Essay on A Rose for Emily Setting Analysis

In “A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner, the main character Emily Grierson is stuck living in the past within the isolated reality that she’s been forced into and that she herself created. Throughout the story, a major theme, (meaning what the story is about) is Emily’s resistance to change which leads to isolation. This Faulkner classic shows us how Emily became isolated because of her families, community and tradition.

5) How do the townspeople know what they know about Miss Emily’s life? What is the source of their information?

Emily herself decays throughout the story. Faulkner writes this story about her whole life, so the reader can see her growth from a young teen, in her father’s care, to a grown adult in her last year of life as her body and mental health decay. Faulkner describes her in her later years as, “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough” (452). The reader can see from this that Emily is literally a walking bag of bones. In the story, we can also see Emily’s mental health decay from her isolation of so many years and her obsession with dead bodies. Emily refused to give her father’s corpse up for a few days after his death and the townspeople also found Homer Barron’s decayed body inside the house after Emily’s funeral. There are many deaths throughout the story and things that decay. The house Emily and her family have lived in also decays. Aside from the awful stench that comes from the house, the reader is told that, at the beginning of the story, a thick layer of dust covers the entire inside of Emily’s house. Then again, at the end, when the townspeople found Homer’s body the dust is mentioned another time. Clearly, a house that is not well kept and dirty deteriorates rather quickly through time. However, the dust could be the most gruesome

Faulkner also talks about the stench of Emily’s home. Our attention is drawn to her home when it is used to symbolize Emily and how she is growing old over the years. Emily’s home also has a great deal to do with the story because the home seems to be the townspeople’s vocal point. Everyone wants know where the horrific smell is coming from and what is in the closed out room that not a soul has gone into. The smell, the foul order reaches out past her home and the smell seeps out under the floor of her home. The town’s begins to complain about the smell emanating from the house. Faulkner’s says,

William Faulkner’s famous story “A Rose for Emily” concludes with this line: “We saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.” Its effect stems especially from two features: the story’s complex chronology and the unusual voice of the narrator. In “A Rose for Emily”, Faulkner uses third person narration to tell the story through an unknown character’s point of view. The thought that telling a story in third person might take away some the compassion that we feel for Emily, we find that instead it makes the readers more inclined to side with Emily, and view her with complete empathy. By using third person narrative, Faulkner also allows the readers to realize that the community chooses to isolate certain members of society.

Emily’s father had passed away in their house. The house that supposedly was waved of tax responsibilities due to Mr. Grierson helping the community with money troubles. When her father died, she didn’t arrange his funeral right away. She left her father sit in the house and slowly start to decompose. Eventually when the house started to smell and townspeople started to complain she turned his body over to the city to have buried.

Emily has always been protected by the house, and the house was Emily’s safe haven that no one could enter and that she could control. Emily had spent her entire life inside, isolated from society and never truly learning how to be a woman or how to love. The house was a place Emily had felt loved and she wanted to share that love with other people, but Emily’s murdering Homer turned the house from a home to a prison. “It was a big squarish frame house that had once been white…set on what had once been our most select street…only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores” (437). The house used to be beautiful and full of love, but once Emily’s father died the house slowly began to die and disintegrate, reflecting Emily’s mind.

This proves society to be shallow and their behavior – one indisputable reason for Emily’s isolation from the life of the community. The house used to be beautiful and it was placed on the once ”most select street”. It is a personified object by calling it “stubborn” for withstanding the passage of time and change in a society which was moving towards future, at the same time anticipating its owner’s attitude towards the same factors of discomfort. “An eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner), phrase also used to describe Emily Grierson’s home and surroundings, is a visual image that depicts the discrepancy and at the same time the similarity between the decaying old and the unaesthetic

Another way we see Emily using the town for her own personal gain is when a few of the men go to fix the smell that begins to exude from her house. Miss Emily is so isolated from the town that no one wants to confront her about the smell. After a couple of complaints, one particularly adamant man approaches the judge in complete distress and says, “I’d be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we’ve got to do something” (Faulkner, 518). This man represents the town in a special way because he shows their fear of her. They are either terribly frightened of her or incredibly intimidated by her or they maybe even think she is too fragile to take what they have to say, but either way they are too scared to confront her directly. Instead, they have to sneak in the middle of the night in order to avoid her.

Taking everything into account, the setting of this story was to clarify the future eras and how they managed their legacy. This portrayal helps us picture a rotting Mississippi town in the post-Civil War in the south. We are additionally ready to perceive how Miss Emily opposes change definitely. The room that was entered amid Emily's memorial service shows the distinctive physical points of interest of the qualities, thoughts and mentalities of the place in various times. Emily's home was the main house that did not change while the others made theirs lovely in the

Faulkner’s Use of Setting in “A Rose for Emily” In William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, the setting plays an immense role in explaining the reason behind the demise of Emily Grierson a prominent town resident. The explanation of her demise is shown in the description of the house that she lived in, the horrendous odor that emanated from her property; along with a timeline that is fluid, moving from present, to past, to present again. Faulkner uses this setting to mirror the physical and mental decay of Miss Emily over the years. Through his description of setting, the reader sees a clear image of the character of Miss Emily Grierson and her downfall.

Emily is an outsider--choosing to remain hidden and block out the others in the town. The house that shields Emily from the world mirrors the woman who inhabits it: closed-off, dusty, and dark. “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and

Emily is a woman that has had a hard life. Her family made it so that she was held in high regard in the public eye. She was not suppose to encounter relationships that were below her stature. The town, being the antagonist, drives Emily to her insanity because they will not allow her to lead a normal life. They liked the “show” they were watching a refused to give it up.

Similar to today’s society, Miss Emily is resistant to change and stuck in tradition. The setting of isolation resulted in Miss Emily’s thinking of being privileged, causing her to fail in seeking a normal life with love and affection. Miss Emily’s house location has a lot

There is the macrocosmic setting of the South that lends a sense of place, both physical and psychological, to “A Rose for Emily," as well as the microcosmic setting of the house in which Emily has spent most of her adult life in bed with the corpse of her fiance. Both places are critical and are used to reinforce the psychological landscape of the story.