William Faulkner's "a Rose for Miss Emily"

William Faulkner's "A Rose for Miss Emily" is based on the different phases of Miss Emily's character. He begins the story with the funeral of Miss Emily and ends the story with the discovery of Homer Barron's corpse. In between that he divides the story in five sections with different stages of Miss Emily's life.

The first section of the story describes Miss Emily believes that she does not have to pay taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris, the mayor of the town, devises a scheme for not making Miss Emily pay taxes on her house, while not making her feel like she is being offered charity. He makes up an imaginary loan from her father to the town, and says the town is paying it back by "remitting" her taxes. But the next generation the Mayor and aldermen write a letter to Miss Emily to pay her taxes. She refuses to pay taxes. Everybody feels sorry for Miss Emily when her father died. He left her with the house, but no money. When her father died, Miss Emily refuses to admit it for three whole days. The town does not think she is "crazy then," but assumes that she just does not want to let go of her dad, even though he had stolen her youth from her.

The second section of the story describes people who live around her house complaint about Miss Emily for bad smell in her house. But at this point nobody knows the cause of smell. Anyhow, the stink gets stronger and the authorities do not want to confront Miss Emily about the problem. So, they sprinkle lime around the house and the smell is eventually gone.

In the third section of story Miss Emily comes in contact with Homer Barron. People of the town think that they are in love with each other and are going to get married. She buys a bottle of poison and people think that she is going to kill herself " So the next day we all said, "She will kill herself", and we said it would be the best thing" (395). But actually in this part of story she kills Homer Barron with arsenic poison, however it is not clearly specified by the author.

The fourth section of the story describes Miss Emily orders some stuff, men's toilet set, a complete outfit for men's clothing including a night shirt. Everybody in the town is sure that they are married. But after a couple of days, Homer Barron becomes disappears. People start thinking that he left Miss Emily because he moves around because of his job of repairing the roads. Her hair turns gray, she gains weight, and she eventually dies in a downstairs bedroom that hasn't seen light in many years. The story cycles back to where it began, at her funeral. Tobe, Miss Emily's servant, lets in the town Miss Emily dies. People even do not know that she was sick.

In the fifth section of the story people go into her house after her death. In one of the upstairs rooms they find out a dead body of Homer Barron. They also notice that she slept