William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

William Faulkner’s short story ‘A Rose for Emily’ was one of his first and one of his most read. This story offers so many possibilities for interpretations mostly because of its unconventional style. The author describes what the world of Emily Grierson is like, a horrible world full of psychological issues. In this ‘A Rose for Emily’ analysis, I am going to discuss the main themes of the story. There are several themes and the major ones include death, isolation, and tradition vs change.

The story starts with a quick description of the funeral for Emily Grierson that the whole town went to. The narrator then tells Emily’s extremely strange behavior in a series of flashbacks throughout decades. The narration travels back and forth in

It is even mentioned in the first sentence. William Faulkner uses the theme of death to explain the strange life of Emily Grierson. This theme is so important to the story that Faulkner begins and ends this fiction story with her death. Emily even tries to take power over death by denying the of death of her father. With her being unable to admit that he has past, she clings to the controlling parental figure who did everything in his power to keep her isolated and control her. This became the only, yet extreme, type of love she ever knew. She only then gives up his body after days of it chilling in the house. Later in the story when Emily meets Homer, he also dies. Except this time Emily was responsible for the death of Homer. With poisoning him with arsenic she was able to make sure he never left her. Emily’s house can also be identified as a symbol for death when told by Faulkner that “only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores” because of how run down, old, and covered in dust it is. The house is decaying along with

Despite some wide-ranging changes in her hometown, Emily Grierson represents the old traditions of Jefferson. As a living monument of the past she’s to be treated with respect and honor, but at the same time she is also a burden and still lives in a time period where she is completely cut off from the outside world. While the new generation of Jefferson is busy industrializing the city and constructing cotton gins, Emily’s house is the only old building still standing. After the colonel protected and made sure she didn’t have to pay taxes by making up a deal he had with her father, later the new government leaders did not follow that path and wanted her to pay. She refused to pay multiple times and sent them on their way telling them to talk to Colonel Sartoris even though he died ten years earlier. That is another way it is shown that she is stuck in the