A Rose for Emily Fiction Analysis
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is written in chronological order to tell a story of once a idolized, beautiful and prestigious women during the Civil War. Emily Grierson, and her once beautiful home that had once been the most select street of the town all symbolize decay in Faulkner’s writing(Faulkner, 1949, p.79). The death of her father, the death of her one love Homer Barren, and the old ways of Jefferson town, seemed to make Emily’s battles with change, and modernization apparent as she got older. Emily’s father had a major impact on her inner conflicts even after he had passed on. Even though Emily had a twisted and deep infatuation with the past, every reader can see a little bit of Emily Grierson in themselves.
The town of Jefferson was a southern town built on southern values and moral. In its hay day it was filled with Civil War soldiers and carried a southern town charm. Emily Grierson was part of a prestige’s family in the Jefferson. The Grierson estate sat on one of the most beautiful streets of the town. As time passed and the Civil war ended the people of Jefferson and the town of Jefferson modernized gracefully, but Miss Emily and her home did not (Faulkner, 1949, pg.79). The modernized sheriff sent out taxes to everyone in the town including Emily. Emily complete disregarded the letters and refused to pay her taxes. Many years ago Emily’s father had given a loan to the town and Colonel Sartoris had made a deal stating that the Grierson family no longer had to pay taxes. Even though a new mayor had been elected and Colonel Satoris had been dead for ten years, Emily refused to except change in her life. She continued on in her unrealistic world and was living in denial all throughout the modernization of the town. Along with her decaying metal status that was never directly implied in the story, her physical appearance seems to be decaying all throughout the story. Emily was described as a small, fat woman, with a skeleton that was small, and spare, and her eyes looked like two pieces of coal pressed in dough (Faulkner, 1949, pg.79-80).What used to be a beautiful and idolized woman no longer existed. The Grierson families’ home decayed with time as well. Miss Emily’s house was described as an eye sore among eye sores (Faulkner, 1949, pg. 79). As the town modernized it seemed as of the house and the owner were stuck in a time warp of their own.
Change is inevitable; Emily couldn’t effectively find a way of coping with change in her life. Emily lived in an unrealistic world of her own. You could blame her father for her twisted desire for the past. Her father drove every young man away from Emily