Does "A Rose for Emily" seem to you totally grim, or do you find any humor in it?

Since this question asks for an opinion, the answer can be either "yes" or "no," although you'd have to give evidence for your opinion either way.

For everything that I might find funny in the story, someone else could come in and say, "To me, that's not funny. That's dark, or morbid, or weird."

So, look for things in the tale that are surprising, or ironic, or awkward, and those are the things that some...

Since this question asks for an opinion, the answer can be either "yes" or "no," although you'd have to give evidence for your opinion either way.

For everything that I might find funny in the story, someone else could come in and say, "To me, that's not funny. That's dark, or morbid, or weird."

So, look for things in the tale that are surprising, or ironic, or awkward, and those are the things that some readers might find funny. Let's check out some examples.

1. Some of the images and bits of information are bizarre and ridiculous. They make you stop and go “Um, what?” Miss Emily’s house is described as “lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores.” To me, it’s funny that one house would stick out from the others like a flirtatious old hag.

2. Look at Miss Emily’s haughty and crazy old-lady behaviors. She won’t pay her taxes, and the mayor himself contacts her about it. She writes back to him “a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink.” Can you imagine a fancy, fussy little note that puts a mayor in his place? That strikes me as hilarious.

3. Notice how Miss Emily gets away with things because people are intimidated by her. Yet we know she’s just a little old lady. Here’s what happens when she went to buy some poison from the pharmacist and he wants to make sure she's going to just use it on rats...not people:

“The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. ‘Why, of course,’ the druggist said. ‘If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.’

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up.”

Whether or not you think the more morbid plot points are funny, you could make a good argument for much of the story having a kind of twisted, subtle humor.