A rose most commonly represents love. The beauty of this flower expresses hope, compassion, and happiness. In many ways, the blossoming of a rose describes love itself. Love is so powerful that we are often blinded by it. In doing so, love creates rose colored glasses. It alters the world around us, making it appear lovelier than it truly is. For the narrator of the short story entitled “A Rose For Emily,” written by William Faulkner, death appears to be prominent. In fact, roses are hardly even mentioned. If we look closer, roses are used to symbolize Emily’s refusal to accept what is going on in the world around her.
Miss Emily has a rose in the sense that she is looking at the world through rose colored glasses. In the beginning of the …show more content…
Multiple times we see a “crayon portrait” of her father as if he is always watching over her (Faulkner 135, 142). She has been heavily dependent on him and now that he is gone, she cannot bare to face the world without him, despite his arguably negative influence on her before and after his death. And so, with her father physically gone, Emily remains in her house most of the time. She shuts herself off from society even more than she already has. After returning, the town notices a difference in her appearance. She has cut her hair short, “making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows – sort of tragic and serene” (Faulkner 138). To match her rose colored glasses, Emily has changed her entire appearance. Every time anyone sees her, Emily’s appearance changes. Many years after that, at a much older age, the towns people notice that “she look[s] bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water” (Faulkner 135). These appearances, however, serve as foreshadows. Although roses are beautiful, they are also deceptive. Their stems are covered in prickly thorns that can hurt if touched. The first image we have of her is shortly after her father’s death. In a story filled with tragedy and death, serenity is the false veil that Emily insists on wearing. Whether Emily knows it or not, she is deceiving the townspeople by putting on this serene veil. In the end, she is revealed as a murderer; …show more content…
As described, her house is “a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies...only Miss Emily 's house was left” (Faulkner 134). In some ways, the house is an extension of Emily. It is the only house left on the street that hasn’t been replaced by cotton wagons, garages, gasoline pumps, and other industrial inventions. Just like Emily, it refuses to progress with the revolutionary times. As stated in the Daily Evening Bulletin, “we have adapted wood to architecture to all extend unknown to Western Europe, and therein have exhibited a genuine evolution, based upon facts of material at hand, climate, and the necessity of cheap and rapid construction” (8 March 1886, 2). Emily’s house is out of place just as the South’s old values are out of place in a changing society. Her home, once thought of as a foundation for the preservation of tradition, is now seen as a stubborn annoyance that refuses to go away. Emily, as well, is stubborn and refuses to move on with her life. Like her house, she is stuck in the Civil War
Miss Emily has a rose in the sense that she is looking at the world through rose colored glasses. In the beginning of the …show more content…
Multiple times we see a “crayon portrait” of her father as if he is always watching over her (Faulkner 135, 142). She has been heavily dependent on him and now that he is gone, she cannot bare to face the world without him, despite his arguably negative influence on her before and after his death. And so, with her father physically gone, Emily remains in her house most of the time. She shuts herself off from society even more than she already has. After returning, the town notices a difference in her appearance. She has cut her hair short, “making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows – sort of tragic and serene” (Faulkner 138). To match her rose colored glasses, Emily has changed her entire appearance. Every time anyone sees her, Emily’s appearance changes. Many years after that, at a much older age, the towns people notice that “she look[s] bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water” (Faulkner 135). These appearances, however, serve as foreshadows. Although roses are beautiful, they are also deceptive. Their stems are covered in prickly thorns that can hurt if touched. The first image we have of her is shortly after her father’s death. In a story filled with tragedy and death, serenity is the false veil that Emily insists on wearing. Whether Emily knows it or not, she is deceiving the townspeople by putting on this serene veil. In the end, she is revealed as a murderer; …show more content…
As described, her house is “a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies...only Miss Emily 's house was left” (Faulkner 134). In some ways, the house is an extension of Emily. It is the only house left on the street that hasn’t been replaced by cotton wagons, garages, gasoline pumps, and other industrial inventions. Just like Emily, it refuses to progress with the revolutionary times. As stated in the Daily Evening Bulletin, “we have adapted wood to architecture to all extend unknown to Western Europe, and therein have exhibited a genuine evolution, based upon facts of material at hand, climate, and the necessity of cheap and rapid construction” (8 March 1886, 2). Emily’s house is out of place just as the South’s old values are out of place in a changing society. Her home, once thought of as a foundation for the preservation of tradition, is now seen as a stubborn annoyance that refuses to go away. Emily, as well, is stubborn and refuses to move on with her life. Like her house, she is stuck in the Civil War