A Rose for Emily

"A Rose for Emily"
William Faulkner

This story may just have been even weirder than "The Lottery"...
      A good question in the book was number five because it asked about the narrator in the story.  The point of view by which the story is told is the whole community recalling stories and details about Miss Emily.  I thought this was very interesting because most stories are not told by more than one person.  The advantage of having the first-person plural is that many people contribute to the story, and more details can be shared.  If one person had told the story, then we would only be privy to one person's memories of her.  The one problem with this point of view is that we really don't get too many facts and cannot completely trust the rumors heard by the townspeople.  It is the most interesting point, however, because of the different insights offered.  Another major aspect of this type of narration is the chronology issue.  The story does not go in order of Miss Emily's life, which is really confusing.  I'm still a little confused as to when Emily actually poisoned Homer Barron because the time/date is not discussed when they discovered his body.  That part was super creepy but also very interesting.  I especially enjoyed the last paragraph which told us that she had lain in bed with him.  "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head...We saw a long strand of iron-gray hair" (Jackson, page 289).