A Rose for Emily

Wanda Tapp-Kratzer

Prof Kocurek

English 1302 - (1002)

16 June 2016

“A Rose for Emily”

        The short story I admired the most while attending a literature class at Temple College was “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. Faulkner was able to grab my attention by using third person to describe characters set in the south at the turn of the century and symbols that clarified the essence of the story in ways words could not fully understand.  The story is about Miss Emily Grierson, a woman who lived in a southern town named Jefferson. She continued to live in her childhood home, even after her father lay dead there for three days.  The townspeople believed that Emily should pay her taxes.  Emily alleged she did not have to pay taxes because her father had an agreement with COL Sartoris. COL Sartoris died ten years earlier.  Emily had her eyes set on Homer Barron, a lowly street paver. The townspeople tried to prevent a relationship by sending for Emily’s egotistical cousins. Emily purchases arsenic and soon after a man’s toiletry set.  Homer Barron disappears, Emily becomes a recluse.  The house was emitting a horrendous smell.  Emily died and Homer was found in her house, dead in a bed, with an indented pillow next to him where lay a grey hair. The symbolism that William Faulkner used in this story was stupendous. Faulkner used symbols to enhance meaning of house, death, arsenic and lime.  

        The Grierson house was one important symbol that is portrayed in the story.  William Faulkner described it as follows:

“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 pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. (I.2)

The fact that the house was built in the 1870s tells us that Miss Emily's father must have been doing pretty well for himself after the Civil War. The narrator's description of it as an "eyesore among eyesores" is a double or even triple judgment” (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008).  He was undoubtedly one of the most prominent men in the town of Jefferson.  That once glorious house, that was able to survive the war, now stood as a dilapidated has been.  The description of the house sounds as if the house has died and withered away.

        Death was another dramatic symbol that was used throughout the story. It began with the death of Emily’s father, who had been in the house dead for three days before the townspeople were finally admitted to remove his body for burial.  What would possess Emily to keep her dead father inside their home?  Her father had been a protective, domineering man.  Was she still frightened of him even through death?  The unpaid taxes might be considered as death to some individuals.  Her father, the southern aristocrat’s secret of his money issues that resulted in the unpaid taxes still haunted Emily after his death.  Then there was the unexpected finale that no one would have guessed that ending to this story.  William Faulkner portrayed Emily as a victim of a domineering father who forced her to live a very sheltered, secluded life. It was unimaginable to think that Emily not only killed the love of her life, but she kept his body in a bed that she laid next to for many years.  Did Emily think the laws were different for southern aristocrats?  Emily almost succeeded in keeping the disappearance of Homer Barron a secret.  Surely the townspeople had an inkling of what was going on when the unbearable smells were being emitted from her house.