A Rose for Emily

By:
William Faulkner
“A Rose for Emily” was originally published in the April
30, 1930, issue of Forum. It was his first short story
published in a major magazine. A slightly revised
version was published in two collections of his short
fiction, These 13 (1931) and Collected Stories (1950). It
has been published in dozens of anthologies as well.
“A Rose for Emily” is the story of an eccentric spinster,
Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the
strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her odd
relationships with her father, her lover, and the town of
Jefferson, and the horrible secret she hides. The
story’s subtle complexities continue to inspire critics
while casual readers find it one of Faulkner’s most
accessible works. The popularity of the story is due in
no small part to its gruesome ending.
Faulkner often used short stories to “flesh out” the fictional
kingdom of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, for his novels.
In fact, he revised some of his short fiction to be used as
chapters in those novels. “A Rose for Emily” takes place in
Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is a
critical setting in much of Faulkner’s fiction. The character of
Colonel Sartoris plays a role in the story; he is also an
important character in the history of Yoknapatawpha.
However, “A Rose for Emily” is a story that stands by itself.
Faulkner himself modestly referred to it as a “ghost story,” but
many critics recognize it as an extraordinarily versatile work.
As Frank A. Littler writes in Notes on Mississippi Writers, ‘‘A
Rose for Emily’’ has been ‘‘read variously as a Gothic horror
tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the
relations between North and South, a meditation on the
nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic
CHARACTERS
 Miss Emily Grierson

Miss Emily is an old-school southern belle trapped in a society

bent on forcing her to stay in her role. She clings to the old ways
even as she tries to break free. When she's not even forty, she's
on a road that involves dying alone in a seemingly haunted
house. At thirty-something she is already a murderer, which only
adds to her outcast status. 

Miss Emily is a truly tragic figure, but one who we only see from
the outside. Granted, the townspeople who tell her story know
her better than we do, but not really by much. This is why Emily is
called "impervious." We can't quite penetrate her or completely
understand her. But, perhaps there is a little Emily in all of us. In
the spirit of finding the human being behind the mask, lets zero
in on a few aspects of Emily, the person.
 Tobe

• Tobe, first described as "an old man-servant –

a combined gardener and cook " . He is an
even more mysterious character than Emily,
and, ironically, probably the only one who
knows the answers to all the mysteries in the
story. He's also a major connection to the
theme "Compassion and Forgiveness." Read
on to see what we mean.
 Homer Barron
• Homer is the man Emily murderers. Yet, somehow, the focus
of the tragedy is on Emily. Given the information we know
about Homer, he isn't a very sympathetic character. This is
partly because the town, as represented by the narrator,
doesn't like him. Jeffersonians don't like him because he's a
rough-talking, charismatic northerner and an overseer in
town working on a sidewalk-paving project. 

How involved with Emily he was, we don't know. He may

have intended to marry her, but became dissuaded by the
wacky antics of her cousins and the town. Why he went to
her house that last time, and how exactly he ended up dead
in the bed, we don't know. We don't even know if he really
did, or was about to, break off his relationship with Emily
before she killed him.
 Miss Emily's Father

• Emily's father is the guy with the gigantic

horsewhip. He's only referred to as "Emily's
father." Faulkner himself didn't approve of the
man at all. In an interview, Faulkner expounds
on this character:
• In this case there was the young girl with a young girl's
normal aspirations to find love and then a husband and
a family, who was brow-beaten and kept down by her
father, a selfish man who didn't want her to leave home
because he wanted a housekeeper, and it was a natural
instinct of – repressed which – you can't repress it –
you can mash it down but it comes up somewhere else
and very likely in a tragic form, and that was simply
another manifestation of man's injustice to man, of the
poor tragic human being struggling with its own heart,
with others, with its environment, for the simple things
which all human beings want. In that case it was a
young girl that just wanted to be loved and to love and
to have a husband and a family. 
• That description is pretty straightforward. The
story is meant to show a very selfish man in a
very selfish society. He's kind of a one-note
fellow, and that note is Me, me, me, me, me!
 Colonel Sartoris

• The Colonel is the guy who initially dreamed up

the scheme to relieve Emily of her tax obligations
when her father died. That was a nice thing to
do. But, this same Colonel, the mayor, "who," we
are told also "fathered the edict that no N egro
woman should appear on the streets without an
apron" . That's not so nice. Unfortunately, the
coexistence of these two modes was the norm in
those days among powerful political figures
 J udge Stevens
• Judge Stevens gets one of the best lines in the story:
“ D ammit, sir, will you accuse a lady to her face of
smelling bad ? “ Given everything the town knows at
this point, the smell should have generated a warrant to
inspect her home. He's portrayed as an older, (he's 8
0), powerful, and a very southern man, and he raises a
little question. O k we know that Colonel Sartoris was
the mayor when Emily's father died, and we know that it
was two years later that the townspeople began
complaining about the smell. The town could have
changed mayors in two years, but would they have
elected a mayor that was eighty years old? We challenge
you to figure this out.
 O L D L A D Y WYATT

• O ld lady Wyatt is Emily's great-aunt (on her

father's side, we believe). Before her death,
according to the townspeople, old lady Wyatt
is "completely crazy " . She seems to be in
the story to suggest that insanity runs in
Emily's family.
 The Cousins
• The town thinks Miss Emily's “ two female cousins are
even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been" .
That is definitely not a compliment. These cousins from
Alabama are relatives of old lady Wyatt and had been
estranged from Emily's father since the time of old lady
Wyatt's death. In fact, they were so estranged that they
didn't even show up to Emily's father's funeral. 

The situation with the cousins exposes some of the dark

irony of the story. The townspeople call in the cousins to
stop Emily from dating Homer, but when they decide
they hate the cousins, they switch sides and try to push
Emily and Homer together.
A Rose for Emily
Summary
The story, told in five sections, opens in section one with an unnamed
narrator describing the funeral of Miss Emily Grierson. (The narrator
always refers to himself in collective pronouns; he is perceived as
being the voice of the average citizen of the town of Jefferson.) He
notes that while the men attend the funeral out of obligation, the
women go primarily because no one has been inside Emily’s house for
years. The narrator describes what was once a grand house ‘‘set on
what had once been our most select street.’’ Emily’s origins are
aristocratic, but both her house and the neighborhood it is in have
deteriorated. The narrator notes that prior to her death, Emily had
been ‘‘a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.’’ This is because
Colonel Sartoris, the former mayor of the town, remitted Emily’s
taxes dating from the death of her father “on into perpetuity.’’
Apparently, Emily’s father left her with nothing when he died. Colonel
Sartoris invented a story explaining the remittance of Emily’s taxes (it
is the town’s method of paying back a loan to her father) to save her
from the embarrassment of accepting charity.
The narrator uses this opportunity to segue into the first of
several flashbacks in the story. The first incident he describes
takes place approximately a decade before Emily’s death. A new
generation of politicians takes over Jefferson’s government.
They are unmoved by Colonel Sartoris’s grand gesture on Emily’s
behalf, and they attempt to collect taxes from her. She ignores
their notices and letters. Finally, the Board of Aldermen sends a
deputation to discuss the situation with her. The men are led
into a decrepit parlor by Emily’s black man-servant, Tobe. The
first physical description of Emily is unflattering: she is ‘‘a small,
fat woman in black” who looks “bloated, like a body long
submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.” After
the spokesman awkwardly explains the reason for their visit,
Emily repeatedly insists that she has no taxes in Jefferson and
tells the men to see Colonel Sartoris. The narrator notes that
Colonel Sartoris has been dead at that point for almost ten
 Analysis

A Rose for Emily Symbolism,

Imagery & Allegory
 The House
• Miss Emily's house is an important symbol in this story.
(In general, old family homes are often significant
symbols in Gothic literature.)
• 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.
• 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. The narrator doesn't seem to
approve of the urban sprawl. We also speculate
that the house is an emblem of money probably
earned in large part through the labors of slaves,
or emancipated slaves. The final part of this
judgment has to do with the fact that the house
was allowed to decay and disintegrate. 
• The house, as is often the case in scary stories, is
also a symbol of the opposite of what it's
supposed to be. Like most humans, Emily wanted
a house she could love someone in, and a house
where she could be free. She thought she might
have this with Homer Barron, but something
went terribly wrong. This something turned her
house into a virtual prison – she had nowhere
else to go but home, and this home, with the
corpse of Homer Barron rotting in an upstairs
room, this home could never be shared with
others. The house is a huge symbol of Miss
Emily's isolation.
 The Pocket Watch, the Stationery, and the Hair

• These are all symbols of time in the story. What's more,

the struggle between the past and the future threatens
to rip the present to pieces. When members of the
Board of Aldermen visit Emily to see about the taxes a
decade before her death, they hear her pocket watch
ticking, hidden somewhere in the folds of her clothing
and her body. This is a signal to us that for Miss Emily
time is both a mysterious "invisible" force, and one of
which she has always been acutely aware. With each
tick of the clock, her chance for happiness dwindles .
• Another symbol of time is Emily's hair. The town tells
time first by Emily's hair, and then when she disappears
into her house after her hair has turned "a vigorous
iron-gray, like the hair of an active man" .When Emily
no longer leaves the house, the town uses Tobe's hair
to tell time, watching as it too turns gray. The strand of
Emily's hair found on the pillow next to Homer, is a
time-teller too, though precisely what time it tells is
hard to say. The narrator tells us that Homer's final
resting place hadn't been opened in 40 years, which is
exactly how long Homer Barron has been missing. But,
Emily's hair didn't turn "iron-gray" until approximately
1898, several years after Homer's death. 
• The stationery is also a symbol of time, but in a
different way. The letter the town gets from
Emily is written "on paper of an archaic shape,
in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink" .Emily
probably doesn't write too many letters, so it's
normal that she would be using stationery
that's probably at least 40 years old. The
stationery is a symbol, and one that points back
to the tensions between the past, the present,
and the future, which this story explores.
 Lime and Arsenic

• Lime and arsenic are some of the story's creepiest

symbols. Lime is a white powder that's good at
covering the smell of decomposing bodies.
Ironically, it seems that the lime was sprinkled in
vain. The smell of the rotting corpse of Homer
Barron stopped wafting into the neighborhood of
its own accord. Or maybe the town just got used
to the smell. The lime is a symbol of a fruitless
attempt to hide something embarrassing, and
creepy. It's also a symbol of the way the town, in
that generation, did things.
• The arsenic used to kill a stinky rat
creates a foul stench, which the
townspeople want to get rid of with lime.
We should also note that arsenic is a
favorite fictional murder weapon, due to
its reputation for being odorless,
colorless, and virtually undetectable by
the victim. Director Franz Capra's 1944
film Arsenic and Old Lace is good example
of this.
 Death and Taxes

• Miss Emily's death at the beginning of the story,

and the narrators memory of the history of her
tax situation in Jefferson might be what Alfred
Hitchcock called "macguffins." A macguffin is "an
object, event, or character in a film or story that
serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite
usually lacking intrinsic importance" .Neither the
funeral nor the tax issue seem to be about are all
that important to the tale of murder and insanity
that follows.
• Still, we should question whether or not they actually
are macguffins. 
• The taxes are can be seen as symbols of death. The
initial remission of Miss Emily taxes is a symbol of the
death of her father. It's also a symbol of the financial
decline the proud man must have experienced, but
kept hidden from Emily and the town, until his death.
Since the story isn't clear on why Emily only got the
house in the will, the taxes could also be a symbol of
his continued control over Emily from the grave. If he
had money when he died, but left it to some
mysterious entity, (the story is unclear on this point),
he would have denied Emily her independence.
• Over 30 years after the initial remission of Miss Emily's taxes
when the "newer generation" tries to revoke the ancient
deal they inherited, taxes are still a symbol of death, though
this time, they symbolize the death of Homer Barron.
• As we argue in "What's Up With the Ending?", the town is
probably already aware that she has a rotting corpse
upstairs. Maybe the taxes were just an excuse to definitively
see what was going on at the house. The next phase of their
plan might well have been foreclosure. They could have
used the tax situation to remove Emily from the
neighborhood, and to condemn her house. Perhaps they
wanted to remove the "eyesore," and to cover up
everything Miss Emily says about the past and present of
the South. 
• The fact that they didn't do this might just
turn the taxes into a symbol of compassion.
Wasn't it out of compassion that her taxes
were initially remitted? That the "newer
generation" decides to continue the tradition
also shows that some of the older ways might
well have merit.
A Rose for Emily Setting
• A creepy old house in Jefferson,
Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 1861-
1933 (approximately)
• Setting is usually pretty rich in Faulkner. SimCity-
style, William Faulkner created his own
Mississippi County, Yoknapatawpha, as the
setting for much of his fiction. This county
comes complete with several different families
including the Grierson family. "A Rose for Emily"
is set in the county seat of Yoknapatawpha,
Jefferson and as you know, focuses on Emily
Grierson, the last living Grierson. For a map and
a detailed description of Yoknapatawpha, 
• Though Jefferson and its inhabitants are unique, we can
see their town as any southern town during that
period. The situations that arise in the story develop in
large part because many southerners who lived during
the slavery era didn't know what to do when that whole
way of life ended. Imagine if suddenly you are told
and shown that your whole way of life is a sham, an
atrocity, an evil. Then heap on a generous helping of
southern pride, and you have tragedies like this one.
This story also explores how future generations deal
with this legacy. To really feel the movement of history
in the story, and to understand the movements of
Emily's life, it important to pin down the chronology of
events.
1861 – Miss Emily Grierson is born.
1870s – The Grierson house is built.
1893 – Miss Emily's father dies.
1893 – Miss Emily falls ill.
1893 – Miss Emily's taxes are remitted (in December).
1894 – Miss Emily meets Homer Barron (in the summer).
1895 – Homer is last seen entering Miss Emily's house
(Emily is "over thirty; we use thirty-three for our
calculations).
1895 – The townspeople become concerned about the
smell of the Grierson house and sprinkle lime around
Emily's place
1895 – Miss Emily stays in for six months.
1895-1898 – Miss Emily emerges and her hair gradually turns
gray.
1899 – Miss Emily stops opening her door, and doesn't leave
the house for about five years.
1904 – Miss Emily emerges to give china-painting lessons for
about seven years.
1911 – Miss Emily stops giving painting lessons. Over ten
years pass before she has any contact with the town.
1925 – They "newer generation" comes to ask about the
taxes. This is thirty years after the business with the lime. This
is the last contact she has with the town before her death.
1935 – Miss Emily dies at 74 years old. Tobe leaves the house.
Two days later the funeral is held at the Grierson house. At
the funeral, the townspeople break down the door to the
bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen in 40 years.
• This doesn't answer all the questions by any
means. Since nobody in the town ever knew
what was really going on in Emily's house,
there are numerous holes and gaps in this
history. Still, you can use this as a guide to
help make sense of some of the confusing
moments.
 
A Rose for Emily Narrator: First Person
(Peripheral Narrator)
 First Person (Peripheral Narrator)

• The fascinating narrator of "A Rose for Emily" is more

rightly called "first people" than "first person." Usually
referring to itself as "we," the narrator speaks sometimes
for the men of Jefferson, sometimes for the women, and
often for both. It also spans three generations of
Jeffersonians, including the generation of Miss Emily's
father, Miss Emily's generation, and the "newer
generation," made up of the children of Miss Emily's
contemporaries. The narrator is pretty hard on the first
two generations, and it's easy to see how their treatment
of Miss Emily may have led to her downfall. This lends
the narrative a somewhat confessional feel. 
• While we are on the subject of "we," notice no
one townsperson is completely responsible for
what happened to Emily. (It is fair to say,
though that some are more responsible than
others.) The willingness of the town to now
admit responsibility is a hopeful sign, and one
that allows us to envision a better future for
generations to come. We discuss this further
in "Tone," so check out that section for more
information.
 A Rose for Emily Genre

Horror or Gothic Fiction, Southern Gothic,

Literary Fiction, Tragedy, Modernism
• Even before we see the forty-year-old corpse
of Homer Barron rotting into the bed, the
creepy house, and the creepy Miss Emily let us
know that we are in the realm of horror or
Gothic fiction. Combine that with a southern
setting and we realize that it's not just Gothic,
but Southern Gothic. The Southern Gothic
genre focuses – sometimes subtly, sometimes
overtly – on slavery, or the aftermath of
slavery in the South. You can definitely see this
in "A Rose for Emily." 
• Since author William Faulkner won
the Pulitzer Prize for
fiction twice (first in 1955 for A Fable,
and then in 1963 for The Reivers),
and the Nobel Prize for Literature
(1949) we'd also have to put it in the
category of "Literary Fiction." 
• Even if Faulkner hadn't won all those prizes, we'd
still put "A Rose for Emily" in this category. The story
is masterfully told, and it's obvious that much care
and skill went into it. It's also strikingly original and
experimental in terms of form. This is part of what
makes it a classic Modernist text. The Southern
Gothic is a perfect field on which to perform a
Modernist experiment. Modernist is all about what
happens when everything you thought was true is
revealed to be false, resulting in shattered identities.
Modernism tries to make something constructive
out of the pieces. We can see all that loud and clear
in "A Rose for Emily."
 A Rose for Emily Tone

Ironic, Confessional, Gossipy, Angry,

Hopeful
• We can think of a bunch more
adjectives to describe the tone of the
story, these seems to be the
dominant emotional tones the
narrator is expressing as Miss Emily's
story is told. (Keep in mind that it's
also the town's story.) 
• The irony of the story is closely tied
to the rose in the title, and to
Williams Faulkner's explanation of it:
• [The title] was an allegorical title; the meaning
was, here was a woman who had had a tragedy,
an irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done
about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute…to
a woman you would hand a rose
• It's ironic because in the story Miss Emily is
continually handed thorns, not roses, and she
herself produces many thorns in return. This is
where the "confessional" part comes in. Since the
narrator is a member of the town, and takes
responsibility for all the townspeople's actions,
the narrator is confessing the town's crimes
against Emily. 
• Confession can be another word for gossip,
especially when you are confessing the crimes
of others. (Here one of the big crimes is
gossip.) The chilling first line of Section IV is a
good representative of the elements of tone
we've been discussing so far: "So the next day
we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it
would be the best thing." This is where the
anger comes in. Because this makes us angry,
we feel that the narrator too is angry,
particularly in this whole section. This leads us
back to confession and hopefulness. 
• The hopefulness of the town is the hardest for us to
understand. It comes in part from the title again – if
we can put ourselves in the same space as Faulkner
and manage to give Emily a rose, to have
compassion for her even though she is a murderer,
to recognize her tragedy for what it is, this might
allow us to build a more compassionate future for
ourselves, a future where tragedies like Emily's don't
occur. This also entails taking off our "rose-colored
glasses" (as we discuss in "What's Up With the
Title?") and facing the ugly truths of life, even
confessing our shortcomings. Hopefully, we can
manage to take those glasses off before death takes
them off for us.
What’s Up With the Title?
• You probably noticed that there is no rose in the
story, though we do find the word "rose" four times.
Check out the first two times the word is used:
• 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. 
• They rose when she entered – a 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. 
•These first two times "rose" (as you can see) is
used as a verb, which is why we barely notice the
subtle echo of the "rose" in the title when we
read. We are concentrating on the image, first, of
the inside of Miss Emily's lonely parlor, and then
of Miss Emily herself. In both cases, the word
"rose" is working on us, maybe even
subconsciously, to contribute to the image.
•We have to look at a few more things before we
can get at why these passages are significant.
•First, let's consider the next two mentions of
"rose," which occur at the very end of the story:
• A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie
everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as
for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose
color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing
table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's
toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so
tarnished that the monogram was obscured. 
• Things are starting to make sense – here we are
talking about the color "rose" – from the curtains to
the lampshades, rose was the dominant color of Miss
Emily's bridal chamber. We've all heard about the
dangers of seeing through 'rose colored' glasses. This
was a particular problem for people of Miss Emily's
generation in the South. 
• As we discuss in "Setting," Emily was born in the early
1860s, probably near the beginning of the Civil War.
Emily's father basically raised her to believe that nothing
had really changed after the war. He instilled in her that
being part of the southern aristocracy (those who made
money on backs of slaves) was still something to be proud
of, and that people like them were above the law. 
• But, in this moment, we realize just how rosy Miss Emily's
glasses were, and that death trumps glasses, rose colored
or otherwise. The reality of death cannot be avoided. Now
that the bridal chamber has turned into a death chamber,
the rose color is bathed in the hues of decay and death,
shaded by the "acrid pall as of the tomb." Which might
make you wonder just what an "acrid pall" is.
• "Acrid" is easy, it's used to refer to something that's nasty
smelling. "Pall" is actually a pretty interesting word, and one
that isn't normally thrown around in conversation. It usually
refers to some kind of covering, like a cloak or a blanket
draped over a coffin. We can see how the word works
literally and figuratively to thicken the atmosphere of death
and decomposition. It works because even if we don't know
precisely what a "pall" is, we can hear the deathly, pale
tones it holds.
• Well, we're not quite done yet. Lucky for us, William
Faulkner told an interviewer what he meant by the title:
[The title] was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here
was a woman who had had a tragedy, an irrevocable
tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her
and this was a salute…to a woman you would hand a rose. 
What’s Up With the Ending?
• We disagree with this opinion. For example, if we
already knew that the corpse of Homer Barron was
up in the bedroom, we would have been crept out to
read that Emily was giving painting lessons to kids in
the parlor (or wherever such lessons are given). The
story could have been just as creepy, and just as
tragic, if told linearly. 
• So maybe "A Rose for Emily" had to be told this way
to mirror the experience of the town, to mirror their
surprise at finding the corpse. Obviously, the town
didn't know about Homer Barron until Emily died,
otherwise, they sure as heck wouldn't have let their
kids go to her house for painting lessons, and they
would arrested her for murder.
• Or maybe not. Check out this moment from the ending:
• Already we knew that there was one room in that region
above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and
which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss
Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it. 
• The town must have known all along. Maybe this is the
real surprise of the ending, the realization that the town
has long ago pieced together the puzzle. While we can
be fairly sure that most townspeople had talked the
matter to death and figured out what went on before
the end of the story, we can't be sure precisely when it
became the consensus. Probably the night the lime was
sprinkled (we're talking about the white powder here,
and not the citrus fruit!). 
• Thirty years later, those people's children had heard
the story in bits and pieces (the way it's told to us),
all the while seeing her house grow more and more
decayed, seeing her in the window, almost a ghost
already, wandering the halls of her haunted house.
The town knew her story by heart, because it was
also their story, down to the last detail.
• As such, the following passage takes on new
significance:
• Then the newer generation became the backbone
and the spirit of the town, and 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. 
• The "newer generation" wasn't going to charge in and
arrest Miss Emily, but they weren't about to leave their
kids with her. If they had arrested her, she probably
would have ended up in an institution or worse. And
this is where the theme "Compassion and Forgiveness"
comes into the picture. One question the story asks is
whether the town's hiding of Miss Emily's crime is an
act of compassion, or yet another crime against her.
•  To see how hard the question is, we can remember
what we are told very early in the story, "Alive, Miss
Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of
hereditary obligation upon the town" .She is family.
What would you do?
A Rose for Emily Plot Analysis
 Initial Situation

• Death and Taxes

• As we discuss in "Symbols, Imagery,
Allegory," Faulkner might be playing on
the Benjamin Franklin quote, "In this
world nothing can be said to be certain,
except death and taxes," in this initial
scene. We move from a huge funeral
attended by everybody in town, to this
strange little story about taxes.
 Conflict
• Taxes aren't the only thing that stinks.
• The taxes seem tame compared to what comes next. In
Section II, we learn lots of bizarre stuff about Miss
Emily: when her father died she refused to believe it (or
let on she believed it) for four days (counting the day he
died); the summer after her father died, she finallygets
a boyfriend (she's in her thirties); when worried that
her boyfriend might leave her, she bought some poison
and her boyfriend disappeared, but there was a bad
smell around her house. We technically have enough
information to figure everything out right here, but we
are thrown off by the issue of the taxes, and by the way
in which facts are jumbled together.
 Complication
• The Town's Conscience
• For this stage it might be helpful to think of this
story as the town's confession. This section is
what complicates things for the town's
conscience. The town was horrible to Miss Emily
when she started dating Homer Barron. They
wanted to hold her to the southern lady ideals
her forbearers had mapped out for her. She was
finally able to break free when her father died,
but the town won't let her do it. When they can't
stop her from dating Homer themselves, they sick
the cousins on her.
 Climax
• "For Rats"
• Even though this story seems all jumbled up
chronologically, the climax comes roughly in the middle of
the story, lending the story a smooth, symmetrical feel.
According to Faulkner, Homer probably was a bit of a rat,
one which noble Miss Emily would have felt perfectly in
the right to exterminate. Yet, she also wanted to hold
tight to the dream that she might have a normal life, with
love and a family. When she sees that everybody – the
townspeople, the minister, her cousins, and even Homer
himself – is bent on messing up her plans, she has an
extreme reaction. That's why, for us, the climax is
encapsulated in the image of the skull and crossbones on
the arsenic package and the warning, "For rats."
 Suspense
• Deadly Gossip
• As with the climax, Faulkner follows a traditional plot
structure, at least in terms of the story of Emily and Homer.
Emily buys the arsenic, and at that moment the information
is beamed into the brains of the townspeople. This is one of
the nastiest sections. The town is in suspense over whether
they are married, soon will be, or never will be. Their
reactions range from murderous, to pitying, to downright
interference. We also learn that Homer Barron was last
seen entering the residence of Miss Emily Grierson on the
night in question. So, we can be in suspense about what
happened to him, though by the time we can appreciate
that this is something to be suspenseful about, we already
know what happened.
 Denouement
• The Next 40 Years
• At this point, we've already been given a rough
outline of Emily's life, beginning with her funeral,
going back ten years to when the "newer generation"
came to collect the taxes, and then back another
thirty some odd years to the death of Emily's father,
the subsequent affair with Homer, and the
disappearance of Homer. The story winds down by
filling us in on Miss Emily's goings on in the 40 years
between Homer's disappearance and Emily's funeral.
Other than the painting lessons, her life during that
time is a mystery, because she stayed inside.
 Conclusion

• The Bed, the Rotting Corpse, and the

Hair
• The townspeople enter the bedroom
that's been locked for 40 years, only to
find the rotting corpse of Homer Barron.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Isolation
• There's no getting around the fact that "A Rose for
Emily" is a story about the extremes of isolation –
by physical and emotional. This Faulkner classic
shows us the process by which human beings
become isolated by their families, by their
community, by tradition, by law, by the past, and
by their own actions and choices. In effect, this
story takes a stand against such isolation, and
against all those who isolate others. When you
get through with this story, you might feel the
urge to take a nice stroll in the county, or at least
take a spin around the park. Go! Breathe the air;
feel the sunshine; visit a friend.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Memory and the
Past
• Gavin Stevens (a William Faulkner character)
famously says, "The past is never dead. It's not
even past." This idea is highly visible in all
Faulkner's work, and we definitely see it here, in
"A Rose for Emily." Spanning approximately 74
years, this short story spins backwards and
forwards in time like memory, and shows a
southern town torn between the present and the
past. Post-Civil War and Pre-Civil Rights, "A Rose
for Emily" shows us an American South in limbo,
trying desperately, with each generation, to find
a better way, a way which honors the good of the
past, while coming to terms with its evils.
A Rose for Emily Theme of V isions of America
• "A Rose for Emily" doesn't look at America
through rose-colored glasses, even though many
of its characters do. In the aftermath of slavery,
the American South shown in the novel is in bad
shape. The novel deals with the stubborn refusal
of some southerners to see that the America they
believed in – an America based on slavery – was
no more. The story covers about 74 years,
beginning sometime just before the Civil War. The
focus, however, is on the periods from about 1 8
9 4 to 1 9 3 5 .Because the dates are all jumbled
together, we have to work to untangle the stories
present vision of America from the vision of the
past.
A Rose for Emily Theme of V ersions of Reality
• By showing people with skewed versions of
reality, "A Rose for Emily" asks us to take off our
"rose-colored" glasses and look reality in the face.
What we confront is the reality of America in the
story, and the reality of the main character's
complete isolation. Faulkner reveals how difficult
it can be to see the past and the present clearly
and honestly by depicting memory as flawed and
subjective. This "difficulty" is part of why the main
characters goes insane, or so it certainly appears.
Luckily, there are healthy doses of compassion
and forgiveness in the novel. When we start to
feel that, we start to see things more clearly.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Compassion and
Forgiveness
• "Compassion and Forgiveness" is another major theme
that we can find in almost any Faulkner story. At first, it
might not be apparent in this case. We almost have to be
told that these sentiments are behind "A Rose for Emily"
before we can see them. The story can seem downright
cruel, the characters wholly unsympathetic, and the plot
gross. When we begin to see the magnitude of the tragedy,
and its impact on multiple generations, we understand the
story is a call for understanding. The story seems to argue
that forgiveness, compassion, and understanding can only
come by facing the facts of the past and the present, which
are tangled up together in an tight knot. Faulkner is both
mercilessly subtle, and painfully blunt in this story, but we
can feel the spirit of compassion rushing through.