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.
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.
Another use of foreshadowing is when the townspeople talk of the putrid smell coming from Emily's house. They ignore this smell and blame it on rodents. However, if the story were read from back to front, readers would know this smell is a result of the dead body rotting in Emily's house.
There have been complaints about an awful stench emanating from Miss Emily's house. The older generation, which feels that it is improper to tell a lady that she stinks, arranges for a group of men to spread lime on her lawn and inside the cellar door of her house.
The Grierson Family House Symbol Analysis
It is, after all, physically decaying—the narrator even calls it “an eyesore”—and the highly respected neighborhood in which the house is located is being encroached upon by garages and cotton gins, structures of industrialization, signs of cultural and social progress.
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.
Emily's house also represents alienation, mental illness, and death. It is a shrine to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room where she preserves the man she would not allow to leave her.
The men throughout the town were afraid of offending a woman especially one coming from a family like the Griersons'. For example, in the story they notice an awful smell coming from Miss Emily's home, but they don't know how to tell her without her being offended.
Although the rest of the town moves on, ''only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. '' As the Confederacy becomes a blemish on America, Emily's home is transformed into a stain on the town.
The narrator says that the only thing Emily inherited from her father was the house.
In section V, the narrator describes what happens after Emily dies. Emily's body is laid out in the parlor, and the women, town elders, and two cousins attend the service. After some time has passed, the door to a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened in forty years is broken down by the townspeople.
The reader also sees this with the corpse of Homer Barron, except she is the one who inflicts death upon him. She poisons him and keeps him locked away in her room; she did not want to lose the only other person she had ever loved, so she made his stay permanent.
Emily's Hair.
The hair is described as iron-grey, symbolising the iron tenacity of Emily in keeping Homer close to her – in death, if that's what it took (and it clearly did take that).
Lesson Summary
One moral, or ethical message, of this story is the risk we take in wearing rose colored glasses because we can't properly see the world when wearing them. Another moral of this story is that we need to find the balance between the morals of the old generation and the modern ideas of the new generation.
why do some townspeople avoid asking Miss Emily about the smell? it was seen as impolite to ask a lady why she smelled foul.
There are three different motives that can be looked at as to why Emily killed Homer. She wanted to exercise power, she couldn't accept that Homer was a homosexual, and she didn't want another man to be taken away from her. Emily's father controlled her life up until his death.
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.
Miss Emily let her past conflict with her present by keeping the body of her deceased father in a room in her home. By her keeping the deceased body it causes a major over that began to leak into the city. The odor was so bad the people of the town had to creep to try and get the smell way.
“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town . . .” “At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. ”
So, four guys go to her house and sprinkle lime (see "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" for a discussion of lime) everywhere they can reach. They can see Emily watching from an upstairs window. She is described as "motionless as that of an idol" (2.10). Anyhow, the smell goes away in a matter of weeks.
''A Rose for Emily'' contains verbal irony when Colonel Sartoris promises the Grierson family that if they loan the town money, they won't have to pay taxes and when Emily tells the new mayor to see Colonel Sartoris, who has been dead for ten years, about her taxes. Neither party means or believes what they are saying.
Emily enforces her own sense of law and conduct, such as when she refuses to pay her taxes or state her purpose for buying the poison. Emily also skirts the law when she refuses to have numbers attached to her house when federal mail service is instituted.
Tobe is introduced as 'an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook,' and the only person who had seen the inside of the house for the last ten years.
White. The first introduction to color we find in the story is white and it's used to describe the house where Emily Grierson lived her entire life. White is used, not merely to describe the house as it is, but how it used to be: ''It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white. ''
Emily eventually apes that male dominance by killing Homer Barron. Now robbing herself, she becomes the black silhouette of her father and assimilates his characteristics. After Homer's death, she successfully retains the corpse.