A Rose For Emily Symbolism Essay

Good symbolism is a sign of a well written piece of literature. A symbol creates a direct and complex relationship between a specific object, scene, character, or action and ideas, values, or way of life. In some ways the symbol substitutes a physical, palpable key for an abstract concept. A symbol is capable of submeaning and hidden pieces but a symbol can’t be fake, must be a literal term present in the text. In “A Rose for Emily”, symbolism runs deep and gives a new level of non superficial understanding.
An important matter in A Rose for Emily is death which is symbolic of both Emily's life and the traditional life of the old south, in which the story is set. “A Rose for Emily,” from the beginning was centralized and emphasized deaths - from the narrator’s mention of Emily’s death at the beginning of the story through the description of Emily’s death-haunted life to the foundering of tradition in the face of modern changes. Based on the setting of this story, the South after defeat in the Civil War by the North, Emily's life is symbolically over in the same way that her old Southern plantation life becomes nothing but a …show more content…
The writer does not only describes the crucial and eerie event of men adding lime dust around Emily’s property in order to cover up the repulsive and mysterious odor, which ended up being the rotting corpse of her lover, but Faulkner also describes the visual of a house being overruled by dust, dirtiness and despair. The house is “filled with dust and shadows” and the bedrooms are covered with “pervading dust.” The dust filling Emily’s house is a indirect and simple symbol to the faded lives that live within the house, the desperation and death of Homer, the silence of Tobe and Emily’s delusions. The layers of dust also suggest the cloud of anonymity that hides Emily’s secrets. In the final sentences of the story, the dust is an brutal being that seems to emerge from Homer’s dead