Homer Barron

Homer Barron is the "big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face" who comes to Jefferson to to oversee the workers paving the town's sidewalks (124). When he and Emily Grierson begin appearing in public together in "the yellow-wheeled buggy . . . from the livery stable," the town is soon scandalized that "a Grierson" woman might think "seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer" (124). Homer tells the "younger men in the Elks' Club . . . that he is not a marrying man," which has led a few modern commentators to suggest that he may be gay (126). Perhaps the more likely reading, however, is simply that he doesn't want to be tied down to any one woman.