Who Is Homer's Death In A Rose For Emily

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In “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, a story of love and loss is told from the perspective of an unknown resident of Jefferson, Mississippi. The residents of this tiny town are highly judgmental of Mrs. Emily Grierson’s love interest, Homer Barron, and, just like in any small town, make assumptions about who or what he is. The townspeople come to their conclusion by greatly misconstruing the words of Homer, and assume he is homosexual. They believe that for this reason, he will not marry Mrs. Emily Grierson. In the grand finale of the story, Homer Barron’s skeleton is found locked away in Emily Grierson’s upstairs room, and it is then exposed that she killed him long ago ( ). Emily Grierson killed Homer because she believed that was the only way she could keep him. The relationship between Emily and her father and the rumors about Homer and his reluctance to marry contributed to her final decision to end Homer’s…show more content…
William Faulkner takes us through the hush-hush dinginess of small town rumors into something much deeper: the mind of Jefferson’s black widow, Mrs. Emily Grierson. In her younger years, Emily Grierson was a child of a wealthy family that once dominated the town of Jefferson. Her father is presented as a controlling, selfish, and dark figure in this story, and the relationship between Emily and Mr. Grierson is thoroughly dysfunctional. In the story, Faulkner paints a picture of their relationship when he says “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door”(518). Faulkner’s choice of a white dress for Miss Emily further emphasizes her father’s
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