Literary Analysis a Rose Emily William Faulkner Essay

Rose for Emily

Emily as a Symbol of the South in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a complex short story that investigates the conflicted nature of the post-War South. Emily Grierson represents the Old World aristocracy, refined in its manners and in its dignity. She represents the glory of the South. And yet the South is fallen; defeated by the Union, it has lost is glory. Its sense of order has been overturned and its hope for the future looks dim. So, too, with Emily, whose reclusion mirrors the South's withdrawal from the pursuit of the rights it fought for. This paper will analyze the way Faulkner uses Emily to convey the desperate and sad plight of South in the years following the Civil War.

Emily's supposed marriage to Homer, the Yankee laborer from the North, represents the return of the South to the Union after the war. Beneath the Southern State's dignity, surrender was viewed as inevitable but tragic. The land-owners of the South were different from the industrial North, just as Emily is different in class from Homer Barron.

But Emily's marriage to Homer does not go through, as the townspeople imagined it would. Faulkner does not give the exact details of what happens. Instead, he observes Emily and her actions from a distance, giving information as though he were only one more onlooker. He does not make use of the third-person omniscient narrator because he himself only wants to suggest, hint, give a sketch of who Emily and the South really are.

What Faulkner does reveal, however, is the fact that Homer disappeared, that Emily became a recluse; that she refused to pay taxes and that the community, out of respect, sorrow and pity, looked the other way; that a rotten smell began to emanate from her home and that the community took measures to mask the smell. All of these details, while…