Symbolism in the Story A Rose for Emily

Introduction

William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily is a wonderful short story that begins with the funeral of the protagonist, Emily Grierson(Morton 21). Faulkner uses an anonymous narrator who is considered the voice of the city and tells the story out of chronological order. The story basically takes the life of Emily Grierson as an allegory of the changes in the post-bellum south after the Civil War. Using a series of symbols, as the home of Emily, hair, clothes, and even of Emily Rose, Faulkner illustrates the collapse of the post-bellum south.

Discussion

The characteristic of Miss Emily's house symbolizes his appearance as it becomes obsolete with time and neglect. The house ... had once been white, decorated with domes and towers and balconies travel through the style of the seventies lightsome, located in what had been our most select street(Faulkner 212). Then it became an eyesore of eyesores. Miss Emily changed the same way he did his house and she also became an eyesore. She was a slender figure in white and then becomes swollen, like a body long submerged in the water with his eyes still lost in the fatty ridges of her face. During the death of Miss Emily had been mentioned as a fallen monument, which could mean that once was something beautiful and rich, but eventually grew old and poor. These same changes to the impoverishment of wealth produced in the South after the Civil War.

There are many symbols that orient to believe that Miss Emily is living in his post-bellum era when he was at his best with his father. She will not allow the city to put a house number at home for the postal service for free. She also tells tax collectors to talk to Colonel Sartoris (who died ...