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In "A Rose for Emily," what event clarifies information about the smell that comes from Emily's house?

In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," the foul smell creates a sense of mystery, which lends itself to the Southern Gothic tradition throughout the story. The smell acts as a topic of debate among the members of Miss Emily's town and allows the reader to gain perspective as to how a person like Miss Emily would have been treated during the time in which the story was written. Although she lets herself go as the story progresses, her community still treats her respectfully, as Emily's family has a privileged tradition in her town. Therefore, as the smell grows more and more potent, rather than directly addressing Miss Emily about it, the community handles the smell with the utmost sensitivity. The final scene in which the narrator investigates Miss Emily's attic after her passing reveals the source of the rancid smell which emanated from her house years prior: Homer Barron's corpse.

Furthermore, throughout the story smell acts as foreshadowing. The first mention of any kind of smell is in the first section when the narrator describes Emily's house as having "smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell" (n.p.). This passage acts as foreshadowing of the smell mentioned in the next section.


Due to repeated complaints from the town regarding the rancid smell coming from Miss Emily's house, four men entered her property to sprinkle lime in the cellar and the outbuildings to discretely and politely take care of it. As the men were leaving, they notice a light come on and a stiff figure sitting in the window. At this point in the story, both the characters and the reader assume the figure to be Miss Emily. However, the smell acts once again as foreshadowing to the final section of the story. 


After Miss Emily passes away, the narrator and other unspecified characters investigate the room upstairs, which had been a vacant mystery for many years. Through the heavy layers of dust, they discover the silver monogrammed men's toiletry set and men's clothing that Miss Emily had purchased earlier in the story. Much to their shock, they also discover the corpse of Homer Barron, who had courted Miss Emily and had gone missing years prior.


This passage confirms that the horrible smell that came from Miss Emily's house as well as the stiff figure that the men saw in the window the night they spread the lime was in fact Homer Barron.

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