Past contrasted with the present in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily In "A Rose for Emily", Faulkner contrasted the past with the present times . The past was represented by Emily herself, by Colonel Sartoris, by the old black servant and by the board of directors who accepted the colonel's attitude towards Emily and canceled her taxes. The present was expressed mainly through the words of the anonymous narrator. The new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron (the representative of Yankee attitudes toward the Griersons and thus toward the entire South), and the so-called "next generation with their more modern ideas," all represented the current period (Norton Anthology, 2044). Miss Emily has been called a “fallen monument” in history (Norton Anthology, 2044). She was a “monument” of Southern nobility, an ideal of past values ​​but fallen because she had shown herself susceptible to death (and decadence). The description of her house "raising its stubborn, coquettish decadence above cotton carts and gas pumps - a horror among horrors" represented a juxtaposition of past and present and was an iconic presentation of Emily herself (Norton Anthology, 2044). The house smells of dust and disuse and has a closed, damp smell. A description of Emily in the following paragraph reveals her similarity to the house. “It looked swollen like a body long immersed in still water, and of that pale hue” (Norton Anthology, 2045). But she didn't always look like that. In the photo of a young Emily with her father, she was frail and seemingly eager to participate in the life of her time. After her father's death, she looked like a girl "with a vague resemblance to those angels in the colorful stained glass windows of churches – rather tragic and serene" (Norton Anthology, 2046). This suggests that she had already begun her entry into the underworld. By the time representatives of the new progressive board of aldermen waited on her about her overdue taxes, she had already completely retreated into her world of the past. She declared that she had no taxes in Jefferson, basing her belief on a verbal agreement with Colonel Sartoris, who had been dead ten years. Just as Emily refused to acknowledge her father's death, she now refused to acknowledge Colonel Sartoris' death. He had given his word and according to the traditional view, his word did not know death..