A Struggling Emily

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is true.

As Faulkner begins this story, the reader quickly learns that this piece is going to be about death and dying. Not so much as physical death, although physical death is also apparent, but spiritual, mental, and social decay. The physical death is opened to the reader in the first line of this short story. The storyteller informs the reader by saying, "when Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to the funeral..." Just by this line the reader wonders if the town was sad to see Miss Emily past away, or were they glad. Later in the story, the reader finds out that the townspeople were glad. However, not for the reason that one might imply. Because the first line of the book deals with death and dying, does it make "A Rose for Emily" a story of horror? Brooke and Warren writes, "we have a decaying mansion in which the protagonist, shut out from the world, grows into something monstrous, and becomes as divorced from the human as some fungus growing in the dark on a ...

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also witnesses Emily's father characteristics in a work of art. The portrait hung "by the back-flung front door." The narrator of the story describes Miss Emily in the picture as "a slender figure in white in the background." It continues to say her father was "a spraddle silhouette in the foreground." The reader can see how Faulkner uses the portrait to symbolize how Emily's father shielded her. The narrator goes on to say that, " [her father's] back to her and clutching a horse whip." The picture depicts how Emily's father is in command. It shows how he ruled her. Her father was the dictator in their relationship. Emily's white garment represents how pure and innocent she was. ...

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