A Rose For Emily In “A Rose For Emily”, Faulkner uses the point of view of a townsperson to show short glimpses of how crazy and mysterious Emily really was. The beginning starts out at her funeral, which everyone in the city attends. Most of the men went to actually acknowledge her and pay their respects. The women went to her funeral to just be nosey and look through her house. Faulkner says this to show how mysterious she was and how little people actually knew about her. When her father was alive, he had loaned money to the town & made it so that Emily didn't have to pay any taxes ever. When the sheriff sent her a notice saying that she needed to come in to talk about, she sent it back to him enclosing the notice with no comment. She would not leave her house. When her father died, she decided not to leave the house at all. She refused to pay taxes as well. Not that she had any money to pay the with, anyways. When her father died she told everyone that came to the house that he hadn't actually died. She didn't let people come and get him to bury him for three days. He had rotted. Many people thought that she did this because her father was really the only man and companion she had ever had. She had never married anyone because no one was good enough. That was mostly according to her father, though. We never can really tell if she kept his body because since the story is being told from the point of view of a townsperson, we can only see what's on the outside, but not what actually happens with Emily herself. It is implied, though, that she did keep her dad's body for a few days and turned away everyone that came to the house to try and take him from her. Emily used to talk to people before her father died. She was always known as weird and maybe a little picked on, but she never was a total outcast. She was this rich girl, living in this huge house, not having to pay taxes; she was probably even a little envied by some of the women. She became kind of public again when she met Homer. People would see them out and they looked happy. Some people thought he was gay, though, and that changed some peoples' ideas of their relationship. Then again, we are only seeing this from the view of an outsider. This person doesn't actually know if they were a happy couple or if they were constantly fighting. When they stopped being so public & stopped coming around town, people thought they had just gotten married. That's what people hoped, at least. The clues given to us about her killing her husband & her keeping her father's body are also exemplified by saying that her house stunk. Many people were told to go to her house and tell her that she needed to do something about it because people had began to complain. People would try & sprinkle lime aorund the house to make the smell less evident. No one knew what the smell was but many people thought it was her father. Then magically the smell went away so people didn't have to bug her anymore. Most people thought it was rude to say something to her because she was a woman & you can't just tell a woman she stinks. Not knowing anything from Emily's point of view made it harder to understand what really happened in that house. From the point of view of the townsperson, we only see what happened on the outside. We only know rumors. Most of the time rumors are not true. Rumors have been stretched from the truth. It says in the book that the women only came to her house once she was dead to investigate. All they really wanted was to see how she lived because she was so mysterious, so different & secretive that no one really knew. The women would go to the house, go through the house, see how she lived, & then go out & gossip to people what they saw. Gossip is not even always the truth. I think that the author made the story so confusing because he was trying to show us how weird & discombobulated Emily's life really was. He starts out at her funeral & then tells the story kind of backwards. He jumps around, though. He goes from her childhood to a death to her new husband, he is just all over the place. He also may do it this way because it is told from the point of view of a townsperson. This may make the story shaky & not very detailed because they are not on the inside & do not really know everything that actually happened to Emily during her life. If the story would have been from the point of view of Emily it would have been much easier to understand because it would have came from the actual source. The author does not use this point of view because he is trying to show you how mysterious and different Emily really was.