Surname 1

Student’s name
Instructor
Course
Date
Miss Emily Character
A rose for Emily presents a story of Emily Grierson facing tragedies and of loss to those
she loved. The story progressively develops her character, even after starting with informing the
audience of her demise that had attracted town’s people for different reasons. Her life had defied
time, living in the once select street that had eventually lost its glamor with the encroaching
industrialization. Such resistance is also embodied in her father, a man who thought no one was
good enough for her daughter, explaining why she had lived a lonely woman except for that one
moment when she got involved with homer and it as well ended tragically. The story shows how
tragic excessive parental control had eventually damaged Emily’s social life that carried on
through her life
The first recognizable bizarre behavior of Miss Emily was her denial of the demise of her
father, spending three days holding onto it. At the beginning of the story, the reader may assume
that she is in denial, or loved her father too much to let go. However, at the end of the story, it
becomes apparent that she may have inherited her father’s trait of controlling people that he.
After she also poisons Homer Barron and preserves his body for thirty years, it becomes clear
that she had an unusual attachment to dead bodies. This would be the ultimate form of control
since the dead could not resist any of her directives. After the upper room was broken following
her death, a strand of her grey hair found besides the decayed body of Barron shows that she
would sleep next to his lifeless body.
Miss Emily was a traditionist as explicitly depicted through the story, resisting the wave
of changes that had taken over town. Her house symbolizes her timeless belief, defying times
and changes that the town had undergone. Her description of “a fallen monument” (Faulkner et
al. 10) in the opening of the story embodies her timelessness. Being a rather stubborn woman,
she has also alienated herself from the town, with few knowing anything about her. She has also
refused to pay taxes, referring the aldermen to Colonel Sartoris, a man who was long dead but
she appeared uninformed about this fact. Again, she resists having a numbered mailbox placed in
her residence and it is clear she is not taking part in the change taking place in town. She is
caught back in time and unwilling to live conventionally according to the changing times.

Works cited
Faulkner, William, Josef Schwarz, and Zdeněk Urbánek. A rose for Emily. Paderborn, De:
Verlag F. Schöningh, 1958.