Miss Emily being a ghost.

She's a creepy character and an ominous figure in the

story “A Rose For Emily”.

I really like the story “A Rose for Emily” so I’m going to give my point of view. By reading

“A Rose for Emily” I started to think of this story as a southern ghost story, given all of

its eerie qualities and its focal position in the past. I think that the story is utterly

haunted; reappearing words like “once been” emphasize the importance of the past

from the very beginning to the end of this story which circulates in a sporadic time frame

around a funeral and death. If we look in to the characters names, we will notice that

Emily’s last name, Grierson, almost contains the word eerie. Mentions of shadows, dust,

and “a close, dank smell” are suggestive of life after death or an open coffin. Emily is

described as submerged, perhaps like a ghost that lingers on earth unable to enter

heaven. This could be one way I would support that the conflict of God and Satan

because Emily is so much like a ghost trapped between these realms. One example of

her being stuck in the middle is that she knows and is taught that every woman must

marry yet she is unable to do so because her father denies her this opportunity. She

was also conflicted within herself because she knew it was wrong to kill someone, but

she did. This demonstrates the classic push and pull that exists so blatantly in the world

we live in, manifested in all forms of life.

Death and the perception of death being the ultimate fate is definitely present in this

story. The idea of living was only seen in those who lived in Miss Emily's community,

never in Miss Emily. Miss Emily actually rejected their efforts of communicating with her
because of their zest of life. The only person she trusted was her African American

servant who others didn't view as having the same social status as they did.

I think all of the allusions to death and the afterlife have one very important objective

here. Perhaps Faulkner the writer of the story, in his attempt to tell a story about the

human experience, is demonstrating the inevitability of Miss Emily’s fate. She is

predestined to be lonely, has been submerged by her father her whole life, and remains

steadfast in her traditional ways, which no longer are valid in present Jefferson

(exemplified by her refusal to pay taxes).

Miss Emily is recognized to be different and unusual. She is as “what would have been

merely plumpness in another was obesity in her.” We have to interpret this as way of

alluding to the uniqueness of Miss Emily’s existence. I believe this uniqueness forces us

to relate Miss Emily to that of a ghost.

In every way Emily is a ghost. This story is of that ghost, that stranger, whose would

have never been told nor known. Moreover, it’s as if the story itself is a ghost, one that

is “on a paper of archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink,” at least I

could have imagined it to be. In telling it, Faulkner is demonstrating his respect and

offering tribute to Miss Emily’s experience. I think it symbolizes something quite simple

actually, I think it’s like Faulkner communicating to this character via letter and on that

letter it says,

Here is a rose for you Emily.

Love,

Faulkner.
To strengthen my thought, the imprint on the pillow is certainly alluding to her ghostly

presence. As well as the origin of this story in particular: It "came from a picture of the

strand of hair on the pillow. It was a ghost story. Simply a picture of a strand of hair on

the pillow in the abandoned house"