The Use of Symbolism in "A Rose for Emily".
In "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, the use of symbolism is in abundance. Symbolism is the use signs or representation of somebody, something, or event. In Faulkner's story does he effectively use symbolism to define Miss Emily Grierson and her house? Faulkner uses Miss Emily Grierson and the Grierson to show the emotion of the townspeople. .
Miss Emily was a symbol to many of her neighbors and her community. She was a "fallen monument" means she meant so much to her community and that she is going to be missed. To have the whole town at her funeral shows a tremendous amount of respect and it shows that even though her neighbors did not know much about her they had fun not knowing what was going on inside her house and Emily's neighbors probably also see her as a kind of entertainment also. Miss Emily's neighbors really liked to snoop around and see what they could find out:.
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"Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon town, dating from that day in 1984 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor-he who fathered the edict that no Negro women should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity" (Faulkner 521).
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The neighbors are really of having fun watching her and that they have been watching her for a long time. Miss Emily was a white lady in an all black town in Jefferson, Mississippi. This could be a reason Emily was thought to be a symbol to her community. Miss Emily kept to herself and confined herself in her house, so she didn't talk to her neighbors much but she was visited by the tax authorities once; "They rose when she entered-a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head.