A Rose For Emily (short story)

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Paragraph Analysis of “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
In this essay, we shall analyze the significance of the following paragraph of “A Rose for Emily”

“Then we noticed that in 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 5)
In my opinion, the story does not lead to the conclusion, which makes the final even more unexpected. This is by far the most interesting line in the whole story. The final punch the reader needs to be finally awestruck by the story. However, the story does show us that Mrs. Emily’s mind was long gone. In a way, the author constructs a whole atmosphere about Mrs. Emily, and the circumstances leading to her destiny. We can see the foreshadow of the story’s finale at the moment when a smell came out from the house, and men had to sprinkle lime on her lawn. Faulkner tries to conceal it by speaking almost immediately about Mrs. Emily’s father.

In a first fast reading, he does, but after a careful second reading, the ruse becomes more obvious, and the death of Homer Barron becomes a possibility. In the same way, the moment when she goes to the drugstore to buy arsenic, is another moment where the story shows us the idea of death.
Another idea that occurred to me is that she could have taken the arsenic she bought, however, the inscription in the label that said “For rats” could have indicated that she also saw as vermin.

In that way, she refused to take it because of the implications in the label. However, regardless the arsenic, it sounds suspicious that after Barron’s arrival to the town, and his sighting in Mrs. Emily’s house, he was never seen anymore.

Since nobody in the town asked, I shall do the honors: Why nobody raised suspicions over Barron’s disappearance? We might think they did not because they respected Mrs. Emily intimacy, but I consider it was out of fear, fear of the unknown.
Also, another clue that lead me to consider the final was going to be that one is that after Mrs. Emily gets old, Faulkner does an extended recollection of her hair, on how it looked, and its gray color. That is why, I consider that despite the final being a shock, after careful reading, we see that the author was foreshadowing it all the time