A Rose for Emily Analysis

"A Rose for Emily" is narrated in the first-person plural from the perspective of the
town. It utilizes the plural "we," indicating that the narrator is a collective rather than an
individual.

Faulkner uses foreshadowing to prepare the reader for the big reveal at the end
of the story. Some examples of foreshadowing include Emily buying the arsenic and
Emily refusing to acknowledge anyone's death.

There are many motifs in "A Rose for Emily," including the repeated references to
Emily's funeral, the cemetery, the law, taxes, corpses, doors, and hair.
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Analysis
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The extraordinary degree to which the young Faulkner managed to compress into this, his first published
story, many of the elements that came to be characteristic of his fiction is the effect of his unusual use of the
first-person point of view and his control of the motifs that flow from it.

By confining himself to the pronoun we, the narrator gives the reader the impression that the whole town
is bearing witness to the behavior of a heroine, about whom they have ambivalent attitudes, ambiguously
expressed. The ambiguity derives in part from the communitys lack of access to facts, stimulating the
narrator to draw on his own and the communal imagination to fill out the picture, creating a collage of
images. The narration gives the impression of coming out of a communal consciousness, creating the effect
of a peculiar omniscience. An entire novel could be developed from the material compressed into this short
story.

Is the narrator telling the story in the southern oral tradition or is he or she writing it? To ask basic questions
about this unusual collective mode of narrationwho, what, where, when, and whyis to stir up many
possibilities. The oral mode seems most appropriate, but the style, consisting of such phrases as diffident
deprecation, suggests the written mode.

A pattern of motifs that interact, contrasting with or paralleling one another, sometimes symbolically,
sometimes ironically, flows naturally from the reservoir of communal elements in the narrators saturated
consciousness as he tells the story: the funeral, the cemetery, the garages, cars, cotton gins, taxes, the law,
the market basket and other elements of black existence, the house, its front and back doors, its cellar and
upper rooms, the window where Emily sits, the idol image that becomes a fallen monument, images that
evoke the Civil War, images of gold, of decay, the color yellow, dust, shadows, corpses and bodies like
corpses, the smells, the breaking down of doors, the poison, and the images of hair.

To lend greater impact to the surprise ending and to achieve greater artistic unity and intensity of effect,
Faulkner uses other devices: foreshadowing, reversal, and repetition. Most of the motifs, spaced effectively
throughout, are repeated at least three times, enabling the reader to respond at any given point to all the
elements simultaneously.

Imitators of the surprise-ending device, made famous in modern times by O. Henry, have given that device a
bad name by using it mechanically to provoke a superficial thrill. In raising the surprise-ending device to the
level of complex art, Faulkner achieves a double impact: The man himself lay on the bed is shock enough,
justified by what has gone before, but the long strand of iron-gray hair, the charged image that ends the
story, shocks the reader into a sudden, intuitive reexperiencing and reappraisal of the stream of images,
bringing order and meaning to the pattern of motifs.

Historical Context
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The South after the Civil War

The Reconstruction after the Civil War had a profound and humbling effect on Southern society. The Souths
outdated plantation economy, based so long upon slave labor, was devastated by emancipation. Northern
opportunists, known as carpet-baggers, came in droves to take advantage of the economic chaos. Some
Southern aristocrats found themselves working the land alongside tenant farmers and former slaves.
Faulkner came from a family that once owned a plantation. The history of his family and of the South in
general inspired Faulkners imagination.

The short stories and novels Faulkner wrote about Yoknapatawpha County combine to create an epic,
mythical history of this era. David Minter, in his biography William Faulkner: His Life and Work, notes that
as a teenager, Faulkner was known for being observational to the point of oddness: Sometimes he joined
the old men of Oxford on the town square there he sat or stood motionless, quiet, as though held fast by
some inner scene or some inner sense of himself. It was in this manner that Faulkner soaked up the legends
of his region. He heard Civil War stories from the old veterans, hunting stories from his father, stories of his
great-grandfathers heroic exploits from his grandfather, and fables about the animals in the forest told by
Mammy Caroline Barr, an ex-slave who watched over him when he was a small boy. The stories he heard,
along with his experiences in Oxford during his own lifetime, greatly inform the scope of his work.

A Rose for Emily, in a few pages, covers approximately three-quarters of a century. The birth of Emily
Grierson takes place sometime around the Civil War. Her death takes place sometime in the late 1920s or
early 1930sthat is, sometime around the year Faulkner wrote the story. Because Faulkner came from a
family with an aristocratic bearing and associated with other similar families, he was familiar with the
arrogance of characters like the Griersons. Some of these people continued to behave as if they were still
privileged plantation owners although their wealth was gone. However, Faulkner spent much of his time
observing ordinary townspeople as well, and this is why he was able to capture the voice of the common
people of Jefferson in the character of the narrator.

The narrator in A Rose for Emily notes a change in the character of his town when Jeffersons Board of
Aldermen attempts to collect Emilys taxes. Originally, the town was governed by men of the old South like
Colonel Sartoris and Judge Stevens. Men like this operated under a code of chivalry that was extremely
protective of white women. Thus, Colonel Sartoris is unable to allow the town to tax a poor spinster, and
Judge Stevens is unable to confront Emily about the smell coming from her house. As each generation
passes the torch, however, the newer generations are further and further away from the antiquated social
mores of their forebears. The men who try to collect Emilys taxes dont operate under the same code of
conduct as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did. Emily is not a damsel in distress to these men;
she is a nuisance, a hindrance to progress. Faulkner was very interested in this conflict between nineteenth
and twentieth-century Southern society. The old Southern families of his novels, such as the Compsons
in The Sound and the Fury, ultimately collapse under the weight of their histories. In A Rose for Emily,
Emily Grierson is certainly a character trapped in her genteel past, although she literally has a skeleton in
the closet.

A Rose for Emily

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Miss Emily met Homer Baron, a foreman with a construction company, when her hometown was first
getting paved streets. Her father had already died but, not before driving away her eligible suitors. As rumors
circulate about her possible marriage to a Yankee, Homer leaves town abruptly. During his absence, Miss
Emily buys rat poison.

When Homer returns, the townspeople see him enter Miss Emilys house but not leave. Only when she dies
do the townspeople discover his corpse on a bed in her house and, next to it, a strand of Miss Emilys hair.

This Gothic plot makes serious points about womans place in society. Throughout the story, the reader is
aware that these events are taking place during a time of transition: The town is finally getting sidewalks and
mailboxes. More important, values are changing. The older magistrates, for example, looked on Miss Emily
paternally and refused to collect taxes from her; the newer ones try, unsuccessfully, to do so.

Caught in these changing times, Miss Emily is trapped in her role as genteel spinster. Without a husband, her
life will have no meaning. She tries to give lessons in painting china but cannot find pupils for this out-of-
date hobby and finally discontinues them. If Homer is thinking of abandoning her, as his departure implies,
one can understand her desire to clutch at any sort of union, even a marriage in death.

The theme is developed through an exceptionally well-crafted story. Told from a third-person plural point of
view, it reveals the reactions of the town to Miss Emily. As this we narrator shifts allegiance--now
criticizing Miss Emily, now sympathizing with her--the reader sees the trap in which she is caught, and the
extensive but unobtrusive foreshadowing prepares the reader for the storys final revelation without
detracting from its force.

Literary Style
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Flashback and Foreshadowing

Flashback and foreshadowing are two often used literary devices that utilize time in order to produce a
desired effect. Flashbacks are used to present action that occurs before the beginning of a story;
foreshadowing creates expectation for action that has not yet happened. Faulkner uses both devices in A
Rose for Emily. The story is told by the narrator through a series of non-sequential flashbacks. The narrator
begins the story by describing the scene of Emilys funeral; this description, however, is actually a flashback
because the story ends with the narrators memory of the towns discovery of the corpse in the Grierson
home after Emilys funeral. Throughout the story, the narrator flashes back and forth through various events
in the life and times of Emily Grierson and the town of Jefferson. Each piece of the story told by the narrator
prompts another piece of the story, regardless of chronology. For example, the narrator recalls Emilys
funeral, which leads him to remember when Colonel Sartoris relieved her of taxes. This of course leads to
the story of the aldermen trying to collect Emilys taxes after the death of the Colonel. The narrative thus
works much in the same haphazard manner as human memory does.

The narrator foreshadows the grisly discovery at the end of the story with several scenes. First, when the
aldermen attempt to collect Emilys taxes, her house is described as decrepit, almost a mausoleum. Emily
herself is compared to a drowned corpse. Then, in section two, the stench that emanates from the Grierson
house is most certainly one of death. Another powerful example of foreshadowing comes when Emily
refuses to let anyone take the body of her father after his death until she relents after three days. When Emily
finally has access to another corpse, she jealously guards it for over forty years!

Point of View
The point of view in A Rose for Emily is unique. The story is told by an unnamed narrator in the first-
person collective. One might even argue that the narrator is the main character. There are hints as to the age,
race, gender, and class of the narrator, but an identity is never actually revealed. Isaac Rodman notes in The
Faulkner Journal that the critical consensus remains that the narrator speaks for his community. (Rodman,
however, goes on to present a convincing argument that the narrator may be a loner or eccentric of some
kind speaking from ironic detachment.) Regardless of identity, the narrator proves to be a clever,
humorous, and sympathetic storyteller. He is clever because of the way he pieces the story together to build
to a shocking climax. His humor is evident in his almost whimsical tone throughout what most would
consider to be a morbid tale. Finally, the narrator is sympathetic to both Emily and the town of Jefferson.
This is demonstrated in his pity for Emily and in his understanding that the towns reactions are driven by
circumstances beyond its control (Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary
obligation upon the town).

Setting
A Rose for Emily is set in Faulkners mythical county, Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi. The town of
Jefferson is the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. In William Faulkner: His Life and Work, David Minter
writes, More than any major American writer of our time, including Robert Frost Faulkner is associated
with a region. He is our great provincial. Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County are based upon the real city
of Oxford and Lafayette County in Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. Once he established
this fictional, yet familiar, setting, he was able to tap his creativity to invent a history for Yoknapatawpha
and populate the county with colorful characters like Emily Grierson and Colonel Sartoris. The land and its
history exert a great influence over many of Faulkners characters. Emily is no exception; she is trapped in
Jeffersons past.

Structure
The best of Faulkner's fiction is characterized by the craftsmanship of its structure. The Sound and the
Fury and As I Lay Dying are both examples of daring experimentation with point of view and time in the
novel. He wrote A Rose for Emily during the same period he worked on those novels. The story moves
seamlessly back and forth in time through almost fifty years in its five sections. Each episode in the life of
Emily and the history of Jefferson is obviously interconnected, yet the clues arent given in chronological
order. Thus, the final scene is powerful because the narrator does not tell the story in a straightforward,
beginning-to-end fashion. This is why the story is even more entertaining and enlightening when read for the
second time.

When was "A Rose for Emily" published?

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William Faulkner's (1897-1962) short story "A Rose for Emily" was originally published in the April 30,
1930 edition of The Forum, a widely-read American magazine founded in 1885. It was the first story
Faulkner published in a national magazine, and is set in Yoknapatawpha County, the fictional county
featured in many of Faulkner's other novels and stories.

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Summary

What is the order of events in "A Rose for Emily" by William

Faulkner?
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One of the things that makes William Faulkners A Rose for Emily intriguing and memorable is its
enigmatic plot. Events are not related in linear order; rather, the story travels back and forth in time. The
reader is yanked in and out of spaces and across years, making Emilys crime hard to immediately discern.
While the plot can be a fun puzzle, it can also be frustratingly difficult to follow at times. Here is a list of
what occurs in the story in chronological order:

1. Emilys father dies

2. Colonel Sartoris pays Emilys taxes
3. Colonel Sartoris dies
4. Homer comes to town
5. Emily purchases arsenic
6. Homer goes missing
7. A smell emerges and becomes stronger
8. Aldermen try to collect taxes from Emily
9. Emily dies and Homer's body is discovered
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Summary

What are the conflicts in "A Rose for Emily"?

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All literature involves conflict of some kind. Without conflict, there is not much of a story. There are four
types of conflict. Most works will involve more than one. In A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner employs
all four. The types of conflict are:

1. Man* v. Man
2. Man v. Nature
3. Man v. Society
4. Man v. Self.

*Note: Man refers to both men and women.

1. Man v. Man

There are two primary man v. man conflicts in the story.

Emily v. Her Father

Emilys father deliberately keep his daughter single by chasing away all her suitors:

None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. 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 and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.
So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with
insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized
(II.25).

Emily v. Homer

There are both class and social conflicts between Emily and Homer. Emily is of Southern aristocracy, while
Homer is a day laborer. Emily is desperate for marriage, while Homer is not ready to settle down.

So the next day we all said, She will kill herself; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first
begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, She will marry him. Then we said, She will persuade
him yet, because Homer himself had remarkedhe liked men, and it was known that he drank with the
younger men in the Elks Clubthat he was not a marrying man (IV.43).

2. Man v. Society

When an individuals values and needs conflict with societys values and needs, conflict results. There are
three types of man v. society conflicts in A Rose for Emily.

Emily v. Aldermen

When Emilys father was alive, he paid the property taxes on their home; he arranged for his friend, Colonel
Sartoris, to continue paying the taxes after his passing on behalf of his daughter. After the colonels death,
the younger generation was no longer interested in maintaining their hereditary obligation. For her part,
Emily feels no sense of duty to pay the taxes herself.

When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement
created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and
there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience.
A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a
note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer
went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment (I.4).

Emily vs. Public Acceptability

There are two areas of Emilys private life encroaching on the public, and the public finds her choices
unacceptable.

The first is her outings with Homer. The town views her suitor as beneath her:

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, Of course a
Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer. But there were still others, older people,
who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse obligewithout calling it noblesse
oblige. They just said, Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her. She had some kin in Alabama; but
years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there
was no communication between the two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral (III.31).

The second is the smell that begins wafting from her home and becomes increasingly intolerable:

The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. We
really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but weve got
to do something. That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one younger man, a member
of the rising generation.
Its simple enough, he said. Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it
in, and if she dont . . .
Dammit, sir, Judge Stevens said, will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?
So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like
burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a
regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door
and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings (II.21-24).

3. Man v. Nature

At the turn of the twentieth century, an unmarried woman past the age of thirty had very few chances of ever
finding a husband. Aging is not helping Emily's prospects, and whatever beauty she may have had is fading
fast. Here is a description of her appearance when the aldermen pay her a visit:

They rose when she entereda small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist
and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small
and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She
looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the
fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved
from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand (I.6).

4. Man v. Himself

For Emily, the entire story is one large internal conflict. She has suitors and seems interested, but her father
chases them away. She must experience some conflict when she dates Homer, a man well beneath her social
station. The most obvious conflict she has is whether to let the man with whom she has fallen in love go or
keep him with her. Forever.

The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had
apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers
even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the
nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside
him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it,
and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-
gray hair.
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Themes and Meanings

Where is there symbolism in "A Rose for Emily"?

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Symbolism is a literary device in which a writer uses a concrete object to represent an abstract idea. While
not all writers use symbolism, Faulkner has chosen to employ symbolism in at least seven different ways in
A Rose for Emily.

1. Dust: Dust can be symbolic of many things: neglect, aging, things that are overlooked, and/ or the biblical
concept of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There are seven different mentions of dust throughout the story. Here
is an example of those instances:

It smelled of dust and disusea close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in
heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the
leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with
slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss
Emilys father (I.5).

2. Rat/ Snake: Both of these animals are associated with conniving and dishonesty. The druggist offers
Emily rat poison.

I want some poison, she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner
than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and
about the eye-sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keepers face ought to look. I want some poison, she
said.
"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom (III.33-34)

Later, the townspeople begin looking for the source of the terrible smell emanating from Emilys home:

It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him about it (II.20).

3. Iron: this metal is associated with being cold and inflexible. Emilys hair is described as iron gray.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next few years
it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to
the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man (IV.48).

4. Black: The color black is associated with death and funerals, but it also has a more abstract meaning of
being psychologically dead.

Emily is described as a small, fat woman in black and she has cold, haughty black eyes (I.6, III.34).
5. Closed houses or rooms: There is a psychological component to doors shutting and rooms being sealed
off. Here are two examples of closing in the story:

The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed (IV.47).
From that time on her front door remained closed (IV.49).

6. Barron: Homers last name is Barron. If the vowel is changed to an e, his name can take on a new
meaning. If something is barren, it cannot bear fruit. Therefore, the relationship was doomed before it
began. His first name may also be a clue as to his nature; perhaps this Homer has something in common
with the ancient Greek master in that they both spin stories.

7. Rose: There is no rose in A Rose for Emily. Using this symbolic flower in the title may conjure up
some abstract meanings, including love but also, due to its strong scent, may hint at death. The tradition of
bringing flowers to a funeral comes from the need to cover the smell of decay.

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Themes and Meanings

What is Faulkner's primary metaphor in "A Rose for Emily"?

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A metaphor is a literary device in which a writer compares two things that seem to have nothing in common
but actually do have some similarities. The metaphor Faulkner uses most often compares Emily to a fallen
monument.

In "A Rose for Emily," the pre-Civil War aristocracy is fading. The old homes are falling into decay and
repairs are being neglected. The old ways are being ignored and replaced with new values.

Likewise, Emily is aging. Her slight beauty is gone. No one in the new generation is interested in
maintaining the hereditary obligation with which they have been bestowed" to pay Emily's taxes on her
behalf. While Faulkner only uses the words fallen monument once, the entire story revolves around this
essential metaphor:

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful
affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no
one save an old man-servanta combined gardener and cookhad seen in at least ten years.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled
balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once 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 pumpsan eyesore among eyesores. . .
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town,
dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayorhe who fathered the edict that no Negro
woman should appear on the streets without an apronremitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the
death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris
invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the
town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris generation and
thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement
created some little dissatisfaction.
(I.1-4)

hemes and Meanings

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Miss Emilys story is certainly bizarre, suspenseful, and mysterious enough to engage the readers attention
fully. She is a grotesque, southern gothic character whose neurotic or psychotic behavior in her relationships
with her father, her lover, and her black servant may elicit many Freudian interpretations. For example, her
affair with Homer Barron may be seen as a middle-aged womans belated rebellion against her repressive
father and against the towns burdensome expectations. That William Faulkner intended her story to have a
much larger dimension is suggested by his choice of an unnamed citizen of Jefferson to tell it.

The narrator never speaks or writes as an individual, never uses the pronoun I, always speaks as we. As
representative of the townspeople, the narrator feels a compulsion to tell the story of a woman who
represents something important to the community. Black voices are excluded from this collective voice as it
speaks out of old and new generations. Colonel Sartoriss antebellum generation is succeeded by one with
modern ideas: Thus, she passed from generation to generation.

Even though Miss Emily was a child during the Civil War, she represents to generations past and present the
old Deep South of the Delta cotton-plantation aristocracy. She is a visible holdover into the modern South of
a bygone era of romance, chivalry, and the Lost Cause. Even this new South, striving for a prosperity based
on Northern technology, cannot fully accept the decay of antebellum culture and ideals. Early, the narrator
invokes such concepts as tradition, duty, hereditary obligation, and custom, suggesting a perpetuation in the
community consciousness of those old values. The communitys sense of time is predominantly
chronological, but it is also like Emilys, the confused, psychological time sense of memory. Like many
women of the defeated upper class in the Deep South, Miss Emily withdraws from the chronological time of
reality into the timelessness of illusion.

Miss Emily is then symbolic of the religion of southernness that survived military defeat and material
destruction. The children of Colonel Sartoriss generation are sent to learn china-painting from Miss Emily
in the same spirit that they were sent to church. It is because we see her as resembling those angels in
colored church windows that her affair with a Yankee makes her a bad example to the young people.
Given the fact that the Yankee colonel who made the deepest raid into Rebel territory was named Grierson,
Faulkner may have intended Emilys family name to be ironic. The insanity of clinging to exposed illusions
is suggested by the fact that Miss Emilys great-aunt went crazy and that Miss Emily later appears crazy
to the townspeople. Ironically, even within aristocratic families there is division; her father fell out with
Alabama kinsmen over the great-aunts estate.

Immediately after the narrator refers to Miss Emily as being like an idol and to her great-aunt as crazy,
Faulkner presents this image, symbolic of the aristocracy: 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 and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. Her fathers
rejection of her suitors is like the defeated aristocracys rejection of new methods of creating a future.
Emilys refusal to accept the fact of her fathers death suggests the refusal of some aristocrats to accept the
death of the South even when faced with the evidence of its corpse. Perversely, She would have to cling to
that which had robbed her, as people will. However, the modern generations insist on burying the decaying
corpse of the past.

Miss Emily preserves all the dead, in memory if not literally. See Colonel Sartoris, she tells the new town
fathers, as if he were alive. The townspeople are like Miss Emily in that they persist in preserving her
dignity as the last representative of the Old South (her death ends the Grierson line); after she is dead, the
narrator preserves her in this story. The rose is a symbol of the age of romance in which the aristocracy were
obsessed with delusions of grandeur, pure women being a symbol of the ideal in every phase of life. Perhaps
the narrator offers this story as a rose for Emily. As a lady might press a rose between the pages of a
history of the South, she keeps her own personal rose, her lover, preserved in the bridal chamber where a
rose color pervades everything. Miss Emilys rose is ironically symbolic because her lover was a modern
Yankee, whose laughter drew the townspeople to him and whose corpse has grinned profoundly for forty
years, as if he, or Miss Emily, had played a joke on all of them.

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What are the conflicts in "A Rose for Emily"?
Where is there symbolism in "A Rose for Emily"?
What is Faulkner's primary metaphor in "A Rose for Emily"?

Themes
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Death
Death is prevalent, both literally and figuratively, in A Rose for Emily. Five actual deaths are discussed or
mentioned in passing, and there are obvious references to death throughout the story. The story begins in
section one with the narrators recollections of Emilys funeral. He reminisces that it is Emilys fathers
death that prompts Colonel Sartoris to remit her taxes into perpetuity. This leads to the story of the
aldermen attempting to collect taxes from Emily. The narrators description of Emily is that of a drowned
woman: She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. One
of the reasons the aldermen are bold enough to try to collect Emilys taxes is that Colonel Sartoris has been
dead for a decade. Of course, this doesnt discourage Emilyshe expects the men to discuss the matter with
him anyway. When the narrator returns to the subject of the death of Emilys father, he reveals that Emily at
first denies that he is dead. She keeps his body for three days before she finally breaks down and allows her
father to be buried. This scene foreshadows the grisly discovery at the end of the story. The narrator also
mentions the madness and death of old lady Wyatt, Emilys great-aunt. Finally, the discovery of a long
strand of iron-gray hair lying on a pillow next to the moldy corpse entombed in Emilys boudoir suggests
that Emily is a necrophiliac (literally, one who loves the dead).

The Decline of the Old South

One of the major themes in Faulkners fiction is the decline of the Old South after the Civil War. There are
many examples of this theme in A Rose for Emily. Before the Civil War, Southern society was composed
of landed gentry, merchants, tenant farmers, and slaves. The aristocratic men of this period had an unspoken
code of chivalry, and women were the innocent, pure guardians of morality. For example, Colonel Sartoris
concocts an elaborate story to spare Emilys feelings when he remits her taxes; the narrator states, Only a
man of Colonel Sartoriss generation and thought could have invented [the story], and only a woman could
have believed it. When the smell develops around the Grierson house, a younger man suggests that Emily
should be confronted with it. Judge Stevens, who is from the same generation as the Colonel, asks him,
Dammit, sir will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad? It is also noted that Emilys father is
from this same generation, an arrogant Southern aristocrat who believes that no man is good enough for his
daughter.

However, post-Civil War society in the South was radically different. At one time, the Grierson home was in
one of the finest neighborhoods in Jefferson; by the time of Emilys death, garages and cotton gins had
encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood. The generation that follows
Colonel Sartoris is not swayed by his old Southern code of honor. This is why the twentieth-century
Jefferson Board of Aldermen attempts to collect Emilys taxes a decade after the Colonels death. The
reaction to the Yankee Homer Barron, also serves to delineate the difference between the generations. The
younger generation finds it easier to accept Homer, while the older folks find his relationship with a woman
born to old Southern gentility unacceptable. Emilys china-painting lessons also show the change in
Southern society. Her pupils are the daughters and grand-daughters of Colonel Sartoriss contemporaries.
However, the narrator notes that the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children
to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies magazines. Finally, Emilys
dark secret might serve as a metaphor for the general decadence of the Old South.

Community vs. Isolation

The odd relationship between the town of Jefferson and Emily is a recurrent theme in A Rose for Emily.
At her funeral, the narrator notes that Emily has been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary
obligation upon the town. However, Emily has very little to do with the townspeople during her life. Her
father prevents her from dating anyone because he doesnt believe any of the men in Jefferson are good
enough for her, and after his death, Emily continues to isolate herself from the rest of the community for the
better part of her life. The only notable exceptions to her isolation are her Sunday rides with Homer Barron,
her shopping trips for arsenic and mens clothing, and the china-painting lessons she gives to the young
women of the town for a few years. These exceptions only serve to show how alienated Emily is from the
rest of Jefferson.

Although Emily is indifferent to the town, the town seems to be almost obsessed with her. The reaction
Jefferson has to her relationship with Homer Barron exemplifies this obsession. The ladies of Jefferson are
mortified because they think the relationship is a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young
people. The older people dislike the relationship because they think it is bad form for a Southern woman to
associate with a Yankee. The narrator pities Emily and secretly hopes that she will outsmart her cousins and
marry Homer. These various reactions demonstrate an interesting conflict. Even though Emily views herself
as separate from the community, the community still embraces her. They view her as an idol in a niche
passed from generation to generationdear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

Next:CharactersPrevious:Chapter Summaries
A Rose for Emily Homework Help Questions
In Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," why has no one suspected Emily of the murder of Homer Barron?
The townspeople do, indeed, suspect something afoul after Emily's father died and after "her sweetheart
went away." When one of Emily's neighbors complains in Part II of "A Rose for...
In the story "A Rose for Emily," is it significant that Emily is the last Grierson? Why or why...
For similar reasons to those posted above, I would also say the answer is yes. Emily's status as the last in a
family line is important to the meaning of the story. As the world changes around...
Discuss the symbolism of Emily, the Negro manservant and the house she lived in "A Rose for...
TOBE, THE MANSERVANT. The African-American manservant symbolizes the slavery of the ante-bellum
Old South. He serves Emily faithfully until her death; afterward, he disappears and is never seen...
Explain Faulkner's technique in "placing" a gray hair on Miss Emily's bed in "A Rose for...
In William Faulkner's Southern Gothic short story "A Rose for Emily", the narrator (in the form of the
"voices of the townsfolk") had been hinting at something mysterious that must have taken place...
A Rose for Emily: Feminist Work?Can one consider "A Rose for Emily" a feminist work?...
Emily's only empowering act is in poisoning Homer Barron; she claims him in death as she has claimed her
father and an antiquated system in which she has been dominated. Emily chooses only at the...
Homework Help > A Rose for Emily

What is the exposition, climax, rising action, falling

action, and resolution of "A Rose for Emily"?
We do not necessarily have to consider the story in chronological order in order to assess these elements. In
fact, the story is not presented to us in chronological order, so I would argue that we ought to honor the order
of events in which we do get the story when analyzing it. As a result, descriptions of Miss Emily's funeral,
the town's feelings about her during her life, and her taxes are all exposition.

The rising action begins with the description of the smell that once emanated from Miss Emily's home, thirty
years prior to the tax conflict and just two years or so after her father's death. Next, we learn about her
father's belief when Emily was young that no one was good enough for her. Then he dies, leaving her all
alone, something that she is clearly uncomfortable with because she hoards his body for days before
allowing people to take it away and bury it. This is also an important instance of rising action because
Emily's odd treatment of the dead is a clue to understanding the story's climax. Emily gets sick, recovers,
meets Homer Barron, buys arsenic, refuses to tell the druggist what she needs it for, and buys wedding gifts
for Homer, before he disappears into her home for good, never to be seen again: This all falls under the
characterization of rising action, as is the description of her "iron-gray" hair.

Finally, Emily dies, and after her funeral, townspeople know that the door to one room upstairs "would have
to be forced open." It had not been opened for some forty years. In the story's climax, there is the "violence
of breaking down the door" and the discovery of Homer Barron's decayed body, surrounded by his bridal
suit and the gifts Miss Emily purchased for him. This is the moment of the most tension in the story: we
learn that she has hoarded Homer's body just as she did her father's.
In the story's falling action, the narrator describes Homer's body, its attitude, and final posture, as well as the
fact that it has essentially rotted so much that it "had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay." In
the story's resolution, we learn that a long piece of Emily's easily identifiable (as a result of the earlier
description in the rising action) hair is found on the pillow beside Homer's. At this point, what we might
have suspected is confirmed: Emily murdered Homer in order to prevent him from ever leaving her, as he
apparently briefly did when her awful family came to visit at the request of the townsfolk.

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troutmiller | High School Teacher | (Level 2) Educator

Posted on January 18, 2009 at 12:35 AM

This story is told almost backwards with its use of flashbacks. So the way to examine it's plot sections is also
backwards. The exposition of the story would be when the author introduces her father and we see his
personality and her background. We know the characters involved and the conflict. Emily is too good for
any man, according to her father, so he keeps her from dating/marrying. Then he dies, which is another
conflict for her--being alone. This carries on throughout the story. She does not want to be left.

The rising action involves most of the rest of the storyline including the town's attitude towards her and her
fling with Homer. Even the part where she buys the arsenic and the house smells something awful. The
town even spreads lime around the house to help keep the smell down.

The climax is not until the last few lines of the story when we find Homer's body and one of her gray hairs
on the pillow next to his corpse. We realize that she had poisoned him so he wouldn't leave, (and that was
the awful smell earlier) and that she has been lying with him ever since.

The falling action is about a decade before she dies when they try to get her tax money from her. She holds
them off, though. And the resolution then is the really at the beginning when she is introduced at her own
funeral.