Death Unit 2

A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner

In A Rose for Emily, the literary term, round character, was made apparent by Faulkner. Emily proved to quite the round character. The speaker seemed to know bits and pieces of Emily's life and aspects of her life, but never anything about her life in its entirity. "Our whole town went to her funeral...mostly out of curiousity..."(Faulkner, 281). This quote shows how very little was known about Emily. The fact that no one was quite sure about Emily's life means that her character was somewhat complex. Therefore, I believe that Emily Grierson was a round character. She also went through physical changes. In her early years, she was beautiful and thin, but after a few years, she became obese and her hair became gray. Due to the hardships in her life, she aged more quickly. The gray stood for Emily's expedited aging. Though there were very few specific characters in the story, Emiy's round character contributed to the story's theme of the complexity of death.