A Rose for Emily - Tobe and Homer's Version

If Faulkner wrote “A Rose for Emily” in first person singular instead of first person plural point-of-view, the reader would only get the perspective from one character. In the original story, different characters put their pieces of knowledge about Miss Emily together in order to form a general picture of what went on with her. With this shift in narrator, the plot of the story would change dramatically. With the plural point-of-view, the narrator didn’t know much about what went inside Miss Emily’s house; most of the time they had to speculate things about her. For example, they didn’t know why her house had an unbearable smell and why she never left her house. They even had to assume that she got married to Homer because of all the things she bought. If it was written in Tobe’s point-of-view, the exact opposite would of happen. The narrator would know everything that went instead the house and wouldn’t know what the people on the outside thought about Miss Emily. But with this shift, the entire mystery in the story would be lost because Tobe would know what Miss Emily was up to. Unless, Miss Emily was sneaky old gal and did everything while Tobe was out of the house buying groceries. But he should be able to put the pieces together. I would also assume that the perception of Miss Emily would change because Tobe knew her more closely that the people in the neighborhood. But I doubt that her motives would be known to Tobe because even though he had access to her house, she was still quite a mysterious woman. The theme of isolation would be more emphasized because Tobe was closer to her and saw how isolated she really was, but once again the reader doesn’t really know how close the two really were. The story would also been even more different if it was written in Homer’s point-of-view. Not only because he comes later into the story but also because he dies before it has finished. The story would have to end when Miss Emily poisoned him and we wouldn’t find out that she has been sleeping with his corpse. Practically we would get an abridged version of the story with many important gaps missing. Through his perspective, the theme of isolation wouldn’t be obvious because the two of them had a close relationship. Since Homer was always in the middle of the crowd, the theme of isolation might be completely lost in his version.