A Rose for Emily

I feel that if the story were told in chronological order it would not have as deep of an effect on the readers as it does this way. It keeps the reader guessing and causes the reader to be somewhat of a detective and also makes the reader return back to previously read passages to interpret what they are currently reading.
The narrator of the story, in my opinion, is not just a single person but the whole town speaking for itself as one body. The use of the word "we" versus the word "I" is suggestive of this and also the way the story states things like in the very first sentence stating "our whole town went to her funeral:" as though the entire town is speaking in unison. It is a historical rendition of what the whole town as individuals but bonded together has seen much like any small town of today would do.
At first I did not know what to think of the ending of the story. It was somewhat confusing to me and at first I had actually thought that perhaps Miss Emily had died sometime ago and that Mr. Barron had taken over her life pretending to be her for so very long. This was because of the passage on page 210 the last paragraph which states that Miss Emily had grown fat and her hair was turning gray and also that her hair was iron-gray like the hair of an active man. My interpretation of that was that it was actually Mr. Barron but then when I read on further I figured out what had really happened. Miss Emily had killed Mr. Barron with the arsenic and then she kept him along side of her in her bed for some time. This was the reason for the smell permeating from her home. I feel that she did this because she was actually thinking back upon her first love that had left her. She was trying to keep his memory alive and this was her way of doing that. It also struck me as odd that it states on page 211 in the middle of the page that she died in one of the downstairs rooms instead of upstairs where Mr. Barron was lying. At first I did not know what to think of that but then I felt as though Miss Emily was trying to portray a message to the people of the town that she died alone as she had been alone for her entire life.