“marrying man.” The narrator (the town) claims, “Homer himself had remarkedhe liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Clubthat he was not a marrying man.” The narrator could be suggesting that Homer is a homosexual or possibly a bisexual; after all he is seeing Emily. With this discovery, Emily knew she could never have him and could not bear the thought of another man that she loved leaving her. This must have been the breaking point for her. Emily was determined not to let another man leave her for the third time. Therefore she purchased the arsenic so she could be with him forever. The last person to see Homer was a neighbor as the Negro man was admitting him in at the kitchen door at dusk one evening. Again, Emily submerged herself into the familiar calm of isolation until her death. After her funeral, the narrator (the town) paints the picture of their discovery in the room above the stairs. A room in which no one had seen in for forty years. “The man himself lay in the bed. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him…. Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it… we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.” Emily must have decided she would rather have Homer Barron dead then to live through another jilting.In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”, George, Granny’s past lover, jilted her at the altar. As Granny is dying, she attempts to face these internal conflicts about being left at the altar. On her deathbed, after sixty years, she has changed her mind and would like to see George; “I want you to find George. Find him and be sur...
