Homer Barron's body is stretched on the bed as well, in an advanced state of decay. The onlookers then notice the indentation of a head in the pillow beside Homer's body and a long strand of Emily's gray hair on the pillow.
Inside, among the gifts that Emily had bought for Homer, lies the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed. On the pillow beside him is the indentation of a head and a single strand of gray hair, indicating that Emily had slept with Homer's corpse.
The gray hair on the pillow indicates that she has been lying down on the bed, beside the corpse of her dead former fiance.
After her death, the same servant allows the townspeople inside, and they make the gruesome discovery of Homer's body in the bed, a single strand of gray hair on the pillow beside it where Emily slept.
Even in death, Miss Emily cannot escape her father: "They held the funeral on the second day . . . with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier . . ." When the townspeople break into a locked room upstairs, they find carefully folded wedding clothes and Homer's remains.
The room is frozen in time, with the items for an upcoming wedding and a man's suit laid out. Homer Barron's body is stretched on the bed as well, in an advanced state of decay. The onlookers then notice the indentation of a head in the pillow beside Homer's body and a long strand of Emily's gray hair on the pillow.
After the funeral, the townspeople break down a door in Emily's house that, it turns out, had been locked for forty years. They find a skeleton on a bed, along with the remains of men's clothes, a tarnished silver toiletry set, and a pillow with an indentation and one long iron-gray hair.
'' When Emily finally passes away, the townsfolk hold a large funeral for her. Some of the citizens then enter her home after the funeral. To their horror, they find the decomposing corpse of Homer Barron on a bed next to a pillow where Emily had slept for several decades.
At the end, why do the townspeople infer that Emily had slept in the secret room after she had shut off from the rest of the house? There was an indentation of a head in the pillow and a strand off her hair.
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, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.
The vast majority of people with gray hair have age-related graying. However, sometimes graying hair indicates an illness, especially if it occurs at a particularly young age. Health problems that may be heralded by gray hair include: vitamin B12 deficiency.
Whether we know it or not, grey hair reminds us of time. We associate grey hair with age even if it has nothing to do with it. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Being reminded about time and how short life is can help take you out of your routine.
To give someone great frustration , confusion , or anxiousness .
Emily's Hair
A few years after Homer "disappears" and her last chance to wed has gone, her hair turns gray, signifying the death of her sexuality. To reinforce this symbolism, the townspeople find a strand of Emily's gray hair next to Homer's corpse in their would-be marriage bed.
1935 – Miss Emily dies at seventy-four years old. Tobe leaves the house. Two days later the funeral is held at the Grierson house. At the funeral, the townspeople break down the door to the bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen in forty years.
Miss Emily suffers from schizophrenia because she shows symptoms of withdrawing from society. Throughout Emily's life, her aristocratic father the townspeople highly respected, kept Emily closed in believing no suitors are worthy enough for her.
In a sense, Emily's disregard of time also means that she is oblivious of death and decay. Keeping her father's and Homer's bodies indicates that she does not accept death. She can love both in life and in death, as if subjects were still living.
These thematic connections are apparent in the story's first sentence: ''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 . . . .''
They later on find that this odor was coming from the corpse of Homer Barron, decaying in the house. This home held the body of Homer in a room that was locked up for several years, which was not discovered until the death of Miss Emily, when people began to look through her home.
When Emily dies, the townspeople learn that she has kept Homer's corpse. Her loneliness had been so severe that she has been sleeping with his corpse for years.
For 3 days, she refused to give up her father's dead body to be buried. Emily had depended so much on her father due to his action of not allowing her to marry. After Mr. Grierson's death, she locked herself away in her house.
-When Emily's father dies in 1894, the people felt "glad" because "being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized." However, her father had run off all of her husband prospects and so when he dies, Miss Emily has no one. Now we understand why she kept his body for three days!
In 'A Rose for Emily,' the smell that comes from Emily's house after she kills Homer Barron is the one piece of evidence the townspeople are not able to ignore. However, rather than facing it and getting to the source of the problem, they sneak onto her property in the middle of the night and cover the smell with lime.
Why were the people glad when it was learned that after Miss Emily's father died, all that was left to her was the house? They felt like she was finally like them because she was always privileged. Why is Miss Emily being asked to pay taxes?
Emily actually intends to use the arsenic to kill her suitor, Homer Barron. The box itself was emblazoned with an image of 'the skull and bones,' a common warning for containers of poison. This image foreshadows the story's final, horrible revelation: Homer has been reduced to bones and dust.