A_Rose_for_Emily

A Rose for Emily A ROSE FOR EMILY A Rose for Emily takes place after the Civil War and into the 1900’s in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi—a town very similar to the one in which William Faulkner spent most of his life. It is a story of the conflict between the old and the new South, the past and the present—with Emily and the things around her steadfastly representing the dying old traditions and the present expressed mostly through the words of the narrator but also through Homer Barron and the new board of aldermen. The issue of racism also runs throughout the story. In part I, Faulkner refers to Emily as a "fallen monument", a monument to the southern gentility that existed before the Civil War. Her house is described as having once been white—the color of youth, innocence and purity, and also of the white society—but decayed now and smelling of dust and disuse. It stands between the cotton wagons (the past) and the gasoline pumps (the present)--an "eyesore among eyesores". Emily comes from an upper class family and grew up privileged and protected by her father. An agreement between her father emily, old, homer, house, faulkner, past, south, emily’s, town, jefferson, father, color, after, one, negro, life, gray, years, time, taxes, rose, part, new, hair, generation, even, disappears, death, confederate, young, yellow, yankee, throughout, three, suggesting, story, southern, room, representing, perhaps, men, man, living, iron-gray, form, ever, dies, described, dark