A Rose for Emily

This is a story about the life of a woman that almost mirrored the life of her town. Miss Emily Grierson was an upper class and wealthy woman. It seems that throughout the story as Emily deteriorates in health that the town seems to mimic that deterioration. She lived single and alone for a long time because no man was good enough to keep her company. Emily always held herself a little higher than necessary. After her father’s death a man named Homer Barron begins to court her. She does not seem very interested and his name could symbolize how he holds no future for her. She then buys some arsenic and uses it to poison Homer. The townspeople begin to notice a horrid stench coming from her mysterious home. I think that this part of the story was the most climactic. Stupidly the townspeople believed Barron just left because it was known he was not into “marriage.” In the end Emily dies at the age of 74 of old age and when people go to investigate this they find that Miss Emily had let Barron rot in her bed, and continued to sleep next to him for years. Emily couldn’t bear to part with Barron because she was so used to losing everything she had in life. The chronological order of the story was very unique and I struggled a bit trying to figure out exactly what was going on. This was the very reason I couldn't stop reading it. I found that even though the story is somewhat dark and twisted that it was so interesting to read. This was a great story.