Foreshadowing In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

I particularly love a good suspenseful story or a story that will keep me guessing. I like to predict the ending and be surprised to find that I was completely wrong. A story with a toss-up. William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” was the best in my opinion because the author use foreshadowing to create a dramatic twist at the end. Faulkner initially painted a sullen picture of a secluded old woman who’s dealing with the loss of a loved one, but the story changes. Faulkner first foreshadows the twist in the story in the beginning when the Board of Alderman visited her home about her taxes. She told them she didn’t owe any taxes, to see Colonel Sartoris for any questions, and dismissed them. The story stated that Colonel Sartoris had been dead for 10 years, so that

The story didn’t explain why she needed the arsenic (arsenic poison is used to kill rats), but it soon became clear. Remembering the beginning of the story when the men came to her about her taxes, the story said, “She vanquished them… just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.” The smell came about shortly after her old boyfriend “abandoned” her. The townspeople eliminated that smell with lime. Then at the end, when Miss Emily died, they found Homer Barron’s body in one of the bedrooms. At the beginning, none of it made sense, and then it hit me like a wrecking ball. The ex-lover is Homer Barron. The arsenic was used to kill Homer Barron whom Miss Emily must’ve thought was a “rat” for leaving her, and the townspeople helped dispose of the smell with the lime.

In conclusion, “A Rose For Emily” is the best. I thought I could play Nancy Drew and figure it out, but William Faulkner is a master of trickery. I wish this wasn’t just a short story and the plot was stretched out into a novel; it could even be a series. I would most definitely read