A Rose for Emily

I found the ending to A Rose for Emily to be both surprising and grotesque. I was not surprised that she would commit murder. Emily certainly had her issues. The author spent so much time setting up her eventual demise and on speculation from the townspeople that she may commit suicide that I felt that it would have been anticlimactic if that had been the ending. Instead the author went with a much more grotesque idea than simply suicide. The idea hat she had not only kept the dead body of him in her home after presumably killing him, but also had spent nights sleeping with the body clinging to her is quite horrific. It is like it comes straight from a horror film. The author does provide some clues to the ending. There is the strange smell in the house and the sudden disappearance of Homer. Both are explained with the ending of the story, but at them time left the reader to wonder.

The story is told through the eyes of a person from the town so we never really here from Emily about what is going through her mind. We only hear the thoughts and speculation of others. It would be interesting to hear Emily’s thoughts about her life and to see the story through her eyes in order to provide the reader a contrasting viewpoint and gain some insight into what she was going through.