preview

A Rose For Emily By William Faulkner

Decent Essays

Throughout one 's life there there are many events in which people desire to live over and over again. Many young adults wish to go back to college or highschool just to live it all again. Similar to this Miss Emily, in William Faulkner 's short story “A Rose for Emily”, also does not desire to accept the fact she cannot relive everything. "A Rose for Emily" is a story which uses a non-chronological story timeline to convey how people resist change. Before one can dissect the theme, one must first be able to comprehend the story. Understanding Faulkner 's story can be a challenge, especially with only one read. This is partially because during the whole story it is never made clear who the narrator is. But, by having an omniscient …show more content…

For example, the beginning and the end of the story both end with the death of Miss Emily. This is a very basic way of informing us that the story does not desire for life to move forward the way that most lives do. When bouncing from her early life to her later life and back again we can easily understand that this is a representation of how Miss Emily, like many people, have an urge to stay in a certain period of time.
One of the main ways we see Miss Emily’s refusal to move on is when we are shown the death of her father. After Miss Emily’s father passed away and women of the town tried to confront her, “she told them that her father was not dead” (Faulkner, Ⅱ). Miss Emily proceed to withhold the dead rotting body of her father for a couple days. Finally, the stench was too overwhelming that she had to release the body. This is a clear example of Miss Emily refusing to let go considering she had no desire to release a dead body for burial. Reading that Miss Emily refused to let her father 's dead body go sounds gruesome and disturbing to most. But, when understanding the theme of holding onto the past it seems almost obvious that Miss Emily would do such a thing. Her reasoning becomes even more obvious as we find out more disturbing things that she does later on in her story.
When we are informed again of Miss Emily’s death at the end of the story we also are now entering her house. After her death the townspeople went into her house

Get Access