Literary Devices and the Main Idea

Imagery-Imagery is a large part of the main idea of A Rose for Emily because of how integral description of what Emily and her house look like is to the story. The story is largely built around a theme of decay and resisting change, seen in the way Emily’s house becomes dilapidated and the way she handles death.  In Part I of the story, the narrator describes how Emily’s house has refused to change, “lifting its stubborn and coquettish display….an eyesore among eyesores.”(1120). This is one of the moments where the theme of decay is shown through the imagery of the story, the house “had once been white” and “set on what had once been our most select street” (1170), showing that both the house and its status had fallen into disrepair. Along with the opening description of Emily’s house decaying, there is also a running evolution in the way Emily herself is described that shows the town also sees her as decaying. When she’s young she’s described “as a slender figure in white,” (1173) the next physical description describes her as having “grown fat and her hair was turning gray”(1176)  and the final moment she is seen by someone in her house she is described as “a small, fat woman in black” and “she looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water.” (1171) The evolution of the imagery surrounding Emily shows her slow decay in the eyes of the townspeople, especially when she is compared to a dead body by the narrator. 

 

Time and Imagery-Time is often used as a plot device in this story, and is often paired with imagery, because of the way the narration jumps through the years. It starts with Emily’s death and then goes back in time to tell of some of the most important parts of her life and her description is often what tells us where we are in time. Emily’s first introduction in Part I the reader can tell that this is a later point in her life because she is described as “a small, fat woman in black...leaning on a cane”, with a small, yet obese looking frame, coal like eyes, and a body that looked as though it had been “long submerged in motionless water” which juxtaposes her description in Part II as young and frail looking after her father’s death. Time and imagery work together to show the impact of her life on her body. Time is also used to show the isolation that Emily forces herself into after she marries Homer Barron. She goes through stretches of times when she refuses to socialize with others after her father’s death, but once she is married she does not leave the house for decades until the day she dies. The time jumps and the way imagery and time work together in this story show the slow decaying of Emily and the path to her ultimate end.

 

Foreshadowing-Foreshadowing is used throughout the story but the biggest example would be how the awful smell surrounding Emily’s house and her purchase of arsenic foreshadowed the death of Homer Barron. The smell is introduced in the story first in Part I and the description of the rotting smell leaves the reader wondering where it could possibly be coming from. Then, Emily’s purchase of the arsenic and her strange demeanor add to the reader’s suspicion of the smell and her possible malintent towards Homer Barron. She refuses to explain her need for the poison and instead “just stared at him (the druggist), her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye” and she didn’t speak until he did what she wanted. This foreshadowing and suspicion come to fruition when it is revealed that Homer has been dead and decaying in the house for years. The reader is able to put the clues of Emily’s purchase of arsenic and the terrible smell together and come to the conclusion that Emily was most likely the one to kill Homer, although the reader may never know the real reason. This adds to the main idea of how Emily decayed over time not just physically but also in her mental stability, shown through her terrible acts, and it adds to the theme of decay in a literal sense by the decay of Homer Barron’s body.