I should have seen that coming...

"Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic."
A Rose for Emily, pg. 287

Although A Rose for Emily has a bit of a twist in the ending, it also has quite a bit of foreshadowing. Looking back, I realized that it would have been easy to predict what the last page of the story tells us; Emily killed Homer, keeping ahold of him in his death. There are many clues, the first and foremost being when she bought rat poison. Next, Homer mysteriously dissapears from the town. We are also told that Homer is a homosexual, and will therefore not marry Emily. It should have been easy to predict that Emily bought the poison to kill Homer because he would not marry her. The biggest shock for me, though, was reading about how "the body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace", which tells the reader that Emily was very close to the body, to put it in light terms. Her buying the "man's toilet set in silver" and "complete outfit of men's clothing" makes much more sense now; she cared about him in some way, and wanted his body to be in good condition. To say it makes sense seems like an odd way to put it, since there is nothing sensical or sane about it. Although Emily may have a rose, she didn't seem to have her full mind.