Explain Faulkner's technique in "placing" a gray hair on Miss Emily's bed in "A Rose for Emily". William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

In 's Southern
Gothic short story "", the narrator (in the form of the "voices of the
townsfolk") had been hinting at something mysterious that must have taken place in the
house. After all, Misshas come to be regarded as a relic of the town. Her house and her
appearance are both stamps from the past that somehow have persisted the changes in time and
society

So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as
she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after
her fathers death and a short time after her sweetheartthe one we believed would marry herhad
deserted her. After her fathers death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away,
people hardly saw her at all..

This excerpt shows us a
Southern Gothic tradition: Theof death, desolation, desperation and the curiosity of the smell
all combine to create a deeply-rooted mystery that will eventually lead to the finding of the
silver hair. It is the genre of the story what makes it necessary to create a situation that is
both shocking, as it is grotesque.

Therefore, the end of the story
reads

 Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the
indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and
invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair

Therefore, what we know now is that they have found the carcass of
, Emily's only known male companion. We also know that he had apparently threatened to leave
her, and that she has a complete inability to accept change. Hence, Emily had kept his body and
slept with it for decades before he was found.