Explain the theme of death in the story "A Rose for Emily."

William Faulkner establishes a theme of death from the first sentence in "A Rose for Emily":

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral.

Emily herself is described in deathlike terms, with the imagery connoting that she is a drowned woman—bloated and pale.
Emily dissociates herself from death. When her father dies and mourners arrive, she appears as usual, with no trace of grief on her face. She also adamantly asserts that her father is not dead and refuses to allow anyone to take his body. For three days, she maintains this assertion until finally ministers and other visitors create a "break" that allows them to take her father's body and dispose of him quickly.
When Emily faces the truth that her love interest is not a "marrying man," she plans his murder and executes it with seemingly cool and calculated tactics. Her subsequent actions following the murder do not arouse the suspicions of anyone in town, and she shows no sense of mourning, showing her disconnect from the death she has inflicted.
Only after her own death do people learn of the extent of Miss Emily's dissociation from death. Not only has she kept Homer's corpse in her house all those years, but she has also lain with him in the bed, as evidenced by the long gray hair found on the pillow.
Miss Emily has difficulty parting with tradition and with those whom she has grown to love, and her actions show her inability to accept the ultimate finality of death's power.

William Faulkner explores the theme of death throughout his short story "A Rose for Emily," which symbolically represents the decay of the Old South and the fall of the Confederacy following the Civil War.
The story begins as the community of Jefferson attends the funeral of the reclusive, southern aristocrat, Emily Grierson. Throughout the story, Emily's tragic life is revealed, and the audience gains insight into the nature of her downfall. Emily and her decaying home symbolically represent the culture and traditions of the Old South. Although the story is told out of sequential order, it is understood that Emily's mental breakdown begins following the death of her father. Interestingly, Emily refuses to acknowledge the death of her father.
Years after her father's death, Emily begins to date Homer Barron, a working-class Yankee. Emily then buys arsenic, which she uses to poison and kill her companion. After Homer's disappearance, the community council members visit her home and describe her as looking like a corpse. After Emily dies, citizens finally enter her home and discover Homer Barron's skeleton on a bed in an upstairs room with a piece of gray hair laying on the pillow beside it. The gray hair indicates that Emily Grierson had been sleeping next to Homer's skeleton. The theme of death is representative of the fall of the Old South and its traditions. Throughout the story, Emily attempts to freeze time by not acknowledging the death of her father and purposely killing her suitor so that he cannot leave her. Similarly to Emily's attempts to stop time, Faulkner metaphorically illustrates how southern citizens attempt to preserve their past. The antebellum society has been destroyed and the South will never return to its former glory. Emily, the "fallen monument," represents the decay of the Old South and its culture.