Metaphors In A Rose For Emily

“At last they could pity Emily” (453) or at least that is what the community thought they could do when Emily lost her father and became “humanized” (453). Emily is one of the most prominent people of her time and is even recognized through a story all written about her. This analytical essay of “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner without doubt, uses symbolism to portray change and decay throughout the story by using Emily’s home, Mr. Grierson, and herself.

In “A Rose for Emily” Miss Emily Grierson live a life of quiet turmoil. Her entire life has revolved around an inexplicable loneliness mostly characterized by the harsh abandonment of death. The most vital imagery utilized by Faulkner demonstrates Miss Emily’s mental condition. She, being self-improsened within the confines of her home, is the human embodiment of her house; Faulkner describes it as “... stubborn an coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores.” (Faulkner 308).

Her unwillingness to change after the civil war was one of the reasons she was so isolated. The narrator tells us twice that Miss Emily is similar to an idol, probably because she was raised to think she was above others, and others were raised to look up to her as well.  She was stuck with the mindset that she was better than others, even when the community was changing she believed that she didn’t have to obey the law. She also kept to herself and no one knew anything about her. According to Faulkner, the quote “…A note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin flowing calligraphy in faded ink…” shows me in a symbolic way, that Emily is stuck in time. The story of Emily is old and dated itself. The author uses the words archaic, calligraphy, and faded. It took me back in time while reading these words, which is exactly what Emily is.

In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner's use of setting and characterization foreshadows and builds up to the climax of the story. His use of metaphors prepares the reader for the bittersweet ending. A theme of respectability and the loss of, is threaded throughout the story. Appropriately, the story begins with death, flashes back to the past and hints towards the demise of a woman and the traditions of the past she personifies. Faulkner has carefully crafted a multi-layered masterpiece, and he uses setting, characterization, and theme to move it along.

William Faulkner has done a wonderful work in his essay “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner uses symbols, settings, character development, and other literary devices to express the life of Emily and the behavior of the people of Jefferson town towards her. By reading the essay, the audience cannot really figure out who the narrator is. It seems like the narrator can be the town’s collective voice. The fact that the narrator uses collective pronoun we supports the theory that the narrator is describing the life of “Miss Emily” on behalf of the townspeople. Faulkner has used the flashback device in his essay to make it more interesting. The story begins with the portrayal of Emily’s funeral and it moves to her past and at the end the readers realize that the funeral is a flashback as well. The story starts with the death of Miss Emily when he was seventy-four years old and it takes us back when she is a young and attractive girl.

In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” Miss Emily Grierson holds on to the past with a grip of death. Miss Emily seems to reside in her own world, untarnished by the present time around her, maintaining her homestead as it was when her father was alive. Miss Emily’s father, the manservant, the townspeople, and even the house she lives in, shows that she remains stuck in the past incapable and perhaps reluctant to face the present.

William Faulkner is a well-known author, whose writing belongs in the Realism era in the American Literary Canon. His writing was influence by his Southern upbringing, often setting his stories in the fictional Southern town, Yoknapatawpha County. “A Rose for Emily” was one of Faulkner’s first published pieces and displays many of the now signature characteristics of Faulkner’s writing. The short story provides commentary through the use of many symbols. In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, the author uses the townspeople as a representation of societal expectations and judgments, Emily and her house as symbols for the past, and Homer’s corpse as a physical representation of the fear of loneliness.

The main symbolism running throughout A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, is the theme of how important it is to let go of the past. Miss Emily clings to the past and does not want to be independent. The Old South is becoming the new South and she cannot move forward. The residents of the South did not all give in to change just because they lost the Civil War. In A Rose for Emily time marches on leaving Miss Emily behind as she stubbornly refuses to progress into a new era. In the story, symbolism is used to give more details than the author actually gives to the reader. Symbolism helps to indicate how Emily was once innocent but later changes, how her hair, house, and lifestyle, helped to show her resistance to change. The story is not

In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner escorts the reader through the peculiar life of the main character Miss Emily Grierson. The gloomy tone of the story is set by the author beginning his tale with the funeral of Miss Emily. During course of the story, we are taken through different times in Miss Emily’s life and how she was lost in time, with the town around her moving forward. Through the use of southern gothic writing style, narrator point of view, and foreshadowing, Faulkner aids the reader in creating a visualization of Miss Emily and the town in which she lives while also giving an insight into her sanity.

Emily comes from a family with high expectations of her a sort of “hereditary obligation” (30). Emily has been mentally manipulated by her as so indicated in the line of the story “we did not say she was crazy then we believed she had to do that we remember all the young men her father had driven away” (32). There is already proof of mental illness in the family “remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great aunt, had gone completely crazy last” (32).

The story "A Rose for Emily" is one of first William Faulkner’s publications. The action of this story takes place in a time filled with social and political turmoil, when Southern came into a historical lethargy, and when its glow start faded. The elements presented in "A Rose for Emily" make reference to that time and are a tribute to Mss. Emily Graiser. A dominant tone is shown by a footprint of the past and loneliness to which was added symbolism and melancholia. The author showed us through his words issue of life, love and death, a sensitivity which gets us closer of characters' life and struggles.

In 1930 William Faulkner published his very first story, “A Rose for Emily.” The story emerges with the funeral of Emily Grierson and discloses the story out of sequence; Faulkner brings into play an anonymous first-person narrator thought to be the representation of Grierson’s municipality. Miss Emily Grierson’s life was read to be controlled by her father and all his restrictions. Grierson was raised through her life with the thought that no man was adequate for her. Stuck in her old ways, Grierson continued with the Old South’s traditions once her father had passed. Awhile following her father’s death, Emily aims to put the longing for love to a stop and allows Homer Barron to enter her life. Faulkner portrays the literary movement of Modernism utilizing allegory through the post-bellum South after the American Civil War. In the short story “A Rose Emily,” William Faulkner uses a series of symbols to illustrate the prominent theme of the resistance of the refinement of life around Miss Emily.

William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi. He was the oldest of four Brothers since a very young age William developed a love for literature.He was awarded multiple awards including Nobel prices and Pulitzer awards. William Faulkner is known for his stories about the decadence of the south and the tones his stories have. In this story, we see how Emily is a symbol for the town of the old South and how everyone need to adapt to the new changes in the town. William tone influences every part of his stories.“A Rose for Emily” is about Emily Grierson a girl in a post-civil war Mississippi and how she isolated from everyone during tough situations. In “A Rose for Emily” William Faulkner use of imagery and symbolism help us develop the theme of the story.

Symbolism in literature is using an object to portray a different, deeper meaning in a story. Symbols represent ideas or qualities that the author has maneuvered into his or her story that has meaning. There can be multiple symbols in a story or just one. It is up to the reader to interpret the meaning of the symbols and their significance to the story. While reading a story, symbols may not become clear until the very end, once the climax is over, and the falling action is covered. In William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” there are multiple examples of symbolism that occur throughout the story.

As an image of decrepit grandeur, Miss Emily’s house is used to symbolize Miss Emily’s character herself, the historical setting in which the story takes place, and some of the story’s central themes. Described as “a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorates with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies” (Faulkner 1), the house is ornate and grand in design, even being located on what was once an exclusive street in Jefferson. However, over time, it had become dilapidated and unkempt, with the interior being dark and full of dust, possessing “a close, dank smell” (Faulkner 1). Similarly, Miss Emily was once a young lady of high standing, opulent in her own ways, but slowly aged and lost her grandeur, becoming “a small, fat woman” (Faulkner 1) whose hair was turning grayer as the days went by. Much like her home, Miss Emily was losing her charm over time, showing that her character was stubbornly grasping on to the idea that she still retained an image of splendor she no longer possessed, all while isolating herself from the rest of the town.