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Gothic Elements In A Rose For Emily

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“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner takes place a few years after the Civil War in a town called Jefferson. The action of the story is centered in Miss Emily's home. The narrator of the story is a townsperson who recalls Miss Emily’s life through a series of flashbacks. The story has many elements of Gothic because the themes of love lost, death, and murder are all present in it. Other elements that suggest about the Gothic nature of the story are Emily’s description, her house, the poison she bought, and ultimately the ending. Some aspects in the story deviate from the norm of Gothic literature because Emily and Homer can be perceived as a traditional love story that every Gothic has, but it follows another path of doom. Emily ends the love between her and Homer when she takes his life, which in return dooms her for a life without love and a life of isolation. “A Rose for Emily” emphasized larger implications of straying from the traditional elements such as marriage can lead to insanity and isolation. Emily’s house is a perfect example of a Gothic because the house has a gloomy and decaying setting. The narrator describes Emily’s house as, “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, Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores” (516). This quote is

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