"A Rose for Emily"

The author of this short story added a little surprise for us at the end which clarified a lot of things in the story. However, I cannot decide whether it was part of the stories structure and plot for it to come out as a surprise or not. The ending included the corpse of the man that Emily was supposed to have married and a strand of long grey hair. This leads the reader to assume a couple of things; however, it is never really clarified. This ending affects the plot because, for me, I would have never suspected it and it changes or affirms a lot of what I thought during the story. A couple things that stood out to me after I read the whole story was the smell that the town covered up, the purchase of the rat poison without Emily dying (I was pretty sure she was going to commit suicide), and the fact that Emily's father never let men get close enough to her for a relationship. These all should have been bells going off in my head alerting me of a twist, but it never really happened. Another element of plot was Emily's relationship with her father. This struck me as kind of odd because she lived with him her whole life, he kept sending away potential suitors, and then he died. It made me feel kind of sorry for her because I really think she was confused on what to do. I think she never really got a chance at anything, which drove her to kind of be an odd ball and do crazy things. The plot and structure emphasized certain elements and foreshadowed events.