Question

How is the house personified in the second paragraph in A Rose for Emily?

Answer 1

First I will provide the second paragraph not just for other users, but also so that we can use the definition that I will provide to see if we can determine where personification occurs. Faulkner writes:

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

The definition of personification is: The technique of giving human attributes or emotions to animals, objects, or concepts as in, "the water lapped eagerly at the shore."

So, reading over the above passage can you see an example of personification?

Answer 2

It is personified with Death and Miss Emily. Death is one of the recurring themes and symbols in A Rose for Emily. The decaying house is a symbol for Miss Emily's physical, and emotional decay, and her mental problems. In summary, the house and Miss Emily are one in the same; both become decaying symbols of their dying generation.