Symbolism in fiction: A Rose for Emily & The Tell-Tale Heart

A Rose for Emily is a story of the conflicting values between the past and present south. Emily and the antiquate house symbolize the ideals of the old, pre-industrial, pre-civil war south. The first paragraph refers to Emily as a “fallen monument”, a monument of southern gentility before the Civil War now decease (Faulkner 75). Her house once a magnificent building in to

Another piece of fiction that applies symbols to interconnect ideas is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”. One significant motif in the story is the old man’s eye. The eye represents the relationship between the narrator and the old man. The narrator says the old man “had the evil eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe 1546). This observation suggest the eye is always watching the narrator, discerns that he is likely the old man’s servant. This would certainly explain the hatred and resentment the narrator build up towards his master.

wn, now “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores” create a juxtaposition of the past and present (75).

Discrimination is a theme that has symbolic references in A Rose for Emily. After the Civil War, Jefferson still perpetuates the values of classism and racism. The narrator describes Miss Emily as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” convey a hierarchical

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