In William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily", the reader observes the life of Emily Grierson. The reader learns about Emily's life among the townspeople from her teenage years until Emily's death at different points in her life. Emily is a person with a possible mental disorder who struggles with letting go and how it affects her understanding of the past and present. Emily's life fascinates and captures the reader's attention and leads to decades of arguments between generations of readers. As the story begins, we learn that Emily and her household were once young and prominent in Jefferson City. They were both highly sought after and "select", the house being located on a wealthy street and built into an almost unparalleled mansion, Emily being a beautiful young woman who had many suitors knocking on her door. However, the suitors were all turned down by her father who said they were not good enough for his daughter. This leads to a relationship almost entirely dependent on his father over the years. It is at her death that the story unfolds and the reader can see the beginning of Emily's struggle to accept reality and how it affects her future. After her father's death, she and the house grow old, the house is the only one left on the street as the town spreads around it, "a horror among horrors", so Emily was once a young woman sought after in the city. has now become “a small, fat woman… Her skeleton was small and thin; perhaps that was why what would have been overweight for someone else was obesity for her. It looked swollen, like a body immersed for a long time in still water, and of this pale color. Her eyes, lost in the fat ridges of her face, looked like two small...... middle of paper...... Emily would represent the past and Homer would represent the present in this short story. While Emily was stuck in the old ways of the past, time moves on and Emily refuses to move forward with time. Emily accepts neither the present nor the future and has her way of denying anything new in her life. By staying home alone, Emily can continue to live in the past and not move forward with updates in her life. The reader can see that Emily has struggled to accept anything new in her life since she was a teenager. This causes Emily, as she ages, to remain stuck in the ways of the past, as Emily does not accept time or reality. In doing so, she blurs the past with the present and continues to live in the past even as the present continues and shifts. Just like the invisible ticking watch she owns, time cannot be seen even though it is always there and always present.