A Rose for Emily

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner (1930) is an eccentric story from start to finish. I believe the narrator is actually a compilation of thoughts that many of the townspeople seemed to have silently agreed upon. In the very first sentence (p.206, Kirszner & Mandell) it states “our whole town went to her funeral”. Throughout the story the thoughts and statements are always referred to as “we”, not from a single person alone. References made by the narrator using many former titles when talking about the characters is a sign that these thoughts are mainly from the commoners of the town. This is also why I believe the narrator is more of a group of person’s beliefs.
The narrator sets the tone of the story as odd from the beginning. This is shown by the wording of the text. For example, there was only a short span (p. 209, Kirszner & Mandell) that she was referred to as something other than “Miss Emily”. And at that time they referred to her as “Poor Emily”. The only time that she was humanized was during the times she was referred to as “Poor Emily”, when they felt sorry for her. The order of the story was peculiar. With the end of the story actually being the beginning it makes it hard to follow in some parts. On the other hand this is what is intriguing about the story. Certain parts would have to be re-read in order to figure out where I was at in time with the story. But, in doing so I was able to see more into the foreshadowing within the story.
I had an eerie feeling right before the end that something weird was about to happen. I think that her poisoning Homer was out of pure love for this man. She had finally found the love of her life, other than her father who passed many years ago. Her whole life revolved mainly around what happened in her house as she rarely went out. Her home was her world and she was going to make sure that Homer never left that home alive. Miss Emily loved Homer so much that she never wanted him to leave her world. She felt in order to so that she must kill him. She loved him up until her very end, which was evident by the gray hair left next to him on an empty pillow. She had lain with him every night – up until the day she died.