"A Rose For Emily"

The narrator of "A Rose for Emily" is an outsider within the community that Emily lives in. The narrator is someone that can see deeply in to Emily's life. This is seen in the great description of the letters Emily received in paragraph four of the first part of "A Rose for Emily". Only someone that knew Emily well could know such details of the letters received by Emily. The narrator also seems to know a lot of insight in to the happenings of the community as seen in section two where the Board of Aldermen meet and then go to Emily's house to spread the lime to rid of the smell. Because the narrator is an outsider looking in, it seems that we are given the story as the narrator remembers it, which is not in chronological order. As the narrator tells the story, each even triggers the memory of another event, which is then described. Also, by hearing the view of an outsider, it leads to immediate opinions, which may be negative, about Emily. However, by digging deeper those original negative opinions may become opinions of sympathy and understanding.
Emily poisons Homer. In paragraph three of section four, Emily and Homer seem to be preparing for a wedding. This shows that there are some true connections of love between the two. Although, we see a line of insanity in Emily's family, I do not believe this is necessarily the case for Emily herself. Three paragraphs before section three, we see that Emily was only left with her father's house after he passed away. In the next paragraph, Emily has trouble accepting her father's death and allowing him to be buried. The burial of her father was another loss to her. Poisoning Homer seems to be Emily's attempt to keep Homer in her life. By not allowing others to realize that he died, his body would not be taken away to be buried. This especially seemed to be the case in the last few paragraphs, where we see that Emily had laid next to Homer's deceased body. She truly just wanted to keep Homer in her life forever.