Symbolic meaning of the rose in A Rose for Emily

英语2103金灿

This novel was titled A Rose for Emily, but there is no direct writing about the rose. Only after Emily’s death, people opened the room of Emily’s pavilion and found it was “decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights...”. Nevertheless, the rose has rich symbolic meanings and plays an important role in portraying characters and deepening themes. First of all, the rose symbolizes Emily’s desire for love and marriage. As we all know, roses represent love. Homer was the only lover in Emily’s life, and she thought she had met a precious love, and even prepared for a rosy room for marriage. But after being betrayed, the rose has a deeper meaning, symbolizing death and destruction, both Homer’s death and Emily’s death. When she was young, Emily was like a rose in full bloom. Though prickly, she was beautiful and attractive, but the rose was destined to wither. Under the suppression of the southern traditional morality and the betrayal of the lover, Emily suppressed desires and distorted human nature, living like a dead body in the water. The decline of the rose implied the end of love. What’s more, William Faulkner once said: “Oh, that was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was woman who had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute, just as if you were to make a gesture, a salute, to anyone; to a woman you would hand a rose, as you would lift a cup of sake to a man.” The rose symbolizes the author’s sympathy and pity, Emily couldn’t get rid of the influence of the traditional values of the South and aristocratic status for her life and finally fell victim to the conflict between the North and the South.