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Motif
Explanation and Analysis—Dust:
In "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner uses the motif of dust to showcase how the past is often forgotten and obscured. When the Board of Aldermen enter Miss Emily's house, they are greeted by a dusty atmosphere:
It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished with heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray.
There is a slight hint of irony portrayed because even though Miss Emily keeps mostly to her house, her house still smells of dust and disuse. Being locked away inside her house and for most of her life not contributing to society, it is as if Miss Emily herself has embodied the atmosphere of dust and disuse in her house. When the Board of Aldermen, a new generation of leaders who come to ask for Miss Emily's taxes, sit on the leather furniture and stir the dust, they represent an invasiveness that can come with change.
Miss Emily, moreover, seems to prefer to keep her house dark. Only a single blind that lets in "a single sun-ray" is opened. Darkness and dust have an obscuring, protective function here. It is only when there is an intrusion that the darkness and dust are disturbed.
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