In the story "A Rose For Emily" William Faulkner portrays two types of conflicts. The readers through the author’s eye encounter these conflicts. An individual that reads this story can see the different conflicting situations that arise in this story. Emily’s conflicts within herself and the community’s conflicts towards her are the two main conflicts in this story. The conflicts within herself are more prominent than what she had with the community she lived in. Conflict within a character can deal with inner morals, dreams ambitions, and rights and wrongs.
As we read this story we realize that Emily’s conflicts start as a young girl. Her father who was a strict man did not let her have a healthy social life. He made her an outcast in her own community. This alone created most of the conflicting situations in her life after her father’s death. Even after her fathers death she refused to acknowledge all the changes that were happening outside her house as the years went by. The confusion that Faulkner has given produces confusion in Emily's life. Emily went to and fro in the lonely circle and did not have any chance to break that circle's wall. Outside time was going by quickly as the natural direction. But Emily was encircled inside and was still where she had been. Yes, Emily is a person of the past. Readers have this feeling in the very first sentences through the description of Emily's house: "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps." This message of essential ugliness of contrast is a presentation of Emily in present time--"an eyesore among eyesores." During the story, the conflicts of the old and young generations push Emily all the way back to the past.''' for example she refused to pay taxes for the property when the officials contacted her she did not want to let go of her past traditions and laws. She denied the fact that the world has changed as the years went by .See "Colonel Satoris" Those are Emily's words to refuse her taxes, just as she refused the existence of Colonel Satoris's death -- the existence of present time. Colonel Satoris's words still had its power in Jefferson and Emily lived with that power against present.
