In the first sentence the reader is informed that the protagonist, Emily Grierson, is dead and that the entire town is present and all for a different reason. The narrator begins a flashback ten years before her death, when the "backbone" of the city began harassing Emily for her taxes; the reader is introduced to a situation. Then a flashback another thirty years to her father's death and that's when Emily started living for herself and met Homer Barron. The people of the town began to interfere out of jealousy, but always claimed that they were the ones who pitied Emily and involved her upper-class family in the socially unacceptable relationship; at this point the reader has understood the conflict. The reader receives clues during the second flashback to conclude that Emily killed Homer out of fear; this is where Faulkner gave us the climax. Years pass and nothing really happens in the Grierson household that raises the mystery of what is happening behind closed doors; the falling action of the story. Upon Emily's death, the ladies of the town enter her home and discover Homer's corpse in a locked bedroom upstairs with a lock of Emily's hair on the pillow next to him; bringing the story to the end and giving the reader the