(COLAGE)

AMERICAN LITERATURE

DEATH IN FOULKNER’S „A ROSE FOR FOR EMILY“

Mentor: Student:

Jun, 2021.
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
1. Plot summary...............................................................................................................................4
2. Death in A Rose for Emily..........................................................................................................6
2.1. The symbolism of death in the story................................................................................................7

2.2. Death and fear of losing a loved one................................................................................................8

2.3. A symbolic representation of death in the character of Emily Grirson...........................................10

Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
Literature........................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction

Faulkner's literary work "Rose for Emily" talks about many dark themes characteristic of Gothic fiction. The story
explores the themes of death and resistance to change. In addition, it reflects the decline of society in the 1930s.
Emily Grierson's father oppressed most of her life, which she did not question because she was used to such a way
of life. Likewise, outdated traditions in the south remained acceptable because it was their way of life. Emily's
inability to adapt to the changes is shown in a scene in which she refuses to hand over his body for burial after her
father's death. Also, her stubborn insistence on not paying taxes may call into question whether her actions of
resistance are a conscious act of defiance or the result of broken mental stability. Emily is shown to the reader only
from an external perspective, we cannot determine whether she is behaving rationally or not.

Faulkner tells the story using two different methods: through a series of flashbacks in which events are told
subjectively and in detail, and from an objective perspective in which the narrator turns into the plural pronoun "we"
to show the linear causality of events. Presenting the story in terms of present and past events, he was able to
examine how they affect each other. The story begins with the announcement of Emily's death, an event that the
whole city is talking about. Disrupting the linear flow of the narrative chronology, the short story focuses on small
details that lead to different conclusions towards the end of the story.

Control and its consequences are a lasting theme throughout the story. A consistent theme throughout the story is
also the theme of death. Due to this inevitability in the portrayal of death, "A Rose for Emily" is seen as a tale based
on determinism, making the short story part of the naturalism literary movement.

As can already be concluded, the purpose and goal of this paper is to present and further shed light on the theme of
death in the story „ A Rose for Emily“.

The paper structurally consists of an introductory part, which briefly explains what will be discussed later in the
paper, and two chapters, the first of which briefly summarizes the plot of the story, while the second chapter deals
with the analysis of the use of death and its symbolism in the story.

At the end of the paper, there is a short concluding discussion and a list of literature used during the preparation of
the paper.

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1. Plot summary

The story illustrates Miss. Emily's miserable life from the town people's perspective. The third-person plural narrator
represents the voice of the whole town. The story is known to all: men and women. They go to her funeral, 'men
through a sort of respectful affection' and women 'out of curiosity to see the inside of her house which no one…had
seen in the last ten years.' The unnamed narrator provides details about the mysterious life of Miss Emily: the
archaic house, Colonel Sartoris remitting her taxes, new generation demanding tax payment, the nasty smell coming
from the house, peculiar relationship with father and later with lover.

Moreover, the text lends itself to different interpretations and themes: Miss Emily's tragic life, father-daughter
relationship, southern identity, north and south, love and marriage, old generation and new generation, change in the
American south and its negative effect on Miss. Emily, past and present, racism, slavery, social norms and time and
its effect on the main character.

The story begins with a short account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southerner whose funeral is the
responsibility of their small town (Foulkner, Rose for Emily, 1930). This is followed by a presentation of the
narrator's memories of Emily's archaic and increasingly strange behavior over the years. Emily is a member of the
southern aristocratic family, which finds itself in a difficult situation after the civil war. Emily and her father, the
only two remaining from the clan, continue to live as in the past. Emily's father does not allow her to marry. When
Emily is about 30 years old, to her surprise, her father dies. She refuses to give up his corpse, which citizens
attribute to her grieving process. Emily was very dependent on her father, and she lived in the belief that he would
never leave her. Emily's father was all she had.

After her father's death, the only person seen in Emilia's home is Tobe, a black man who serves as Emilia's butler.
They often see him coming in and out of the house to get groceries. Although Emily did not have a strong
relationship with her community, she gave art classes to the children. The main reason she held classes was because
she was running out of money. As a consequence of Emily's disrespect by her fellow citizens, cruel comments about
her and nasty looks behind her back appear. After accepting her father's death, Emily comes to life a bit, changes her
hairstyle, and befriends Homer Barron. He is a worker from the north who comes to the city soon after the death of
Mr. Grierson. Opinions about their relationship are divided, some from the community are surprised by her, while
others are glad that Emily is having fun. However, "Homer loves men and claims he is not married." This draws
attention to Homer’s dubious sexuality in the story. Emily soon buys arsenic at the city pharmacy, where she is
supposed to want to get rid of the rats. Emily's distant relatives are invited to the city by the minister's wife to
supervise Miss Emily and Homer Barron. Emily was seen in town buying wedding gifts for Homer. Homer leaves
town for a while reportedly to give Emily a chance to get rid of his cousins and returns three days later after the
cousins left. After being spotted entering Miss Emily's home one evening, Homer was never seen again, leading
residents to believe he had escaped (Wilson, 1972:43-72).

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When Miss Emily’s father died, and it came out that all he had left his daughter was the house, effectively leaving
her a pauper, the town was “glad” and could at last pity Miss Emily. When townspeople came to call on Miss Emily,
“she met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face.” Miss Emily went on to explain to
her callers that her father was not dead, and it took three full days before the minister and the doctors could persuade
Miss Emily to let them dispose of her father’s body properly.

Despite the changes, Emily still behaves as mysteriously as before her father's death. Her reputation leads to the fact
that despite the strong unpleasant smell that began to be felt from her house, the city council cannot face her. They
believed that Tobe was unable to maintain the house and that something in it had rotted. The council decides to send
men to her house under cover of darkness to sprinkle lime around the house, so that the smell does not spread. The
mayor of the city, Colonel Sartoris, agrees to overlook her taxes as a charitable act. Years later, when the next
generation came to power, Emily insisted on this informal arrangement, flatly refusing to owe any taxes, stating that
"I have no taxes in Jefferson." After this, Emily becomes withdrawn, never goes out of the house and rarely accepts
people into it. The community eventually perceives it as a "hereditary obligation" of the city, which must be
tolerated.

After her father’s death, Miss Emily disappeared from public site for a long time, and when she reemerged,
Jefferson had just started paving its sidewalks. Homer Barron, a “Yankee,” is a foreman for one of the crews
working on the contract, and soon he would be seen by the town escorting Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons. The
townspeople began expressing pity for Miss Emily; Homer, being a Northerner, is not considered a proper match for
a Southern woman such as Miss Emily. But about a year after the two started appearing in public, Miss Emily
ordered arsenic from the local druggist. Despite being asked by the druggist what the poison is for, Miss Emily
refuses to tell. The box has a skull and bones on it, with the caption, “For rats.”

The funeral is a big deal: Emily has become an institution, so her death arouses great curiosity about her secluded
nature and what is left of her house. After she is buried, a group of locals enter her house to see what is left of her
life there. Tobe came out of the house and was never seen again, giving the citizens access to Miss Emily's home.
Some of the locals break down the locked door of her upstairs bedroom, to see what has been hiding there for so
long. Inside, among the gifts Emily bought for Homer, lies the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed. On
the pillow next to him is a hollow of the head and one lock of gray hair, which indicates that Emily slept with
Homer's corpse. The house is an indicator that reveals how Emily struggled to keep everything the same, in a frozen
period of time, avoiding change.

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2. Death in A Rose for Emily

William Faulkner uses the theme of death to examine the bizarre life of Emily Grierson, the main character in ''A
Rose for Emily''. This theme is so important to the story that Faulkner begins and ends the narrative with Emily's
death. Faulkner may also have in mind the death or decay of the southern aristocracy after the American Civil War,
which parallels the mental and physical decline of the main character.

Death is prevalent, both literally and figuratively, in ‘‘A Rose for Emily.’’ Five actual deaths are discussed
ormentioned in passing, and there are obvious references to death throughout the story. The story begins insection
one with the narrator’s recollections of Emily’s funeral. He reminisces that it is Emily’s father’s deaththat prompts
Colonel Sartoris to remit her taxes ‘‘into perpetuity.’’ This leads to the story of the aldermenattempting to collect
taxes from Emily. The narrator’s description of Emily is that of a drowned woman: ‘‘Shelooked bloated, like a body
long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.’’ One of the reasonsthe aldermen are bold enough to try
to collect Emily’s taxes is that Colonel Sartoris has been dead for adecade. Of course, this doesn’t discourage Emily
—she expects the men to discuss the matter with himanyway. When the narrator returns to the subject of the death
of Emily’s father, he reveals that Emily at firstdenies that he is dead. She keeps his body for three days before she
finally breaks down and allows her fatherto be buried. This scene foreshadows the grisly discovery at the end of the
story (Birk, John F, 1991, 203-13.). The narrator also mentionsthe madness and death of old lady Wyatt, Emily’s
great-aunt. Finally, the discovery of a long strand ofiron-gray hair lying on a pillow next to the moldy corpse
entombed in Emily’s boudoir suggests that Emily isa necrophiliac (literally, ‘‘one who loves the dead’’).

Emily’s story is told in flashbacks that reveal her life through the time before her death. Emily lives a reclusive life
dominated by the patriarchal rulings of her father and her social values. Her upbringing is confined by the Southern
social system and her father, the figure that she had become totally dependent and attached to. It is the judgment of
the town and the death of her father that ignites Emily’s desire to control time.

After Emily’s father’s passing, she was left to inherit her childhood home. Nevertheless, she insisted that “her father
was not dead”. For this reason, she would not allow his body removed until ministers and doctors trying to persuade
her to give up the body. This indicates the beginning of the deterioration of her sanity. It also reveals Emily’s
attachment to the controlling paternal figure whose manipulate and rule became the only form of emotional
connection she ever was known. This indication shows that, without her father to manage her very existent, she
becomes confused and disoriented, unable to make decisive thoughts and decisions without her father’s guidance,
and is unable to function on her own. Ultimately Emily’s mental health devolves as a response to losing the main
figure of control and stability in her life. Later in her life, Emily gains another male figure to rely on in the form of
her lover Homer Barron, reinforcing the theme of patriarchal control in Emily’s life. Emily feels her connection with
Homer Barron is serious, however, Homer’s feeling towards her are not mutual. Emily comes to the decision of
poisoning Homer and placing him carefully in the upstairs room in order to keep him near her.

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 2.1. The symbolism of death in the story

The introductory lines of the story announce the funeral of Miss Emily, which will be held in her home, not in the
church, and the reasons why the whole city attends the funeral, men out of respect for the southern lady, women
sniffing in her house. Emily's death symbolizes a transient way of life, which has been replaced by the cruel way of
working of the new generation.

One of the most impressive descriptions in the first section of the story involves the narrator's portrayal of Miss
Emily's physical appearance. Descriptive phrases include expressions that add to the Gothic quality of the story: she
is dressed in black and leaning on a cane; her "skeleton" is small; and she looks "bloated," "pale in color." Here,
Faulkner does not openly indicate that Emily looks much like a dead person, but presents it in a symbolic way.

We return to the past, two years after Miss Emily's father's death. There have been complaints about an awful stench
emanating from Miss Emily's house. The older generation, which feels that it is improper to tell a lady that she
stinks, arranges for a group of men to spread lime on her lawn and inside the cellar door of her house. All the while,
she sits at a window, motionless. Of primary importance in this section is Miss Emily's relationship to her father and
her reaction to his death. When her father dies, Miss Emily cannot face the reality of his death and her loneliness.
Because she has no one to turn to — "We remembered all the young men her father had driven away . . ." — for
three days she insists that her father is not dead (Hays, Peter L, 1988:105-110). Her clinging to him after his death
prepares us for her clinging to Homer Barron after she poisons him, and we feel that her father ultimately has some
responsibility for his daughter's killing her lover.

The citizens never suspected that the poison that Emily bought in the pharmacy was intended for Homer. After
Homer tells the men that he is not married, the citizens think that his and Miss Emily's relationship is a shame and
try to stop her. When they can't put an end to the relationship between the perceived lovers, they write to Miss
Emily's relatives in Alabama, and two relatives come to stay with her. The city then learns that Miss Emily bought a
men's toiletry set - mirror, brush and comb - with the initials "HB", as well as men's clothing, including a nightgown,
which, ironically, will not serve as a wedding nightgown, but as a funeral shirt for decades.

Homer disappears after Miss Emily's cousins move into the house, and everyone assumes that he has gone to
prepare for Miss Emily's joining him. A week later, the cousins leave. Three days later Homer returns. The narrator
notes, "And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron." The townspeople never suspect the horror of what happens,
believing that such an aristocratic woman as Miss Emily could never do any wrong. She secludes herself for six
months, and when she next appears in public, she is fat and her hair is "pepper-and-salt iron-gray," the same color of
the strand of hair that will be found on the pillow next to Homer's decayed corpse. Here, the author of the story
connected Miss Emily with the perverse act of sleeping next to a corpse, which also represents Emily’s refusal to
separate from loved ones.

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Et Miss Emily's funeral her black servant meets the mourners, who arrive at the house, then he walks out the back
door and disappears forever, apparently fully aware that Homer's decayed body is upstairs. When citizens break into
a locked room upstairs, they find a carefully folded wedding dress and Homer's remains. It was only after the first
shock when they saw his skeletal body that they noticed a dent in the pillow next to him, with a long lock of gray-
iron hair lying where his head once lay.

Because Faulkner presents his story in random fragments, it is not until the final sentence that the entire picture of
Miss Emily is complete. We realize that, having been denied male companionship by her father, she is desperate for
human love, so desperate that she commits murder and then uses her aristocratic position to cover up that murder.
But by killing Homer, she sentences herself to total isolation. With no possibility of contact with the living, she turns
to the dead.

Miss Emily preserves all the dead, in memory if not literally. “See Colonel Sartoris,” she tells the new townfathers,
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, thenarrator preserves her in this
story. The rose is a symbol of the age of romance in which the aristocracy wereobsessed with delusions of grandeur,
pure women being a symbol of the ideal in every phase of life. Perhapsthe narrator offers this story as a “rose” for
Emily. As a lady might press a rose between the pages of a historyof the South, she keeps her own personal rose, her
lover, preserved in the bridal chamber where a rose colorpervades everything. Miss Emily’s rose is ironically
symbolic because her lover was a modern Yankee, whoselaughter 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.

In this gothic story, though, perhaps the most vivid symbols are the locked room in Miss Emily’s house andthe long
iron-gray hair found on a pillow inside. The room symbolizes the secrecy and mystery associatedwith Miss Emily’s
house and her relationship with Homer. The location of the hair as well as its color andlength suggest a continuing
interaction between Miss Emily and the corpse of Homer, again indicating herrefusal to acknowledge the finality of
death.

2.2. Death and fear of losing a loved one

From Emily's point of view, the story is about a woman's inability or unwillingness to bear the loss of a beloved man
(father, protector or lover). From the narrator's point of view, the story is also concerned with fear of loss, although
his subject, Miss Emily, lives on for a long time. The narrator's 60-year supervision seems to say: "Watch her so
carefully and for so long that I can be sure that she is still there. I take her in with my eyes so that, being inside, I can
control her and prevent her from leaving. Next, I tell this story again and so I manage to keep it to myself even after
he dies. She kept the dead Homer Barron in her room because she did not accept his loss; I keep the dead Miss
Emily too, but in the form of a story (Schwab, 1992:16).

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He expresses loss anxiety, too, in a concern about whether Miss Emily sees him or not and in concern abouthow
Miss Emily uses her eyes. “Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows—she hadevidently
shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not lookingat us, we could
never tell which.” When Miss Emily ever does look at anyone, it is sightlessly, coldly: “Hereyes, lost in the fatty
ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough asthey moved from one face to
another. ...” She had “cold, haughty black eyes. ...” Worse, Miss Emily iscapable of aggressive, even destructive
looking such as she does when she stares down the druggist, socompelling him to sell her poison: “Miss Emily just
stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look himeye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic
and wrapped it up (Warren, 1959:325). The Negro delivery boybrought her the package; the druggist didn't come
back.” Seeing the loved person is reassurance against loss; being seen by her can be assurance of love if the regard
iswarm; but if it is cold and aggressive it must cause anxiety about both being harmed and being left.

So now we can conclude that this is a story about the kinds of depravity - Miss Emily's necrophilia and the narrator's
voyeurism - that are motivated by the fear of losing a loved one. Miss Emily is afraid and reacts madly to the loss of
her beloved men - Father Grierson, protector of Sartoris and lover of Barron; the narrator fears the loss of the
necessary woman, Miss Emily herself.

The author also uses death to show how it causes people to change and adopt new ways of doing things. Death is
used to symbolize an irresistible force that makes people change the prevailing social order and adopt new ways.
Emily’s defiance of death is best illustrated when her father died. She chose not to accept the idea that her father was
dead. When the ladies decided to call at the house after the father’s death, Emily showed no “trace of grief” and “she
told them that her father was not dead” (Faulkner, 96). Here, Emily decided to hold onto her father’s body and
behaved as if nothing had happened. However, she eventually had to give the body for burial. Similarly, when she
killed Homer, she kept her body or a while but later had to release it for burial. Clearly, just like people hold onto
traditions, they are at some point forced to give in to the new order.

The story further brings out the sharp contrast between the living and the dead. It shows that life and death cannot be
fused. Throughout the story, the author highlights the idea that there is a great difference between the living and the
dead. For example, when Emily killed Homer, she kept his lifeless body around her. Unfortunately, she realized that
Homer’s lifeless body rendered him distant from her. In the story, the author says that for Homer, “the long sleep
that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him” (Faulkner, 101). It is thus evident that
Emily attempted to bring life and death together. She was not successful in doing so, and she finally realized that
death and life do not coexist. Death creates a big divide between the living and those who were once alive. This
illustration shows that death is powerful and that death and life are apart.

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2.3. A symbolic representation of death in the character of Emily Grirson

Enigmatic and inescapable, Emily Grierson dominates William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily,” and herprotean,
mysterious nature is nowhere more apparent than in her physical appearance. If her psychology isdifficult to fathom,
her body is equally rich in ambiguity. Her first direct appearance in the narrative, aflashback to her meeting with the
aldermen who have come to discuss her taxes, dramatically conveys hercorporeal oddity (Winter, 1984:685-97).

The main character, Emily Grierson, is used to display the struggle of change while trying to keep old traditions
alive. Emily’s house is a perfect symbol of old traditions. The theme of death is also displayed a few different times
throughout the story, death seems to just follow Emily throughout her life. At the end, something as simple as a
piece of long of gray hair becomes a huge symbol of the story; answering many questions for the community.
Through Emily Grierson, the author tries to convey the struggle of change. Emily herself is a tradition.

This "little, fat woman in black" embodies the opposites of her supposed qualities. Although she is astonishingly
obese, her skeleton is still unusually obvious. This is not just a reminder that Emily was overly skinny earlier in her
life. The reference to Emily's "skeleton" not only points to her past. It also hints, no matter how obliquely, at its final
mortality. Clearly alive, Emily seems dead. Looking like a "body long immersed in still water", Emily is an
uncomfortable combination of being and non-being. Both grotesquely fat and excessively thin, living and dead,
female and male, Miss Emily is, finally,“undecidable,” the copresence of opposites. Evading basic distinctions, she
is that most gothic of figures: thecompound being. But to label Emily and to dismiss her would be to ignore the
aptness of her body to theissues raised by her story, for her narrative is concerned with the mutation and corruption
of bodies, withviolations of the line between life and death, and with the differences and relations between the sexes.

To understand the full significance of the story we must turn from the enigma of Emily's appearance to theeven
more troubling realm of action and motive. Emily Grierson's fascination for a generation of readersstems primarily
from the secret gradually unfolded in the course of the narrative. Having poisoned her loverand concealed his body
in an upstairs room, she sleeps with his corpse for roughly forty years. Shocking andincomprehensible, Emily's
actions demand an explanation. Despite numerous hints as to her possible reasons,Emily's motivation is obscure, and
much of the critical commentary on the work is an attempt to discern acoherent rationale for her actions, to find a
motive for Emily.

Critics have traditionally seen Emily's crime as sexually motivated. Until her death, Emily's father prevents her from
marrying. Denied of a normal romantic and sexual life, Emily becomes incapable of distinguishing between reality
and illusion, a "pathological case." She kills Homer to prevent him from leaving her, because for her there is no
significant difference between a living lover and a dead man. Emily's murder of Homer and the preservation of his
body are the result of conflicting impulses. Emily's desire for a forbidden lover who will replace her father conflicts
with her introjection of her father's prohibitions. Homer's murder satisfies both requirements. Not only does this
satisfy the paternal superegogot that Emily internalized, it also makes Homer more like a dead father who is Emily's
real wish.
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Emily’s suspension of time can be understood as a denial of death. In her dispute with the Thealdermen, Emily's
final position is to refer the matter to Colonel Sartoris, even though he has been dead for ten years. The action is
parallel to her earlier refusal to admit the death of her father. Like her manipulation of time memory, Emily's murder
of Homer is, ironically, an attempt to prevent his loss by death. Straightened out of the ravages of time, he will be
with her forever, unlike her father and Colonel Sartoris. Basically, such an effort is an attempt to avoid one's own
death. Preserving her dead lover and invading the closed universe of memories, Emily tries to escape not only time
or change, but also mortality.

The comparison ofEmily, at one point, to an angel in a church window suggests her high social status, but it also
implies thenature of the aristocratic “kind”: physically rarified beings, more spirit than flesh, who are untroubled
bybiological processes. Thus, when a smell develops around Emily's house and various townspeople insist thatshe
be told to eradicate it, Judge Stevens responds by upholding the aristocratic ideal: it is impossible to“accuse a lady to
her face of smelling bad.” To do so would be to call into question the assumption that ladiesare immune from the
gross realities of the body (West,1969::85-100). Evidence to the contrary, Judge Stevens suggests, is alwaysignored.
In this particular instance, the smell is not that of “a snake or a rat” killed in the yard, as JudgeStevens assumes, but
the odor of Homer's corpse. In either case, it is clearly the smell of death, and JudgeStevens' dismissal of its
relevance to Emily hints at a fantasy at the heart of the aristocratic denial of the body:that ladies and gentlemen, like
angels, are immortal, untained by death. In refusing to acknowledge the deathsof Colonel Sartoris and her father,
Emily simply insists a bit too literally that aristocrats differ from otherpeople.

Emily is caught between the taxonomic ideal and the return of what it has repressed: the body, with itsdemocratic
implications. This ambivalence sheds additional light on the nature of her crime. The action isdeeply contradictory, a
reflection of her dual impulses. By disposing of Homer, she is able to repudiate hersexuality; by preserving his
corpse, she can deny the reality of death. Yet, as murder, her crime admits theexistence of death just as her
necrophilia acknowledges her sexual drives. On a deeper level, however, themurder of Homer is an attempt to
obviate such contradictions, to dispel Emily's vacillations. If sexuality anddeath cannot be excluded successfully
from the aristocratic world, if Emily is forced to recognize them, theycan be re-repressed; Emily's recognition itself
will be repudiated. Thus Homer is consigned to the closed roomupstairs that, as a combined bridal-chamber/tomb,
contains and circumscribes not simply sexuality and deathbut the entire process of biological existence, from the
nuptial relations, which are its origin, to the grave,which is its end.

When the scent of the decaying body escapes the house and members of the community start to notice the horrible
smell. It seemed as if people were scared to encounter Emily. When the four men went to Emily’s house to sprinkle
the lime, they went when it was dark out, at midnight. Probably because that’s when they knew she’d be sleeping so
they would have less of a chance of being noticed. When the four men were leaving her house, Emily saw them and
stood peering out the window. The men “crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined
the street (Faulkner 80).” This also makes me think they didn’t want to be seen by her for some reason because it

11
says they “crept quietly across the lawn” and hid behind the tree. The author also refers to Emily herself as a theme
of death.

Conclusion

Faulkner's "Rose for Emily" is a retrospective Gothic, that is, the reader is not aware that the story is Gothic until the
end when the body of Homer Barron is discovered. Given that narrative flashbacks are not presented in the usual
sequential order, readers who are not really familiar with the story do not compose all the parts to the end. However,
a really careful first reading should begin to reveal the Gothic elements at the beginning of the story. Emily quickly
establishes herself as a strange character when the elders enter her dilapidated salon in a futile attempt to collect
taxes. It is described as bloated, like a body immersed for a long time in still water and those pale shades. He insists
that older people talk about taxes with a man who has been dead for a decade. If she’s not a sinister character yet,
she’s certainly weird. In the second part of the story, the inexplicable smell coming from her house, the unusual
connection she has with her father and the suggestion that madness can reign in her family by referring to her
"crazy" great aunt, old lady Viatt, are elements that at least hint at Gothic nature stories.

The story majorly focuses on the life and struggles of Miss Emily, a woman portrayed as a lonely, poor and selfish.
Throughout the story, Faulkner illustrates how Emily lives in denial and fails to comprehend and accept the idea of
death. Through the characters, themes, setting and style, the author successfully brings out the undeniable power
death has in human life and society. Although other themes are evident throughout the story, they only help to
support the central theme of death. Death is irresistibly powerful and facilitates changes in life and society.

The time period the story was written further helps highlight the power of death. Since the story was written after the
civil war, the author used the idea of death to highlight how the South had greatly been changed and affected by the
war. The South had been devastated by the war, and their old economy based on the agriculture and slave labor was
diminishing. The figure of Emily in this story can be seen to represent the South. When she was alive, Emily is
described as being a tradition, a duty, and a care. Although she was once a charming and respectable woman, death
had brought her down, just like the civil war had changed the South.

Emily's horrible work continues to captivate readers. Why would she do something so awful? How could she kill a
man and lay his corpse? This line of examination leads to a psychological examination of Emily's character. In the
story, Emily's father denies her a normal relationship with the opposite sex by expelling potential partners. Since her
father is the only man with whom she had a close relationship, she denies his death and keeps his corpse in her
house until it breaks down three days later when doctors insist that she allow them to take the body. The narrators
suggest that Homer himself may not be very thrilled about marrying Emily. However, it remained for man to
imagine the exact circumstances that led to Homer's denouement. Finally, Emily takes the offensive by poisoning
Homer so he can't leave.

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It is obvious that the story A Rose for Emily highlights the inevitability and the power of death. Through death, the
author was able to advance other themes such as change versus tradition, isolation and compassion. In the story,
death is portrayed as a powerful thing that no one can resist, and through death, many changes take place in the
society.

Literature

1. Birk, John F. (1991)‘‘Tryst Beyond Time: Faulkner’s Emily and Keats.’’ In Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 28,
No. 2.

2. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, (1958), Understanding Fiction, 2nd ed. (New York:Appleton-Century-
Crofts, 1959).

3. Dennis W. Allen (1984) “Horror and Perverse Delight: Faulkner's ‘A Rose for Emily,’” in Modern Fiction
Studies, Vol. 30,No. 4.

4. Hays, Peter L. (1998), ‘‘Who Is Faulkner’s Emily?’’ In Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 16, No. 1.

5. Schwab, Milinda. ‘‘A Watch for Emily.’’ In Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 29, No. 2.

6. William Faulkner, (2015), A Rose For Emily.

7. Wilson, G. R., Jr. (1972), ‘‘The Chronology of Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ Again.’’ In Notes on
MississippiWriters, Vol. 5, No. 2.

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