A Rose for Emily

Dhusten

In the story, “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner uses a great deal of description to explain to the reader how Emily is as an individual. He also includes subtle details about her reaction to her father’s death, and then later with her love life. All of these details add up to define who Emily is as a person, and how she handles certain circumstances in her life. This story discusses how Emily and her father are very close, and her father is very worried about her finding a proper husband. When he finally passes away she is devastated, and the man that he had chosen to be her future husband takes off. Miss Emily ends up running out of time to be happy, and she leaves the town that hated her with a dessemated old house, and a gruesome secret.

She is left alone to mourn the death of the father, and doesn’t take the passing well. She refuses to let his body leave the house until three days after his death. The townspeople did a great deal of the convincing of that. Later in the story the reader can see that Emily became quite unsociable, and for 10 years most people didn’t see her. She was not all that friendly, and a lot of people didn’t pay too much attention to her, other than the smells that emitted from her home later on. The townspeople also had issues with the fact that she was not forced to pay taxes, as agreed to by an old arrangement. When they confronted Emily about it she refused to pay wholeheartedly.

Regarding the smell coming from her home, the townspeople had a huge issue with it, but eventually lime was sprinkled around the property to rid the area of the stench. This was widely appreciated by the locals, and solved a lot of problems for Emily without her even having to lift a finger. The stench was questioned a bit though as to where is was coming from. No one had entered her home in 10 years by the time she had passed herself except for her servant, and that was strange for that time period.

Miss Emily's house is an important symbol in this story. (In general, old family homes are often significant symbols in Gothic literature.) For most of