Though my loneliness certainly isn't as extreme as Emily's, and I do not think I would want to sleep next to a corpse for years instead of finding people to interact with in the outside world, the sense of being cut off from those around you and kept in a separate bubble is something I can relate to. There are times when I have exactly this feeling as a student in a foreign country -- no matter how nice and understanding people are, there are certain moments where I just don't fit in or I have no idea what's going on, and I imagine that Emily must have felt this way a lot, too. It would have been much worse to feel this way in your own town, full of people from the same place as you and that you had known all of your life, and the powerful level of emotion...

The way the story is told makes it seem as though everyone is curious to know about Emily, but they only want to know certain facts about her that are on the surface. The townspeople are all very surprised to learn about what has been going on behind closed doors, but they weren't willing to show enough interest beforehand to offer Emily the help and the love that she obviously needed. The message is a rather depressing one, but it is something that is still very useful for us to hear in the current times.