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A Rose For Emily House Essay

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A Rose for Emily People often say that one’s house is a reflection of their personality. A busy person might have a messy house or a person who likes aviation might have model airplanes. A house doesn’t just represent one’s interests though. It can represent the mental state and deeper truths about its inhabitant. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, there is an important emphasis on Miss Emily’s house and how it is a physical representation of her mind through the use of symbolism and Miss Emily’s conflicts and secrets throughout the story. Miss Emily’s house is a very significant part of the plot. It is so meaningful that Faulkner decided to start mentioning it in just the first few paragraphs. “It was a big, squarish frame house that …show more content…

Her father was quite authoritative. He drove many young men away from Emily and we can assume was very abusive toward her. “We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her clutching a horsewhip” (2). As a result, when Miss Emily’s father died she had nothing left and “ would have to cling to which had robbed her, as many people will” (2). Her house displayed this by developing a vulgar stench. The reason for the smell literally was because Miss Emily had kept her father’s dead body, but the smell represented that she was greatly troubled and broken and was starting to fall apart. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, there is an important emphasis on Miss Emily’s house and how it is a physical representation of her mind through the use of symbolism and Miss Emily’s conflicts and secrets throughout the story. In the beginning her house was pretty and clean just as Emily was before the events of the story. When her father died she was emotionally torn, so her house became smelly to represent that. Later in her life after she had murdered her sweetheart, she became more isolated and secretive, which was shown through her dusty and locked up

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