A Rose for Emily Essay

A Rose for Emily Symbolism

EMILY VS HER FATHER
• Her father is portrayed with his back to her: Disregard to her emotional welfare.
• The horsewhip: a symbol of control over her life

THE DEAD
• The dead are present in her life (foreshadowing)
• She holds onto her father's body
• After Homer's missing she became a living dead
"But the images of death emerged most frequently: her pallid complexion: her drowned, bloated body; her lost eyes; and the cold, dry voice of the tomb. Not only had Emily been living with the death literally in the form of Homer's corpse, but something essential had died within her."
• At the end she lives with the dead

EMILY BECOMES HER FATHER
• Inversion of her youthful portrait: "a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her".
• Emily became the dark silhouette of her father in the dominant foreground.
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EMILY REPRESENTS THE "OLD SOUTH"
• Emily represented the "Old South" that was slowly dying and making way for the newer, industrialized South that was on its way in. The South was lagging behind the North in technology, and it took the Sound longer to become an industrialized society. Miss Emily, with her dilapidated mansion in the middle of the town that around her was demonstrating growth and changing with the times, was the last remnant of the "Old South" in the town, really. She refused to change and this was one of her tragic flaws, really.

DEATH BECOMES HER
• A significant theme in A Rose for Emily is death which is symbolic of both Emily's life and the life of the old south.

After the Sound is defeated in the Civil War, Emily's life is symbolically over in the same way that plantation life becomes a memory. She lives, but has no life. She becomes enamored of the dead which is first depicted when she resists burying her father. Emily is a necrophiliac (literally, one who loves the dead")."

Her attempt at grasping at life through her relationship with Homer Barron also results in death. She would rather kill him than allow him to leave her. She then lives with death by sleeping next to the corpse of Homer Barron for many

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Symbolism In A Rose For Emily

Essay On A Rose For Emily