Story Begins with the narrator talking about Emily Grierson’s funeral. The beginning gives us the impression that Miss Emily Grierson had been a much respected person, but had fallen from that status in the town.

The story continues through a series of flashbacks of events that leads up to Emily’s death and uncovers her story. The interesting thing about this story is that it is not written in chronological order, the events are described out of order, but helps to create suspense and foreshadows what had happened. Foreshadowing and Flashbacks are used extensively in this story.

The plot explains that Miss Emily’s taxes had been remitted by Colonel Sartoris, the mayor in 1894 because of her heredity. When the next generation came though, they attempted to get tax from Emily again, but apparently Emily refused to pay the taxes, and kept asking them to see Colonel Sartoris who had, then, been dead for almost ten years. This begins the rising-action.

This develops one of the conflicts in the story, Emily’s conflict against time.

Another conflict also develops the conflict between Emily and the town.

The story then flashes back again to thirty years before. This time the incident is a strange smell that comes out of Emily’s house. This creates suspense and suspicion, and makes the reader thing, “What’s that smell?” This is also foreshadows of the events that will be uncovered later on. Here we also see the reactions of the Board of Aldermen, where as the three older men didn’t want to disturb Miss Emily, but the younger one wanted to confront her. There is also a conflict between the old and the new generations.

Her father died, and Emily refused to accept it. We learn that there was madness in her family. “We did not say she was crazy then.” Seems to foreshadow an event later on that will cause the town to say Miss Emily was crazy. Emily was sick for a long time and when the town next saw her, her hair was cut short, making her look like a young girl. This incident shows that Emily wanted to keep her youth.

At that time the town had hired workers to pave the sidewalks. Homer Barron was the foreman; he was a Yankee from the North and was very popular with the people of the town. The town people began seeing Homer and Emily driving around together in a buggy, and began whispering about their relationships and poor Emily. This is where the conflict between Emily and Homer begins.

A year later, Emily went to buy arsenic, she refused to disclose the purpose to the druggist, but just stared him down. This is another foreshadow of what will happen later on. The town had thought that she would kill herself. Later we learn that the poison had not been for rats or her, but for Homer. This is a part of the complications and suspense. At that point we do not know who the poison was for.

“We learned that Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt” The town had thought for sure Emily and Homer were married. And that was the last time the town saw Homer Barron. This is the crisis point. What happened to Homer?

The next time Miss Emily appeared, she had grown fat and her hair turned gray.

At this point we see a transformation between the Miss Emily before and the Miss Emily now.

Then for a period of time Emily had china-painting lessons, but soon the children of the new generation didn’t take any lessons. When the town got free postal delivery Emily refused to let them attach a mail box to her house. This helps certify the conflict between Emily and society. She refuses to change.

Later on Emily, had apparently sealed shut the top floor of her house, and then as time passed, she died.

At the end, after Emily had been buried, the town’s people opened a room upstairs that had been unopened for forty years. Inside they found a rose colored room with the toilet things that Emily had bought before and on the bed there was the body of Homer.

This would be the climax and also the denouement of the story.

Conflicts

Emily vs. Time/Reality

Refuse to recognize the world and the town had changed.

““See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) “I have no taxes in Jefferson.”” (p204)

Refused to pay her taxes when the new generation asked her, because she thought it would just be like the old times where her taxes were remitted.

“She told them her father was not dead, she did that for three days..” (p206)

Refused to recognize her father’s death.

“When the town got free postal delivery Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mail box to it.”(p209)

Refused to let the town attach a postal number to her house.

Emily vs. Homer

Emily loved Homer and wanted to marry him.

Homer was not a marrying man.

“Homer himself had remarked – he liked men, and it was know that he drank with younger men in the Elk’s club – that he was not a marrying man.”(p208

Resolution: Emily kills Homer and slept with him for 40 years.

Emily vs. Town

The town looks up at her and respects her as a tradition of the past, but also pitied her and thought she held herself too high. The town was annoyed at Emily’s arrogance and thought. “She carried her head high enough – even when we believed she was fallen.”

The town wants to interfere in Emily’s life and often gossips about her.

“So the next day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would e the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will marry him.” Then we said, “She will persuade him yet,” … Later we said, “Poor Emily,””

The town had moved on it the future, but they believed Emily had not, and often wants to uncover her secrets.

“When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house.”

Resolution: At the end, when they uncover Homer’s remains, the town realizes that Emily was desperately alone.

Rose

Rose often symbolizes life and romance.

Emily her self, she had been a beautiful lady, a Southern Belle, but as time went on, she had deteriorated like how a Rose wilts and dies.

“Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background.”

“She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.”

Emily’s love for Homer. Homer could have been Emily’s rose, and Emily could have tried to preserve Homer, by keeping him sealed in that room, like how someone would preserve a rose.

House

The state of the house represents the state of change of Emily.

Like the house, Emily had once been a very beautiful, elegant lady, but as time went on, her state had deteriorated. She had grown fat and her hair turned gray, and she had isolated her self. Her house had once been a white new, prominent house, on one of the best streets in the town, but after so many years, only Miss Emily’s house was left and it had decayed from its previous state. “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background.” (p205)

“The men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument.”(p202)

“It was a big, squarish frame house that had one been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighbourhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay among the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps - and eyesore among eyesores.” (p202)

Invisible watch

“Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.” (p204)

When the Board of Alderman visited Miss Emily get her to pay her taxes, she had worn a gold chain with a watch at the end of it. The chain symbolizes time ticking away, yet it’s invisible to Emily, because she didn’t realize that times have changed and wanted to do things the same as before.

Homer

Homer is a Yankee from the North, and is a construction worker. He might have symbolized the New since construction workers create new things, and Emily murdering Homer would be to keep her self away from the new generation.

Emily

Emily is a symbol of death and decay. Emily had been a distinguished lady from a distinguished aristocratic family, yet her situation slowly worsens especially after her father died, and she was reduced to a lonely woman without anyone. In the end she died a shadow of her former glorious self, as a psychotic lady resorting to murder to keep her love.

“Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized.” (p206)

Negro House Keeper

Is sort of a symbol for Emily, because he always did the same routine over and over again without change, sort of like Emily, the only thing different was he got older.

“…The only sign of life about the place was the Negro man – a young man then – going in an out with a market basket.” (p204)

“The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed.”(p204)

“Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow gayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket.”(209)

“He walked right through the house and out the back door and was not seen again.”(p210)