he past and present (353). It is easy to imagine that the house had once been grand and the envy of everyone in the community. It is precisely that past grandness that has the monument still standing at the time presented in Faulkner’s writings. No one in the community could really bear to have the house condemned because most residents remembered their awe of the home in its glory days. Inside, the house smelled of dust and had a closed, dank smell. This too, tells the reader that the home and its contents were well beyond their prime. A description of Emily tells how she is in a similar condition, “She looked bloated like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that palled hue” (354). These images of decay and age have two meanings. While it is obvious that the home, its contents and Emily are nearing the end of their existence, it is also evident from knowing the themes of the of writing of Faulkner that the author is using the house and Emily as a symbol for the death and decay of traditional “old south” values. Emily lived in the ideal past. She was the symbol of a bygone era where things were simpler, more genteel and more formal. Faulkner shows Emily to be a symbol of the old culture by contrasting her personal conflict with conflicts in the outer world. It is very difficult for Emily to live in the ‘real’ world outside her home and it has been for sometime when this story takes place. Emily has found conflict between her father’s ways of doing things and the ways of the outside, new world since she was a young woman and could not please her father with her choice of a beau. This conflict is also seen through examples of discord between Emily and two town officials, as well as she and her lover, Homer Barron. Emily owes taxes, according to the young town officials. Emily’s side of the story is that she does not owe taxes because her father had made an arrangement wit...
