The southern origins of William Faulkner play a constitutive role in the creation of his story "A Rose for Emily". With his creative mind, Faulkner created a county in Mississippi called Yoknapatawpha. Like the southern town in which he was born and raised, Faulkner populated this story with African Americans and Caucasians from the late 1800s. Faulkner's idea in writing this story was to focus on the events causing destruction and suffering in one's inner and outer situations. Many of Faulkner's characters and many of his families that he introduced in his writings appear in many of his other writings. “Some of Faulkner's major fictional families include the Sartoris, Snopes, Dee Spain, Compson, Sutpen, McCaslin, and Carothers families” (William Faulkner). Throughout Faulkner's lists of favorite books and stories, these people are present. “One of the strangest, strongest, and most memorable characters in Faulkner's short story is the murderous dowager, Emily Grierson, in 'A Rose for Emily.' Generations of Faulkner devotees know the story of the reclusive spinster who, through murder and necrophilia, wages a life-and-death battle against time and change in Jefferson City” (The Widow of Windsor… Emily Grierson). They describe the many generations that span. Miss Emily, the alderman's board, the African-American servant, and Colonel Sartoris are all representations of the Antebellum South in "A Rose for Emily." Homer Barron and the townspeople were representations of the modern South and the Greirson family is the representation of the old South. “Faulkner's structural problem in 'A Rose for Emily' required him to address Miss Emily's entire life and her increasing withdrawal from the world. community and...... middle of paper ...... important events contains the death of Mr. Grierson; Emily's father in her youth and his ties to a northerner, Homer Barron. This story summarizes the most important changes in the South after the Civil War. Faulkner's description of the Griersons' rotten house matches Emily's emotional and physical rottenness and also clearly shows the reader what is going to happen in the story. Miss Emily is characterized by her efforts to separate herself from her community. “After her father’s death, she rarely went out; after the departure of her lover, we hardly saw her anymore” (395). The severing of the bond with Homer Barron and the end of her father's life lead her to want to stay away from the townspeople. Faulkner's organization of the story and description of Emily gave the story real meaning..