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essay

  • Submitted By: lannguyen
  • Date Submitted: 03/19/2014 12:39 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1333
  • Page: 6

A Rose For Emily Fiction Analysis English Literature Essay
In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the story of an old and lonely lady stuck in her own timeframe. Her controlling father died some thirty years ago and she has never quite found her own ground. Her house has become the most hideous looking home on the once most select street in the city. Previously elegant and white with scrolled balconies, it was now encroached with dust and decay. The people in Miss Emily’s city gossip about her and pity her lost soul. She soon begins dating a young bachelor by the name of Homer Barron, whom is part of the construction company paving sidewalks on her street. They begin taking buggy rides together, and townspeople talk more, and pity Miss Emily more. Things change quickly though, as Miss Emily is seen less with Homer, and is witnessed purchasing arsenic from the local drug store. Eventually no more is seen of Homer, and Miss Emily dies at age seventy-four. After Miss Emily’s death the townspeople breakdown her upstairs room that had been sealed shut for some forty years. They find Homer’s dead decaying body, an imprint of another body beside it, and a single grey strand of hair. “A Rose for Emily” tells the story of tradition versus nontraditional and old versus new, which is brought to light through the story’s plot, characters, and setting.
Right the beginning of the story it is clear that it will be about old versus new. The writer begins by describing Miss Emily’s house, which was once luxurious, is now old and dusty. “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white… [Now] an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 146). The house itself stands for tradition, it has aged, and instead of moving along with the rebuilding of the South, it has stayed the same. As the story begins to speak about Miss Emily’s past, it is clear that her family is well respected in the town. So much so that when she walks into a room, people are expected to rise in...

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