"A Rose For Emily" is a strange story told in a series on
non-linear and episodic flashbacks. As such, there aren't any choices really to be
made. Emily's dead on the first page, before the story even starts. Her story has
happened in the past. It's just now that the unnamed narrators are discovering her
morbid secret life.
Earlier, I guess that Emily faces some
difficult choices with her father. Her father chases away her potential suitors, so no
one wants to marry her. As you know, the worst thing to be called in the South is an
"Old Maid." And then her father dies, and she doesn't want to give up his corpse. If
the town hadn't demanded the body, Emily would have taken him to bed too. This all
shows that Emily is quite mad. Do crazy people make difficult
decisions?
Her difficult choice, then, is whether to marry
at all. Can she survive the rumors and gossip and shame of living as a penniless
spinster? Instead of marrying, per se, she decides to murder a man (Homer) right after
she marries him. This will fulfill both of her needs, allowing her to live in peace and
replace her father's corpse.
Is it a difficult decision to
sleep with a corpse? When it smells, you bet. But after that, I suppose, it gets
easier.
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