A Rose for Emily
By: William Faulkner

In this short story, I noticed situational irony.  Emily Grierson seemed pretty depressed and lonely throughout the entirety of the story.  Even when Homer Barron came into the picture, I did not think she was truly happy.  She was still seen sitting alone in the window of her house some nights.  When Emily went to the druggist, I thought she was going to pull a Lily Bart.  She kept telling the druggist that she wanted arsenic, which is very poisonous.  The label on the box had a picture of a skull and bones and said it was for rats.  Considering Emily seemed unhappy with her life, I thought she was planning on killing herself.  She would not tell the druggist why she was getting the arsenic.  "'But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for'" (286).  Even after this, Emily refused to explain her intentions.  Because of this, I assumed she would end up committing suicide.  The townspeople said that they did not see her leave her house for 6 months.  However, they also said the Homer Barron entered her house one day and was never seen leaving.  They all just assumed that Homer and Emily got married and lived in her mysterious house together.  Emily eventually died at an old age in her house, but no one even knew that she was sick.  After her burial, the curious people end up going upstairs in her house, which no one had supposedly been in in 40 years.  Shockingly, they find Homer Barron's dead, decomposing body laying in a bed upstairs.  I was taken by surprise when I read this.  I did not even think of the possibility that Emily planned on killing Homer with the arsenic.  This was situational irony because what really happened was completely different from what I expected to happen.