A ROSE FOR EMILY

William Faulkner’s classic short story, “A Rose for Emily,” has been noted as an excellent example of Southern literature. Southern literature can be defined as literature about the South, written by authors who were reared in the South. Characteristics of southern literature are the importance of family, sense of community, importance of religion, importance of time, of place, and of the past, and use of Southern voice and dialect. Most of the novels are …

…no one can change the past. Faulkner succeeded in writing a work of Southern literature that displays a romantic pull of the past and the idea that submission to this romance was a form of death. Thematically, death conquers all. The story of Miss Emily Grierson from Yaknapatawpha County is a tale depicting the romance of the South combined with the story itself created a captivating atmosphere, a world where no one wants to leave.