A Rose for Emily, ironically there was no actual rose, which is a flower that is used to show love and affections or romance. This story incorporates the rose in different ways based on its message it is trying to convey to us readers. One, Emily, the protagonist was never able to love or be loved, which is why she took to the extent to kill Homer, because she was scared of losing him after the death of her father. However, in my perspective, I think this story mainly introduces the idea of the rose being a wall of color that blocks the citizen’s view on the reality of Miss Emily and her life.
Rose is why being a color is not transparent, which is why it is a perfect symbolism. The society is living in this light or time that has never quite healed. Although if this story was real in today’s generation, many would have called her crazy, but in the story, she was regarded as not crazy and just in a grieving state. When my family member had passed away, I understood Emily’s pain. It is not easy to just move on, it takes time. However, Emily became mentally unstable and developed an unhealthy relationship with the society and the past. The society is behind a rose wall, where their view is different because they can’t move on. They did not want to respond to the bad part of their life and chose to seek the good part of their life and how they view their life because they could not get over the massive loss after the civil war had taken place. They even went to the extent to believe Emily would soon be able to find love and enjoy life, instead of trying to seek and help her or getting her the treatment and support she needed mentally.
I believe that the author wants us to accept reality as it is and that nothing will be perfect. You will go through ups and downs and be stuck, but there will always be a part of your life to heal, and that in order to heal, you have to accept the truth and not be behind rose glasses. When I encounter the bad parts of life, sometimes it is so tempting to ignore and move on, but to do better you have to accept reality and your problems to fix it and move on gradually, instead of handling her loss like Emily had did, or the way the town ignored the problems by putting up that rose wall barrier to view life differently, which is the main reason why it was so difficult for the South to heal.
