A Rose for Emily

"A Rose for Emily," takes place over a long indeterminate period of time reaching back into the 19th century and coming into the mid 1920's. The narrator brings up several references to time but none helps the reader actually know or pinpoint when the event occurred. In fact the narrator, goes back and fourth through the events in Emily's life as if time in not important and beginning and ending the story with Emily's funeral. I think time is not important anyway in a culture that is forever grounded in the glories of the past. The narrator wants us to sympathize with Emily's character within the context of the past and not the present moment where Homer's skeleton is found in bed next to a pillow with Emily's iron gray hair on it. My sense of "time" while reading this was more subjective, that time can move forward but some memories can can still say alive and unhindered and really effect your present. Emily lives in the present world where life moves on, but she stays committed to the past.