The Past Vs. the Present

The Past vs. the Present

In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner uses history as the basis of his story. Faulkner uses a story to tell us about a situation in history. This story is about how older generations are replaced by new ones. Faulkner’s story gives us an impression of his view on the situation. This is a story about the old south verses the new south. Faulkner uses Emily to represent the old south and the town to represent the new, the past against the present.

The second paragraph gives a picture of what Emily had once been. Emily lives in the area that was once the rich and select part of town, but it is now run down and pushed out by technology. Faulkner expresses this well in the second paragraph with the sentence: “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” (171-172). This clearly establishes Emily and her house as a part of history which is dieing out, she is just a rundown piece of the past. Faulkner even says that she now will join her people in the cemetery, further setter her apart from the new south.

Emily represents the old south’s values which are trying to hold on while being pushed out by the new south. Emily represents the south before the civil war, a south that was part of slavery and tradition. The town sees Emily as the old dieing generation which is a symbol of the past, but they still respect her to a point. They try to break away from her kind of values and bring her with them, but Emily refuses to be a part of what the town represents. She refuses to pay taxes every year because she claims that Colonel Sartoris told her she never had to pay them again. The fact that Emily lived in the time where a Colonel was important enough to exempt her from taxes, sets her back in history in the towns view. Emily makes a point to refuse everything coming from the new age. She does not let the town give her a mail box, which is a symbol of her refusal to join the new.