In the short story, A Rose for Emily, written by William Faulkner, the readers are presented with the many changes that a society goes through and how it may be hard to overcome those changes because of what one has known and been accustomed to all their life. The historical aspects in this short story and the way the main character handles everything that was brought her way because of these historical aspects, is what truly makes the story what it is These aspects show the relationship between how things were prior to the end of the Civil War and how things turned around after the Civil War ended during the Reconstruction period.

 The main character, Emily Grierson, is the last remaining member of a very rich, upper-class family. Emily is pretty much a recluse, but when she dies just about the whole town attends her funeral. This is very surprising because no one really knew her; she kept to herself, never went out, and didn’t have any friends, making the majority of her life basically a puzzle for the people of the town to put together. A big piece to the story comes into play when some of Emily’s family comes to take care of her estate after her passing and after her funeral. To their surprise, they come across a dead body in Emily’s bed with a strand of her hair next to that body, which further allows people to believe that Emily murdered this man and went into that reclusive state because of it.

The setting and time period of the story is probably one of the most important aspects of the story. A Rose for Emily takes place right around/during the Civil War and the Reconstruction time period. Emily’s family being the upper-class family that they were, they were not too keen on accepting their new lowered social status because of the loss of their fortunes after the surrender in the war. Even with that new social status that they were supposed to accustom to, Emily still lived to the very high, privileged standard that she had known all her life, with no regards to anyone else. Some discrimination also comes into play in this short story when Homer Barron comes into town. Homer is a northerner and a manual laborer, which is just about the complete opposite of what Emily is. Emily and Homer began to get very close and even talk about marriage. The people of the town were discriminating in the fact that they believed Emily was very above him and they were very surprised that Emily would consider someone like him as a husband since he was lower-class and Emily wasn’t. Discrimination was a big issue during the Civil War time period so that discrimination towards Homer and Emily was a big deal throughout this story.

With the obvious murder in this story, crime/violence could be considered a big issue throughout A Rose for Emily as well. The fact that she murdered him and the way that she did it is very violent in the sense that she purposefully poisoned him, and after his death, kept it all a big secret and just allowed people to believe that she was grieving over the loss of her father, and that that was what was keeping her away from everyone and making herself be the recluse that she had become. That proves that there is definitely a very cynical side to Emily, considering how exactly she executed what she did. Had maybe she come clean about the murder, rather than hiding out, everything that happened after the murder wouldn’t have been so sketchy and confusing. However, even murdering someone in the first place shows a somewhat insane side in a person, especially Emily Grierson.

In the end, there were a lot of historical aspects throughout the entire story that made it easy to relate the story to things and events that we are familiar with, no matter how far back to date they are. The historical events brought up or all very common ones that everyone knows atleast something about. Reading a story where you are able to make those connections always makes the story easier to read and easier to understand. All of the aspects mentioned truly show the relationship between how things were prior to the end of the Civil War and how things turned around after the Civil War ended, during the Reconstruction period.
