A Rose for Emily Essay example

"A Rose for Emily"
William Faulkner (1897-1962), who came from an old southern family, grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. He joined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during the First World War, studied for a while at the University of Mississippi, and temporarily worked for a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper. Except for some trips to Europe and Asia, and a few brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, he worked on his novels and short stories on a farm in Oxford.
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" was originally published in April 30,1930. It is one of Faulkner's most controversial stories. The main character Emily Grierson shuts herself away and in some way helped by the townspeople by not following the rules of society. This story takes place in the town of Jefferson the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. The principal themes of this story are resentment, generation gap, disillusionment, and forbidden love. After Miss Emily's death, the townspeople discover that many years ago she killed her lover and has slept with his corpse every night. In a way she punished Homer, " her lover" by eternal life with her. Miss Emily had a husband for her own. While reading this story we witnessed that she was not afraid of dying since she gave her own freedom and personality just to be with her "husband". "A Rose for Emily" is use in some ways to symbolize the failure of the people in the South to accept change.After the Civil War many Southerners denied to accept new ways instead of trying to hold on to the past or live in the past. "Only now Miss Emily's house was left lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pump - an eyesore among eyesore"(pg. 237). This part from the story tells the reader that the old South is loved without new technology or new changes. In the story Miss Emily begins to fade after her father's death. She acts like nothing has happened when people come to pay their respects. She closes the door or symbolically stops time and stays inside her house. In some way the townspeople helped her not follow the new rules of society because when she won't pay her taxes and angrily refers people to Colonel Sartoris, a man who died ten years ago, the townspeople overlook this instead sending her to jail. They overlook things like this because Miss Emily is a symbol of their beloved past and can not bear to let it go. When mailboxes and house numbers are require to have in the houses Miss Emily refuses to have either one. The author wrote "When the next generation with its more modern ideas become mayors and alderman this arrangement created some dissatisfaction"(pg.238) . This is another example of people keeping with the idea of the old South being

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