Atmosphere and Theme in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

Atmosphere is defined in the Dictionary of World Literature as "The particular
world in which the events of a story or a play occur: time, place, conditions,
and the attendant mood." When, as in "A Rose for Emily," the world depicted
is a confusion between the past and the present, the atmosphere is one
of distortion of unreality. This unreal world results from the suspension
of a natural time order. Normality consists in a decorous progression of
the human being from birth, through youth, to age and finally death. Preciosity
in children is as monstrous as idiocy in the adult, because both are unnatural.
Monstrosity, however, is a sentimental subject for fiction unless it is
the result of human action - the result of a willful attempt to circumvent
time. When such circumvention produces acts of violence, as in "A Rose
for Emily," the atmosphere becomes one of horror.

Horror, however, represents only the extreme form of maladjusted nature.
It is not produced in "A Rose...