The next major symbol that reflects death is obviously the rose. As people began to visit Emily's decayed fragile body, the imagery Faulkner uses is, " The rose when she entered- a small, fat woman in black with a thin gold chain descending to her waisther skeleton was small and spare" (Faulkner 300). The rose might be compared to the idea that the beauty of tradition is dead. Based how Emily is described in the story when she was dead as pale, drowned, small and skeletal. Overall, one of the major themes, death, is emphasized in this story clearly to relate it to the death of tradition. This is even described with gruesome imagery in the text to really remind the reader how death of tradition changed society.
Southern Gothic writers emphasize a lot in their stories about the changes revolving around their world, such as tradition to modernization. The next major theme the author addresses is the ignorance of 'tradition'. On the other hand, Emily was seen as the only traditional one, because of the way her house looked which was described as, "Big, squares frame housedecorated with cupolas and spirals and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies" (Faulkner 299). The descriptions of Emily's house might signify that society is living in some type of controversy of looking down on traditional methods and trying to accept modernization. As the speaker in the story describes the house in more detail, it seems that they are unflattered and not appreciative about the only traditional house. Having said, the author uses the townspeople as a general voice of modern society that is changing its ideology because of modernization. Next, as the story unfolds, the mindset of the townspeople or 'society' shows that they were disgusted with this character when, " the next day he [the mayor] received two more complaints'send her word to have her place cleaned up' the broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime" (Faulkner 301).