The Representation of Miss Emily as an Extended Metaphor in Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily

In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner uses imagery and symbolism to both illustrate and strengthen the most prevalent theme; Emily’s resistance to change. William Faulkner seems to reveal this theme through multiple descriptions of Miss Grierson’s actions, appearance, and her home. Throughout the short story it is obvious that Emily has a hard time letting go of her past, she seems to be holding onto every bit of her past. Readers see this shown in several ways, some more obvious than others.

In the end, with her death, which is where the story begins, Miss Emily is the talk of the town. Not because people truly mourn her, but because people are curious about the life she had lived in secret, in her big house, for all those years. People pitied her, it was as had been left alone in the world and seemed to have wished it that way.

William Faulkner once said, The article describes the fate of a southern town after the American Civil War. As the patriarch of the family, Emily's father leaned heavily to maintain the rank and dignity so he drove all the courtship to love Emily and deprived her of her right to happiness. After the death of her father, Emily fell in love with a foreman northerner that was building the railway for the town. But Emily still did not get rid of the shackles of family dignity and her father's influence on her approach. When she found that Homer Barron had no intention to marry her, she poisoned him with arsenic. Since then, Emily closed herself in the old house, and lived with his dead father for 40 years, until she died. The town residents found the secret at the funeral of Emily. William Faulkner is a pivotal figure in the history of American literature, known as the head of the Southern Renaissance and the leader of the Southern literature. "A Rose for Emily" is Faulkner's most classic short story. In this novel, Faulkner used a symbolic, like rose, Emily and the shadow of father, to reveal the contradictions and conflicts between the American old-age cultural minds and the northern industrial civilization after the civil war. He shaped a fallen southern aristocratic lady “Emily “in the tragedy of personal and social, realistic and traditional tragedy.

Miss Emily is also decaying, but it is subtle and internal--the awful smell that begins to permeate from her dwelling is a reflection of the withering woman within rotting. Perhaps most tragically, Miss Emily’s isolation is far from self-inflicted. Her blind devotion to the ones she loves; her father, her husband, her home; only serves to further condemn her actions. Her neighbors disregard toward her inabilty to let go of her father after his death, despite the delicacy of her being, caused for her madness to fester. “She told them her father was not dead.

William Faulkner wrote, "A Rose for Emily." In the gothic, short story he contrasted the lives of the people of a small Southern town during the late 1800's, and he compared their ability and inability to change with the time. The old or "Antebellum South" was represented by the characters Miss Emily, Colonel Sartoris, the Board of Aldermen, and the Negro servant. The new or "Modern South" was expressed through the words of the unnamed narrator, the new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron, and the townspeople. In the shocking story, "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner used symbolism and a unique narrative perspective to describe Miss Emily's inner struggles to accept time and change

Just as Miss Emily’s resistance to change is symbolized by the Grierson house so is Miss Emily’s loneliness. The Grierson house is so symbolic because it had once been a hub of activity with china painting lessons and guests. After the death of Emily’s father, the house was shut off from the rest of the world, very much like Miss Emily herself. The narrator tells us that “From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china painting.” (Faulkner 34). We can tell, and perhaps understand to some degree, that Miss Emily has a very real fear of being left alone. This is first revealed by her denial of her father’s death for several days. “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days” (Faulkner

Emily's father suppressed all of her inner desires. He kept her down to the point that she was not allowed to grow and change with the things around her. When “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated…only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (Rose 217). Even when he died, she was still unable to get accustom to the changes around her. The traditions that her and her father continued to participate in even when others stopped, were also a way that her father kept her under his thumb. The people of the town helped in

William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, is a dark tale of a young girl damaged by her father that ended up leaving her with abandonment issues. Placed in the south in the 1930’s, the traditional old south was beginning to go under transition. It went from being traditionally based on agriculture and slavery to gradually moving into industrial and abolition. Most families went smoothly into the transition and others, like the Griersons, did not. Keeping with southern tradition, the Griersons thought of themselves as much higher class then the rest of their community. Emily’s father found no male suitable for his daughter and kept her single into her thirties. After her fathers death Miss Emily was swept off of

When Miss Emily refuses to respond to a government letter regarding her taxes the Board of Alderman comes to visit her. When she comes in she is cold to the gentlemen, showing her lack of social skills which in many cases is a factor in mental Illness. Also before Miss Emily makes the guests leave she tells the, that if they still think she has taxes they need to "see Colonel Sartoris," (Faulkner 149) who has been dead ten years. This statement by Miss Emily could be seen as her minds unwillingness to live in the present. Her mind belives what it wants which is also the case after her fathers death. We see in the book that after her father’s death and her subsequent breakdown, Miss Emily was “sick for a long time." This could mean the state that Miss Emily refused to believe her father was gone. Right after the death of her father, the ladies of the town come to Miss Emily’s home to offer their condolences, and they observe that she had “no trace of grief on her face” (Faulkner 151). The inability to either feel or demonstrate appropriate emotion, is a classic symptom of mental illness. More explicitly, Miss Emily insisted to the visitors that “her father was not dead” (Faulkner 151). For this reason, Miss Emily would not let anyone remove her father's body until three days after her father should have been buried. Finally the third day “she broke down” and let the townspeople remove the body quickly

William Faulkner is a well-known author, whose writing belongs in the Realism era in the American Literary Canon. His writing was influence by his Southern upbringing, often setting his stories in the fictional Southern town, Yoknapatawpha County. “A Rose for Emily” was one of Faulkner’s first published pieces and displays many of the now signature characteristics of Faulkner’s writing. The short story provides commentary through the use of many symbols. In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, the author uses the townspeople as a representation of societal expectations and judgments, Emily and her house as symbols for the past, and Homer’s corpse as a physical representation of the fear of loneliness.

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a story about an elderly woman, Emily Grierson who represents the old south. “A Rose for Emily” consists of five parts. The story begins with the death of Emily Grierson. Then, the narrator takes the readers into a flashback to the time Miss Emily Grierson is alive. The narrator explains Grierson as a representation of the old south. The narrator describes Miss Emily Grierson actions rather than explain her thoughts on why she choses not to accept the new way of life or the New South. “A Rose for Emily” ends with a twist which is why readers view the story as a southern gothic. By the end of the story, the townspeople discover that Miss Emily Grierson was psychotic. She kills her companion, maybe-lover, Homer Barron with arsenic poison. Emily Grierson could not accept the changes that came along with the new south which transforms her into psychologically damaged spinster. In a sense, Grierson symbolizes the old south to the townspeople; She’s unwilling to change her old ways of living and accept the new south. Faulkner’s story, “A Rose for Emily” protagonist, Emily Grierson and the town symbolizes the old south, which readers can imply by the poor conditions of Grierson’s house, the reconstruction of the town, and Grierson’s funeral.

William Faulkner has done a wonderful work in his essay “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner uses symbols, settings, character development, and other literary devices to express the life of Emily and the behavior of the people of Jefferson town towards her. By reading the essay, the audience cannot really figure out who the narrator is. It seems like the narrator can be the town’s collective voice. The fact that the narrator uses collective pronoun we supports the theory that the narrator is describing the life of “Miss Emily” on behalf of the townspeople. Faulkner has used the flashback device in his essay to make it more interesting. The story begins with the portrayal of Emily’s funeral and it moves to her past and at the end the readers realize that the funeral is a flashback as well. The story starts with the death of Miss Emily when he was seventy-four years old and it takes us back when she is a young and attractive girl.

“A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner, tells the story of a lonely woman who is stuck in her own timeframe. Miss Emily refuses to adapt to the new ways of the South and keeps her own traditions instead. The town she lived in spread much gossip about her, they pitted her lost soul. “A Rose for Emily” highlights the traditions of the Old South vs the New, which is told through the life of Miss Emily who refuses to change.

In A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, the author exemplifies the Old South in the character of Emily Grierson. He uses decay to show how the South deteriorated after the civil war. Emily represents the refusal of the Old South to let go of the time-honored traditions and adapt to the changing culture. Even when Emily desperately makes an attempt to move forward, other devout traditionalists hold her back.

Emily’s father isolated her to the point she could not move on with her life. Her father is controlling and possibly to blame for her mental illnesses. This lead to Emily as an adult to keep herself in her home, and in due course become in denial about her father’s death. She does not let go of his body and refuses to have a burial for her father. Faulkner explains in the text after her father’s death she went out very little and people hardly saw her at all. It took a while for her to accept her father’s death and possibly the initial cause of her refusing to start any sort of life. There is nothing left for her, so she clings to her father who took away her change for a better life and cannot let him go. Her father is protective of her and her father cut off any future with her having a husband and overall controlling to her well-being. The second example is with the townspeople. The people isolate Emily based on her social status and believe she is better than them. The people do not take initiative and only assume the belief of her not wanting to leave her home because she is grieving her father’s death. The people do not feel they are obligated to help her based upon this outlook she cannot be helped and refuse to accept the misconduct of Emily declining to bury her father’s body and poisoning her husband after he tried to desert her. The certain events were not the townspeople’s fault overall, but from her upbringing. Emily is raised to think she is higher-class and is cut off from making any connections. Her father wanted her to not accept the fact the times are changing and isolated her from making any moral connections with the townspeople, even if they looked at her with high