A Rose for Emily Mood

Mood defined – how the story makes the reader feel.

The mood of this story is that the main character Emily’s life was a sad and depressed life. It makes you feel sorry for Ms. Emily that her father kept her sheltered all of her life until he died. Then after he died she was not really able to find anyone to love her.
When she finally met a man he showed her the attention that she had always wanted. Homer Barron was the only actual love she had ever seen. Although the attention he was giving her was more like a friendship than an actual relationship she really enjoyed the attention that he showed her. She seemed to fall in love with him and he saw the relationship in a totally different light. It seems to me that when he tried to explain this to Emily is when she decided that if she couldn’t have him then no one would. So in order to keep him in her life Emily chose to kill him instead of dealing with the shame of being left all alone yet again.

Foreshadowing Defined – The introduction early in a story of verbal & dramatic hints that suggest what is to come later in the story.

Foreshadowing is used by the author of “A Rose for Emily” he foreshadows the discovery of Homer Barron’s body in a few ways
The way the smell develops around Emily’s house.
Homer never returning to Emily’s house these both foreshadow the fact that when Emily went to the drug store & purchased poison to kill him.
Also, right at the end of the story, after Emily died when the cousins came to the house, the Negro man Toby came to the door and he immediately left the house never to be seen again.
This leaves you feeling that he had something to hide. The thing he had to hide was Homer Barron’s body.