A Rose for Emily and Simbolism
... a kind of debt with Emily’s father. He invents it because she wouldn’t accept charity. Some years later new people comes to the city and complain about this absent of taxes given for Emily. Then, we read about the smell that comes thirty years before Emily’s funeral and nearly two years after her father’s death, when her boyfriend goes away. Emily’s neighbors aren’t surprised with the smell because they think it is caused by lack of cleanliness. This smell goes away some weeks after Emily’s neighbors sprinkle lime in her house. Next, the narrator refers to Emily’s great-aunt Wyatt, who is a crazy old lady, and a fact that Emily is about thirty and still single, both are evidences of gloomy future events that comes rapidly: Emily’s father died and she gets alone, without someone to love or to care. She does not believe that her father is dead, it must be a result of her contrasting feelings: she wouldn’t have someone to control her life, but she is afraid of going on alone. In the third chapter the narrator shows us Emily’s affair with a Yankee worker called Homer Barron. They are seen walking together on the streets. By this time, people become to say “Poor Emily”. Why? Because she is over thirty, still single, pauper (she has only her house), and interested in a poor worker Yankee that has a bad reputation for being gay. About a year after she meets Homer, people from Jefferson city brings Emily’s cousins to prevent her from marrying him. The next event we read about is Emily buying some men’s clothing and other things that are evidence of a marriage. About this time, Emily is seen buying arsenic, “a poison rat” says the narrator, and people think she will kill herself. But it doesn’t happen. Homer goes away for a time and returns when Emily’s cousins leave her house. This is the last time he is seen by Emily’s neighbors, and after it she spend about six months without appearing on the streets. Until Emily’s death, she keeps her house closed except for a time when she, who is about forty, gives china-painting’s lessons for six or seven years. The last and the most important event in the story is when Emily’s neighbors go to her house and find Homer’s skeleton that must be lain down in Emily’s bed for forty years. They are shocked. The symbo...