Symbols and Motifs in A Rose For Emily Essay

Symbols and Motifs in William Faulkners A Rose for Emily

In William Faulkners A Rose for Emily, the setting and descriptions of physical surroundings serve to depict the passage and manipulation of time. William Faulkner through the use of few literary devices plays with time and shows how his main characters, such as Emily Gierson also wishes to play with time. For Emily, time is a subjective reality used to visit different moments in ones life. She denies herself the ability to see time as linear, objective, and unchangeable. She is resistant to the strict governance of time as well as the changes it can bring. This is so because of the changes in her life and physical body and appearances that serve to her displeasure. William Faulkner also allows the reader to further understand the nature of time and the way it is manipulated with the image of the house, the surrounding neighborhood as well as several other qualities of his story.

Throughout the story, the narrator continually describes Emilys violent actions in resistance to the modernization of her neighborhood. She refuses to have metal numbers on her house and to pay the taxes the officials urge her to pay. She refutes paying taxes claiming that the general said that taxes dont have to be paid. Emily is living in the past and refusing to live up to the changing world around her. In doing so, she is an emblem of the old south and is representative of the old aristocratic nature of the Old South. However she refuses to change these patterns and align with the changing social order of the south. She is able to remain in her own private world and social order when she refuses to leave her house.

For example by not leaving her house, Emily decides to separate herself from the rest of the world, and decided to live life by her own terms, deciding how time runs and how she is able to live within this subjective reality. For example, in her house she is able to practice freedom with time by being able to kill Homer and keep him in her home. By doing so, she is able to keep him near her, and stop the element of change that is such an intrinsic element of time. Death seems to be part of the nature of change that Emily so tries to deny and is afraid of. Unfortunately her fears drive her to eccentric and even contradictory actions.

For example, when she kills her husband she is able to keep him close to her however his lifelessness keeps him distant. It can almost be said that in order to prevent change, Emily attempts to fuse life and death with her husband, even though this of course can never be done. Emilys resistance to change is also shown when she fails to acknowledge that her father is dead.

Another significant quality in the setting of A Rose for Emily is the prevalent presence of dust. For example when the tax collectors arrive at Emilys house, it is described as smelling of dust and disuse, and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. The house, where dust is everywhere, remains a marker of changelessness, due to Emilys inability to move from certain emotions and feelings. Thus the dust in the setting further clarifies or represents Emilys subjective interpretations of time and the objective realities that face her like the inevitability of death and change.

As Emily seeks to protect herself from such deterministic concepts, and seeks to protect herself from them, dust in A Rose for Emily can also be seen as a protective presence. It covers everything in the house thus allowing for a barrier between the reality around Emily and her private life that comes through in her house. Also, Emily is seen as an extremely enigmatic character throughout the neighborhood as she disallows everyone but her slave from gaining any knowledge or perspective of her private life. Dust itself also covers everything in Emilys house and metaphorically in her private life, disallowing anyone to truly see the nature of the thing that remains behind or under it. Thus the presence of dust can also be seen as creating the obscurity that Emily so depends on to prevent anyone from truly gaining any perspective into her nature and personality.

Another extremely important part of the setting in the story is the strand of hair that is found in Emilys house after she dies. It is one of the last images in the story and stands to make an extremely significant presence. The strand of hair is found in one of Emilys rooms where her husband is found dead and stands to let the reader as well as the characters in the story that Emily killed him. The strand of hair represents the eccentric and grotesque things Emily was willing to do in order to remain happy and secure in her own subjective reality that is free of time and the changes it brings.

It represents Emilys willingness or rather shear doggedness to live in her own terms despite any judgments she may receive from the surrounding neighborhood and its peoples.

Also, the strand of hair is the only thing that remains of Emilys body, and is the last testament of her presence. It represents Emilys efforts and determination to remain in a world in which she is safe. It represents Emilys fight to not give in to death and its inevitability. It is a rather beautiful symbol that William Faulkner uses in his story to represent not only Emilys fight against time and death, but also the continuing fight for survival so inhabited by every human being. It is the last remaining sliver of Emilys physical existence, and even though Emilys body is gone, she is still able to somewhat exist in this changing world around her, through this one single strand of hair. The strand is separated from Emilys body even though she is gone, and so the single strand of hair comes to represent Emilys single existence in a world that is changing around her. Just as Emily was the last testament of the Old Aristocratic South her strand of hair represents the last testament of her existence.

Emily Gierson is a character that is noted throughout the story for doing extreme things and having a near psychotic attitude. Her fears of the deterministic nature of time and change is scary to her and thus she tries her best to protect herself from these things even though of course, no one can. Although it may seem that William Faulkner in writing A Rose for Emily simply tries to pose a strange and eccentric character named Emily Gierson, he might have higher intentions. Emily Gierson may be part of a larger metaphor. She is simply an example of a human being that is driven to eccentic and extreme actions simply because of fear, something that every human feels. Whether crazy or not, Emily is trying her best to rationalize the world around her by taking extreme measures however any human being when afraid of something especially time will also try to do anything to solve or ease those fears. William Faulkner might simply be commenting on the mysterious and muti faceted nature of human beings and the human condition, as well as the extreme things human beings might be willing to do in their vast determination to survive and live a happy life by ones own terms.