She is also someone the residents feel they need to take care of because they see her as part of the town's history, the narrator describes her as "alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty and a care; they felt the obligation to hold her and not let her go because for they was a historical figure. He also represents death because even though he wanted everything to stay the same, he was changing physically and getting older, the older you get the closer you get to death. His hair was turning gray and the narrator says his body "seemed swollen , like a body immersed in motionless water for a long time..." (Faulkner, I), a "motionless body" makes you think of a dead person. When his father died, he could not believe that he was dead and wanted to keep him in the house .He couldn't let go of her death