closer look at the story's characters reveals a deeper meaning behind his work. Emily Grierson, the protagonist is established as an important testament to the town's tradition early on in the story, despite the fact that she is already dead. The disharmony between traditional values and acceptance of change proves to be a recurring theme throughout the story, and Emily's actions, words, and overall appearance are expertly used to exemplify this point. In fact, in the first paragraph, the narrator expressed that the men at her funeral were there, "Through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument" (91). But what did Emily do throughout her life to be considered monumental? Faulkner interrupts the chronology of the story, going back and forth through time, exposing her insanity and resistance to change bit by bit.
Emily's actions reveal that she is resistant to change. For example, Emily was part of the old aristocracy, and was not expected to pay her taxes until, "The next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and alderman" (91), and went to her home to collect them. When the city officials attempted to collect her debt, she turned them away, and did not have to pay. Tradition won. Later, her debt was to society, and it was not measured in dollars, nor was it ever paid. The major representation of Emily's stagnancy was when she murdered her fiancé, Homer Barron, and kept his body in an upstairs bedroom, where she would presumably sleep with him every night. The room in which she kept his corpse was also unchanged, from the day she murdered Homer, “This room decked and furnished as for a bridal; upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver….lay a collar and tie as though they had just been removed” (96). Although this was the most disturbing illustration of Faulkner's theme, Emily was in a similar situation before this incident, she kept her father's corpse in her home for three days before burying him. Her refusal to let go of her father’s decaying body, or to admit that he had even passed away, foreshadowed the strange relationship she would have with the man she found to fill the void her father left behind, which is when she met Homer Barron.
Faulkner's physical description of Emily also harmonizes with his theme. She is described similarly to her home, and her home is depicted as the only home in the neighborhood that was traditional, although radical changes were occurring all around it in the Southern town of Jefferson in the 1930's where the story takes place. Faulkner establishes the relationship between the town and the house, "It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white...Set on what had been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps..." (91). Next, the relationship between Emily and the home is established as Faulkner describes Emily as unchanging and unpleasant as her home, "Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (91). "She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue" (92). This, together with the portrayal of Miss Emily as a hermit, illustrate that Miss Emily and her home were one entity - the dying tradition of the old South - while the town symbolizes the South subsequent to the Civil War.
Overall, Falkner expressed his theme though Emily in the way that she looked, acted, and spoke. She kept to herself, unless she was disputing with someone about not wanting to change something. In the end, the narrator realized to what extent she went to stay true to her traditions, and the consequences that the inability to adapt to change can be. For Emily, there were no exterior consequences, such as jail time, but instead, the consequence was internal. She lived a sad, desolate, and still life, where things were unchanging and lacked color, movement, variation, or growth.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Literature An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 10th ed. Edgar V. Roberts, Robert Zweig. Glenview: Pearson, 2011. 91-96. Print.
