A Rose For Emily

Although this story was confusing a lot of the time due to Faulkner's use of "stream of consciousness", I feel the end of the story really illuminates why Faulkner chose to write the rest of it the way he did. The story line sometimes seems to skip around, and time becomes somewhat confusing throughout the story, but knowing that Homer was killed helps to understand the order of events, and how they happened and why. For instance, the smell coming from Miss Emily's house makes no sense in the story unless you understand that Homer is dead inside her house. The same goes with the arsenic that Miss Emily buys. She is very nervous when buying it, and it would appear she meant to use it for something other than its true purpose, but this is not illuminated until the very end. I think Faulkner does a very good job of creating a surprising cliax at the end of the story to illumate the rest of the story.