Miss Emily Grierson dies, and the townspeople finally enter the upstairs room that has been closed for forty years. Faulkner's 1930 story is Southern Gothic at its purest: decay, obsession, a secret that retrospectively illuminates everything. The narrative shifts through time, the collective 'we' of the town serving as chorus. The final image is unforgettable, and critics have interpreted it as everything from necrophilia to the death of the Old South. The story simply presents it, horrible and somehow tender.