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Rose For Emily Respect

Decent Essays

Respecting the elderly is a lesson that most people are taught early on, and there is good reason for it, but respecting and enabling are not synonymous, especially when heinous crimes are committed. This is exactly what happens in William Faulkner’s Southern gothic short story “A Rose For Emily” or, at least, that is the tale told on the surface. Underneath the story of an old disturbed woman’s death is the author’s commentary on the nature of Southern pride and tendency to hold on to the past. Much like the in the current day, the respect that old Southern ways demands from the region’s inhabitants has not changed and will likely remain a constant fixture for generations to come. Faulkner gets his overarching theme of respect for the past across by using the characters of Miss Emily and the town as a whole as symbols for the past that is respected and the living people that must continue. The subgenre of Southern Gothic literature is one that explores all kinds of hard and gritty themes that can often leave the reader chilled; one such theme that are explored in this particular piece of Southern …show more content…

The story follows the life and death of Emily Grierson through flashback and outside perspective; it is through the thoughts of the other entity -the collective identity of the town- that the theme of respect for the past shines. From almost the beginning, the reader is given this sense of generational divide among the townsfolk; the older people wish to enable Emily’s lack of tax payment out of respect for her and the arrangement made up by Colonel Sartoris while the younger want her to pay said taxes, “when the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little

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