Changes of Miss Emily in "A Rose for Emily"

Throughout history when change come along there is always people who cling to their past and ways of life. Always has and always will be people like that. Even though the town settlers in the story are clinging to the pre-civil war ways of life the world around them is changing rapidly. Emily is a tradition herself she though the years of change stayed the same helping people and all the civil war soldiers who died and are buried in the cemetery.

Though she is representing what people want to be and to honor she was completely cut off from the community. When it comes to weather to change or stick to your old ways, you should evolve with the change or get left behind. Change is going to happen no matter what you do or say. This can be supported by the decaying in the story, miss Emily being shut out by the town, and by Emily’s death.

The decaying through out the story is everywhere.

Everyone in the town know of miss Emily and her father, everyone respected them. As her dad and all the old men and women of the town had died so did the respect miss Emily had. The town changed and was evolving, and she did not want to change with it. Her property stunk so bad and looked so bad that the town wanted to get rid of it, and the houses like them, and make more economically practical garages and cotton gins. The judge did not want to go to an old lady and say to her that she stunk and to get out, so they decided to pull taxes from her. Thus, started her to decay more and to be shut out by the town.

Jiddu Krishnamurti once said ‘Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.’ Miss Emily not wanting to change caused he death. She got comfortable with where she was and what she had, and it started to kill her. She stays in her ways even after going into debt and taking a hit finically and socially with her fathers’ death. With change killing her she still does not change, and she gets too comfortable where she is and does not want to better herself.

If there is one thing that this story taught me is to not get comfortable because that is when hard time comes and you will be at your most venerable. Emily had decayed so much that she did not understand what was normal or difference between right or wrong. The shape she and her house where in can be explained by her state of mind. The fight between tratiion and change took ober this town and miss Emily. What was once a nice beautiful town got turned into a decayed eyesore of a town.