Metaphorical Functions of Setting in.
"A Rose for Emily" and "Soldier's Home".
Although in both William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" and Ernest Hemingway's "Soldier's Home," the settings are the times, places, and social environments that frame the characters, the context in which these stories occur actually become the story, in a sense. The setting in each of these stories take on metaphorical functions and is key to understanding the characters which they enclose. These metaphorical functions serve to tie the two stories together, as the setting exists as the antagonist.
Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is set in the 1930's in a region known as the "Old South," and that is the epitome of Emily"s image. She is a monument that symbolizes the glory of the south, and she struggles to live in this. For Emily, time and change present a major conflict, and serve as the antagonist. She refuses to accept changes that affect her: After her father"s death, Emily "told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly" (Faulkner 73). She attempts to freeze time and live in the past: "I have no taxes in Jefferson. See Colonel Satoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson" (72). She is trying to present this fantasy of the way things should be, how .
they've always been. Eventually, this constant yearning to live in an earlier period consumes her, and she ends up living with the dead. Homer's murder is yet another example of how Emily simply cannot adapt to change. As her whole world crumbles around her, she desperately clings to her place in society, and thus carries the past around inside of her.
Just as Emily carries the past around inside of her, Kreb's carries the past with him in Ernest Hemingway's "Soldier's Home.