When asked at a seminar at the university of virginia about the meaning of the title "a rose for emily," faulkner replied, "oh, it's simply the poor woman had no life at all. her father had kept her more or less locked up and then she had a lover who was about to quit her, she had to murder him. it was just a 'a rose for emily'--that's all." in another interview, asked the same question, he replied, "i pitied her and this was a salute, just as if you were to make a gesture, a salute, to anyone; to a woman you would hand a rose, as you would lift a cup of sake to a man." what do you make of faulkner's responses

She took up a scalpel and slit the monkey's abdomen, making a slow and gentle cut, keeping the blade well away from her gloved fingers. the spleen was puffed up and tough, leathery, like a globe of smoked salami. she did not see any bloody lesions inside this monkey. she had expected that the monkey's interior would be a lake of blood, but no, this monkey looked all right, it had not bled into itself. if the animal had died of ebola, this was not a clear case. she opened up the intestine. there was no blood inside it. the gut looked okay. then she examined the stomach. there she found a ring of bleeding spots at the junction between the stomach and the small intestine. this could be a sign of ebola, but it was not a clear sign. it could also be a sign of simian fever, not ebola. therefore, she could not confirm the presence of ebola virus in this animal based on a visual inspection of the internal organs during necropsy.