Death and Decay in a Southern Town “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a southern gothic story of Emily Grierson. It is the struggles of a woman left alone during the reconstruction of the South after the civil war. This story is filled with death and decay. Death fills the story of “A Rose for Emily.” Southern traditions are slowly dying with the coming of changes. Emily is the traditional southern lady, proud of her name and heritage.
Faulkner’s use of this particular time-period is successful in giving the reader an understanding to the values and beliefs of the characters in the story. The town of Jefferson is a fallen legacy. The hierarchical regime of the Griersons and the class system of the time, where by law of the mayor-Colonel Sartoris, a Negro woman could not even walk the street without an apron, had changed completely. It has changed into a place where even the street on which Miss Emily lived, that had once been the most select, had now been encroached and intruded. Both the town and Miss Emily herself now looked upon Miss Emily as the only remainder of that greater time.
In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the life of a woman known as Emily is explored. Everything from the way she treats those around her to the way people look up to her can attest to the time period in which men came to view a “fallen monument” (Faulkner 91) and pay their respects to an era that was no longer in their midst. These deep seeded conflicts that grip this region can be pinpointed to the south, during reconstruction, after a long and grueling civil war from which “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of [Emily’s] neighborhood.” (Faulkner 91) Even before her passing the death of the old was being overrun by the new just as the cotton gins had done to Emily’s street. This old versus new rivalry brings upon the all-important theme of tradition versus change. As the custom of the South the elites or Aristocrats have power not linked to their land alone, but to the name they carry as well.
She discusses the story in a unique way because she changes its point of view; helping the audience gain a new perspective of the issue. “I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress” (Jacobs 84). Jacobs’ story speaks out to me because she addresses an audience of people that slavery should have been stopped. She tells a story about how traumatizing the life of an enslaved black female can be. She tries to gain sympathy for what she has been through.
The main theme of the story is about the decaying in the town, the house, and in Miss Emily herself. Miss Emily’s house is one of the main important symbols which represent her past because it’s like Miss Emily. The house was almost similar to Miss Emily, because over the years the house started to get old and so did she. Her life began to go down the drain along with the house. She was the type of person that kept herself locked up in the house.
A Product of Her Environment The setting found in “A Rose For Emily” plays an enormous role in building the overall effect of the story. The setting is Jefferson, Mississippi, a small fictional city in the South, during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the beginning of the story, Jefferson is portrayed as a quiet, traditional, small town, but as the atmosphere is further developed, Jefferson becomes a character of its own. Jefferson and everything that it becomes has a huge effect on the main character, Emily and it illuminates how she becomes the person that she does. This is shown through how Jefferson and its people ignore Emily’s mental problems; how she is indoctrinated to think she needs a man in her life; and by the way that the people of Jefferson allow her to get away with several incidents without paying the consequences.
The conflict between the past and the present is symbolized in the beginning of the story by this description, “only now Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores” (91). It is ironic that the same description “stubborn and coquettish decay” can be a description for Miss Emily herself as well. Miss Emily had becoming just like her house, which had once been white and on a “select street”, she had been a slim young lady dressed in white but as the house fell into a decrepit state so had she. “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water and of that pallid hue” (92). The town played a definite part in Miss Emily’s mental delusion.
We have all experienced or been the victims of bullying so can relate to how Margot would’ve been feeling. Although it is not mentioned in the text, we are inclined to believe that Margot may have Seasonal Affective Disorder (being depressed during the winter time) due to the way she is described which could also be symptoms. Several language features are used to do this. “She was an old photograph” This metaphor shows us that Margot was frail and unspoken. She conveyed happy memories from the past, in her case her time on Earth just like an old photograph.
One of the main events which has had an effect on the fall of the Roman Empire is the decline of her military. The main reason for the decline of the military is the fact that they were under constant warfare. Imagine an empire where peace and stability finally overruled war and chaos. The Roman empire was much like this. After years and years of war the empire was finally uniting.
The town’s people | | |have received the news that Miss Emily has died. The story takes the reader through several periods of Miss Emily’s | | |life where we learn that her death is the culminating loss and not only the end to a family legacy and a home that | | |was such a permanent fixture in the town, but also a chance for a new beginning, a change, a chance to solve |