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A Rose For Emily Analysis

Decent Essays

Not wanting to deal with and accept change seems to be the message that author William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” is trying to convey. Emily Grierson is the main character in this story, the people of her town feel sorry for her after her father dies. She becomes a loner and does not leave her house. Emily was controlled by her father. He rejected suitors that were interested in marrying her. Now she is all alone, until a new person comes to town. Homer Barron comes to work in the town. Emily is very interested in him, but he does not return the feelings. Emily buys everything that would make it look like they are getting married. The townspeople are wondering if he will marry her. There is talk in the town that …show more content…

This is Miss Emily’s craziest try at keeping her life the way it was before her father died. The death of her father was so traumatic for her that she never wanted to lose anything.
This story takes place in the South, when there is racial discrimination. The South was very prejudice. “They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow” (Faulkner, A Rose for Emily). This use of the offensive word “negro” shows that Mr. Faulkner was trying to show what the life of an African American was during this time. They were just property and by using these words to talk about them, they had no identity. “In 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor –he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity” (Faulkner, A Rose for Emily). African Americans were seen as nothing more than workers. They could not socialize with white people, they were just there to serve them.

Mr. Faulkner explains the roles of women in the South and how they were seen through the eyes of men. “When Miss Emily Grierson died the whole town went to her funeral: the men out of respectful affection for a fallen monument and the women mostly out

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