Character analysis of Emily

Essay by samsum_11College, UndergraduateA, March 2005

download word file, 5 pages 4.5 1 reviews

Downloaded 73 times

Different Aspects of Emily

Often people are stuck in the past and cannot accept the truth, the present, and modernization going around them. The character of Emily Grierson in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is one from this category of people. Emily Grierson was a strange personality with distinguished characteristics. From the point of view of many, she is a crazy woman because she kills her lover in order to keep him forever with herself. Miss Emily Grierson is a static character that is locked in her past life. She is not able to change herself and roll on with the wheels of time. William Faulkner, through the use of various symbols indicating death and decay, portrayed a woman whose life ends long before her death.

The first and one of the significant symbols of death and decay presented in the story is Miss Emily's house itself. The look, setting and atmosphere of the house provide us with the features of death and decay in Emily's life.

The street where her house is located has changed completely except Miss Emily's house. "Garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood" (28). The house that once had been beautiful is destroyed now. "...lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps- an eyesore among eyesores" (28). Cotton gins, cotton wagons, and the gasoline pipes are all symbols indicating the new and modernized era and period where still stands, Emily's old and destroyed house. Emily's house was an eyesore in the city, and Emily herself was a greater eyesore in her society.

The entire look from the inside of the house is also a symbol representing death and decay. The inside of her house is explored in the story for...