Faulkner's "A rose for Emily": the narration
             The narrator in this short story is an omniscent one, endowed with the ability of inner view into the minds of his characters. He echoes the words, thoughts and suspicions of an entire small-town community, and he seems to be fully acquainted with its ways. He is someone from the "inside", someone who probably lives in the community. Although he never gives up his identity he establishes himself as someone who is familiar with poeple's thoughts, with the history and legends, with individuals like Colonel Sartoris and even with the interior of Miss Emily's house.
             He is to that extent omniscious that he refers to himself as "we" so that it seem as if the town itself were the narrator of the story. In either way we do not pay attention to whom the narrator is, but what matters is that we can perceive the town as one coherent entity which has one common opinion about the only two individuals in the story – Miss Emily and Tobe – the only two who live isolated and do not obbey the rules of the "crowd".
             In the second version of A Rose for Emily the narrative coherence is well kept as the only point of view we get and the only narrative voice we hear is that of the town. The gossips and legends become the basis of our knowledge. We believe what the town believes. For instance, when we read: "So the next day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said, "She will persuade him yet", because Homer himself had remarked – he liked men, and it was known that he liked younger me in the Elks' Club – that he was not a marrying man. Later we said "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, ...