“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner was published in 1930 and tells a story of an old woman named Emily Grierson in post-civil war Mississippi town. Faulkner builds the story in a way that makes the reader feel sorry for Emily and the things she is facing and later shows the reader, that she was in fact, crazy the entire time.  The author uses the theme of change and symbols of death and decay to build sympathy for Emily but also alludes to her insanity.  

Throughout the text, Faulkner shines light on the theme of change. The setting of this piece is a post-Civil War Mississippi town and it is shown to be modern for its time. Though, Emily’s home still resembled the structure that was of the 1800’s. Faulkner notes, 

 It was 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, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps- an eyesore among eyesores.

The lack of change just to Emily’s home symbolizes her stubborn personality, and her need to live in the past. Her fear of change was first displayed when her father passed away and she did not allow anyone to dispose of the body for three days, continuing to live in denial of his death. The townspeople almost turned to the law before she cracked and they could bury his body (Faulkner, 1). Her denial phase created sympathy towards her by the townspeople. They acknowledged that she was just hurting from the loss and was in shock and failed to realize that she was not mentally in the right place (2-3). Her fear of change foreshadows the crime she would commit by killing her husband, Homer, to keep him with her. Her stubbornness, although a common characteristic within people, surpasses sanity. After killing her husband, she laid in a hidden room with his corpse for weeks, knowing if she would announce his death, he would be taken from her. She is just afraid of being alone, a man in her life left her before and to keep that from happening again, she kills Homer, so he can never leave her. Furthermore, so no one can ever take him away the way they took her father away; which is why she hides him. Faulkner states, “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head,” this shows that Emily never bothered to straighten out the pillow, she purposely did not change a thing in the wrong, because she wanted it to be as if there was a presence always in the room. 

Death is prominent throughout the piece, it begins with “When Miss Emily Grierson died…” from the beginning the reader was aware of the death in the story. Homer’s body not only abides by the theme of change (or lack thereof) but it also greatly signifies death and decay. She leaves his body in a room that is untouched with his things, to revive a manly presence and the void that was not filled with him being alive. She had created this room with Homer’s body for no one to find, left it in such a way that no one would run across it. It was on her agenda to leave his body and his things there to decay.  Her notion of loving him is ironic, she self-creates marriage in the form of death, not even allowing ‘death to do them part’. She kills the man she loves in order to reassure herself that they have a lasting bond and in the end, the supposed bond she had created “cuckolded him”(5).  The house itself symbolizes death and decay and like Emily is a monument. Faulkner notes, “And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson,” the anonymous soldiers signified strength but also death, since they had died in such a way that they became nameless. Emily signifies much of the same characteristic, because of the deaths she had faced and caused. Death in general creates sympathy, it is a grieving matter – Emily’s death did create sympathy but her death showed the townspeople her true reality. Faulkner states, “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…,” many in the town came to pay their respects, because she had simply been a part of the town for so long and they felt that they had to go. It was a custom. Just as the townspeople had their respect as the last thing to give, Emily had something of her own, “One of us lifted something from it, and leaving forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair” (Faulkner, 5). The grey hair was left to decay on the pillow next to Homer’s body, as if that is all she had left to give him and to show that it was the last of her in the decaying house. 

In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner creates an unexpected plot, while reading it, the reader never realizes what Emily has actually been doing the entire time. He not only created sympathy for her from the townspeople and alluded her insanity through her fear of change, but he created it for the readers as well. He uses the theme of change and symbols of death and decay to highlight that she was a grieving woman, but she was an insane grieving woman. 
