Abstract：Abstract: In his A Rose for Emily, with the creation of the deviant character “Emily Grierson” and his anti-logical narrative strategies, Faulkner expresses profound philosophical implications and an overall humanistic concern. With the help of both Lacan and Žižek’s theory of “the Thing”, “object petit a”, “the Real”, “pleasure” and “plus-de-jouir”, the seemingly grotesque “Emily” is not only explicable, but presents itself as the “non-existent” figure and as “the Thing”, which covers the symbol system of the town of Jefferson, and at the same time threatens to overthrow it as an alienating power. However, this “non-existent” character is not relevant to the philosophical “emptiness”, but Faulkner’s revealing, based on his insight of the postwar American life in the South and his feeling of “the Thing”, of the truth of human alienation and separation, which is totally beyond the symbolic system of its time and paves the new modernistic way for people to reflect history and the effect of moral-ethical teaching.
Key words: Emily; “non-existent”; the Thing; object petit a; the Real
