William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" Analysis

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William Faulkner’s story, “A Rose for Emily”, makes use of imagery to depict a theme of death and decay. This imagery ultimately shows the transition of Ms. Emily to her insanity as well as her death. Looking at the last few paragraphs, Faulkner uses imagery to create this sense of disturbance in the readers. Upon breaking and entering the door on the second floor of Ms. Emily’s house, everyone stood in dismay. They look upon a dead man. The man is pictured laying in bed with a “profound and fleshless grin.” (96) This description gives us a visual of a skeleton in the bed that has been decaying for some time now. He had been laid into a “sleep that outlasts love.” (96) The idea of Ms. Emily being capable of killing a person, especially a lover, is unimaginable. What makes this situation even more disturbing is that Ms. Emily had become so desensitized that she kept the body in her room to embrace and love it forever. Faulkner’s imagery creates this sickening idea of embracing a dead body. Faulkner’s story is about the decay of the mind, body and social environment. The story begins with “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral.” (90) This opening into Faulkner’s story starts with the form of physical death but as you read on, you will see that it is much more than physical death. Death will soon emerge in many other forms than you would have imagined. The death in the story is not so noticeable as you begin reading. Decay on the other hand is apparent. As a child, her life was very difficult. Her father occupied a high social position in the town of Jefferson. He shunned Emily from society and forbade anyone to see or even meet her. This attitude was very detrimental to Emily and her overall well-being. As you can see, Emily became dependent of her father. She had little to no access to the outside world. As the story continues, the
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