A Rose For Emily

The narrator in the story never refers to themselves as “I,” it’s always “we”. I can only conclude that this means there isn’t a single person retelling the events. Unless the narrator is suffering from a psychological disorder, perhaps dissociative identity disorder, and is aware of their other selves, the only other feasible reason for the pluralism is that there is a collective recounting of the story from the people that lived in the town. If this is true, then the story’s development makes perfect sense, as multiple people would add in different details, and not always in chronological order.

Another reason for the jumbled order of the story, which leads to a grisly revelation, is that it supports the “poor Emily” schematic. By telling the story in order, it would be clear near the beginning or middle what Emily did, ruining the ending. Emily murdered the laborer Homer, whom had been supposedly courting her while he was in town working on construction. Homer’s preference in sex is explicitly mentioned in the story, and since “Homer himself had remarked – he liked men…that he was not a marrying man” (pg 210 Kirszner & Mandell) Emily would have been rejected as a potential partner.

Emily had previously been rejected, and was traumatized by it. With the fear of another public rejection, she decided to take matters into her own hands, and ensure that this one won’t get away. She decides to poison Homer with arsenic, after making it seem to the townspeople that they were to be wed. Emily went as far as purchasing wedding bands, personalized toilet seats, and creating a bridal tomb for Homer in an upstairs room. After Emily had passed away, the townspeople inspected her home, and a strand of silver hair was found laying on a pillow next to Homer’s rotted corpse. Emily reacted at the thought of rejection, the fear of rejection, and thought that the most prudent recourse would be in murdering her suitor and keeping him with her forevermore.