A Rose for Emily Themes

There's no getting around the fact that "A Rose for Emily" is a story about the extremes of isolation – by physical and emotional. This Faulkner classic shows us the process by which human be...

Gavin Stevens (a William Faulkner character) famously says, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." This idea is highly visible in all Faulkner's work, and we definitely see it here, in "A Ro...

"A Rose for Emily" doesn't look at America through rose-colored glasses, even though many of its characters do. In the aftermath of slavery, the American South shown in the novel is in bad shape. T...

By showing people with skewed versions of reality, "A Rose for Emily" asks us to take off our "rose-colored" glasses and look reality in the face. What we confront is the reality of America in the...

"Compassion and Forgiveness" is another major theme that we can find in almost any Faulkner story. At first, it might not be apparent in this case. We almost have to be told that these sentiments a...