Student Question
Why did Miss Emily need arsenic in "A Rose for Emily"?
Quick answer:
Miss Emily needed arsenic to kill Homer Barron, whom she viewed as a threat to her reputation. Although she did not explicitly tell the druggist her reason, she was able to purchase the poison under the pretense of needing it for rats and pole cats. The druggist labeled the package "For rats" to avoid trouble.
Miss Emily actually did not tell the druggist why she wanted the arsenic. The druggist chose to put rats on the package so he would not get in trouble for selling her arsenic. Faukner writes:
The druggist looked down at her [Miss Emily.] She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for."
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats."
References
Miss Emily...
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indicates to the pharmacist that she needs arsenic to kill the rats and pole cats at her home. Otherwise, she would not have been allowed to purchase this poison. Of course, in this time period, no self-respecting gentleman would have questioned a Southern lady's intentions. The reader knows she does have a rat...Homer Baron...who is threatening to ruin her reputation by leaving her after being alone with her in her home. Even as old as Miss Emily was at the time of Homer, a chaperone would have been expected to preserve her "ladylike" status.
What does Miss Emily want the arsenic for in "A Rose for Emily"?
Miss Emily purchases the arsenic to kill Homer Barron, a Yankee working man who has come to town to work on the paving of sidewalks in the town. He is not someone whom Miss Emily's father would have approved of, finding such a person beneath her. But Homer seems to court Emily, and they go riding together on Sundays. Emily intends to marry him, and she buys a monogrammed toilet set and some men's clothing for him. The people of the town think that she will be able to persuade him, although he is said not to be a marrying kind of man. He is seen going into Miss Emily's house at the kitchen door at twilight one evening and is never seen again. A short time later a bad smell begins to emanate from Miss Emily's house, and after a consultation with town officials, four men go to the house and sprinkle lime about to get rid of whatever the smell is. At the end of the story, after Miss Emily dies and the townspeople go into the house, they find Homer, or what is left of Homer, dead in Miss Emily's bed, having clearly died a very long time ago, with the toilet set intact but tarnished and he in the nightshirt she had purchased for him. His position is such that he would be embracing someone lying next to him, and the people found a gray hair, clearly one of Miss Emily's, on the pillow next to him.
What is never made clear, really, is whether Miss Emily kills Homer because he does not want to marry her and thus she can hang onto him forever like this, or she kills him because he does not want to marry her and this is her revenge as a spurned woman. There are other possibilities as well. Her complete denial of her father's death suggests that she cannot bear to be left at all, and so perhaps she loves Homer but kills him simply to preserve him. There is also the possibility that Miss Emily, having been raised without a mother and apparently completely sheltered by her father, finds her wedding night so shocking that she decides to kill this man who has turned into what she perceives to be a beast. The fact that Miss Emily seems to have slept all these years in the embrace of a dead man certainly establishes that her motives are not sane.