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The Significance of the Townspeople and Emily's Father in A Rose for Emily

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A necrophiliac is described as a person who has an obsessive fascination with death and corpses (Mifflin 1). Emily, a necrophiliac in the story, “A Rose for Emily,” is a deranged, lost, and confused woman. A story filled with many symbols that help the stories meaning. The only man Emily knew growing up was her father. He taught her to trust no man, and no man would ever be good for her. He was highly favored through the town and everyone looked to him. The small town of curious and nosey people makes the story of “A Rose for Emily.” The town’s people are curious to know Emily’s every step, or wondering what she is going to do next, her appearance, and where the horrible smell in her house comes from. She meets a man in this small town and …show more content…

She stays in her home and never comes out. The town is filled with hear say gossip and the townspeople only know what they hear about her. Nothing is understood until the sickening truth is found out about her. It is all just one big mystery to them until her bedroom is unlocked.
Faulkner also talks about the stench of Emily’s home. Our attention is drawn to her home when it is used to symbolize Emily and how she is growing old over the years. Emily’s home also has a great deal to do with the story because the home seems to be the townspeople’s vocal point. Everyone wants know where the horrific smell is coming from and what is in the closed out room that not a soul has gone into. The smell, the foul order reaches out past her home and the smell seeps out under the floor of her home. The town’s begins to complain about the smell emanating from the house. Faulkner’s says, “Like Miss Emily it stands “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay” alone amidst alien surroundings. When the town complains about the smell emanating from the house, the judge equates house and woman: “Will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” Miss Emily becomes a fallen woman where she lived in a house that had “once been white… set on what had once been our most select street…lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps an eyesore among eyesores.” The house, like Miss Emily, has fallen from purity and like Miss Emily it is an eyesore, for

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