Theme

Your Name

Professor 's Name

Class Name

Date

A Rose for Emily : Themes

Miss Emily Grierson is a character that stands out in the minds of most Americans . Almost all American Literature teachers and professors have assigned A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner to students for generations . The story of Miss Emily has enthralled readers to the point that most will never forget her or her story . They feel sorry for her because they see a woman so greatly by her society that she is driven to do

appalling acts . Faulkner captures his readers with three major themes of obsession , changes in the community , and the setting of the time period

Obsessions can be dangerous and in the story A Rose for Emily obsessions lead to death and destruction . Her father and society have destroyed Miss Emily . Her father is obsessed with preserving his daughter from the world

of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such . We had long thought of them as a tableau Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background , her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground , his back to her and clutching a horsewhip , the two of them framed by the back-flung front door (Faulkner

He was so fixated on keeping her to himself that he ruined the chances of her finding love and marriage , which is what society expected her to do to be acceptable

Society was also obsessed with the idea that all women should marry and become the property of her husband

So when she got to be thirty and was still single , we were not d exactly , but vindicated even with insanity in the family she wouldn 't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized (Faulkner

Miss Emily had lost her chances and was beyond retrieving them by the time that her father died . She was a woman without a man to take care of her , which was an obsession of society . The people of the town feel sorry for her because she has not married , yet when she starts to see Homer Baron , the Yankee day laborer who is passing through the town due to a job , they criticize Miss Emily because of the way that she conducts herself . Because of their view of the obsession , she could do no right

Times change and there is nothing that anyone can do about it However , there are always those who get left behind when times do change . Miss Emily is a perfect example of a person who is left by time . She cannot understand that the names that were once so prominent are now just names in the history of the town . The former mayor who had remitted her taxes because of her family name did not have the same values of the new generation

When the next generation , with its more modern ideas , became mayors and aldermen , this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction . On the first...