William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” has two central concepts, dust and decay. Decay is the most easily seen in this narrative starting with the decay of Emily’s homestead and the aging and death of Emily. Faulkner’s representation of dust signifies the changing of time doesn’t, however “erase events of the past but also reflect how the past is uncovered.” The dust covering much of the inside of Emily’s homestead serves to obscure the past. The coating of dust, covering the bones of Homer, shows readers that the past remains, waiting to be discovered. “Unlike memory and decay, some details of the past may remain undiscovered, but they still exist—“patient and biding””. Just as with Emily the past can only remain hidden for so
