Shortly after her father’s death, Emily doesn’t leave her house until she meets a man named Homer Barron. Miss Emily really liked this man and everyone in the town thought that they were going to get married one day. Unfortunately, their relationship only lasted a year and a half and Homer decides he wants to break up with Emily. Homer was considered a Yankee and wasn’t really interested in pursuing a life together with Emily. Emily, having already struggled through loneliness and isolation, decides that she wants to kill Homer. Faulkner shows the murder of Homer by stating, “A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening. And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time” (Faulkner …show more content…
Emily did this so she could still be close to Homer and to have company. Even though Homer is dead, Emily still chooses to sleep in the bed with him at night in her secluded bedroom. His body remains in Emily’s house for a long period of time, but nobody realizes he disappeared. After the death of Homer, a smell starts to make its way around Emily’s house. Unbothered by the smell, Emily continues to live through the smell, but the smell disturbs her neighbors. After Emily’s death, the people of the town discover Homer’s dead body lying in the bed upstairs. The neighbors found out that Emily was sleeping in the bed with Homers corpse after she killed him with poison. “Then we noticed that the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (Faulkner 487). Apparently, the smell had been bothering her neighbors for a very long time was Homer’s corpse rotting in Emily’s house. Faulkner uses Emily’s insane and horrific actions to symbolize isolation and loneliness. It is apparent that Emily did not want to be left alone in her house, so the only way for her to not to be lonely was by killing her true