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The theme of death used in literature
Theme of life and death in literature
The theme of death in literature
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The Jilting of Granny Weatherall is about an older woman who is coming to terms with death, and the losses in her life. Throughout the story, Granny has many memories from her life, including ones about her children and her lovers. Granny thinks that she has accepted death, but realizes that she has not.
Granny Weatherall lives on a farm with her daughter Cornelia and with her daughter’s husband. When a car come down the driveway one day Granny mistakes it for a black horses pulling a black carriage; this image of symbolism foreshadows that death is coming for her. After this incident, Granny decides to make a white cake, something she has not done in years. To make the cake she insists on making fresh butter. To do accomplish this she uses a butter churn; while using the churn it makes a fast spinning sound, but Granny is unable to keep up and is forced to quit. This represents Granny’s life and how at first she could do almost anything, but now towards the end of her life she is slowing down. While helping her daughter plant flowers in the garden, Granny keeps digging deep into th...
Ellen Weatherall from "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" suffers from a state of demension throughout the story. Her thoughts and memories grow tangled and confused with age, causing her to live in the dark. ""Here's Doctor Harry." "I won't see that boy again. He just left five minutes ago." "That was this morning, Mother. It's night now. . .""(779 -780). Ellen Weatherall's troubled mind can compare to the demented mind of Emily Grierson. Emily experienced a high status life, but that high status brought her down. Since Emily could never date or really experience a normal life, she surrounded herself with darkness and shut herself off from the world. Her mind slowly warped itself, clouding her morals and better judgment. Emily, like Ellen Weatherall, experienced mental trauma that tormented their thoughts. Ellen lost her child Hapsy and lost her fiance George, while Emily lost her father and eventually Homer Barron. While Ellen expressed her regrets during her mental turmoil, "There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it, crept up and over into the...
Granny Weatherall, who is an old woman of about eighty, is awaiting her death on her bed, surrounded by friends and family, desired
The Grandmother often finds herself at odds with the rest of her family. Everyone feels her domineering attitude over her family, even the youngest child knows that she's "afraid she'd miss something she has to go everywhere we go"(Good Man 2). Yet this accusation doesn't seem to phase the grandmother, and when it is her fault alone that the family gets into the car accident and is found by the Misfit, she decides to try to talk her way out of this terrible predicament.
From the very beginning of this story, it came to my attention that Granny continually repeats are "there's nothing wrong with me" and "that's for tomorrow.” This repetition, to me, shows two very important aspects about Granny Weatherall as a person – she’s stubborn and hardworking, yet procrastinates all the time. When she felt death come upon her on her bed that day, she wasn't expecting it. We know this because of the repetition of all that she needs to do and that she'll get it done tomorrow. At the same, who can blame her for not expecting it? I mean, who really expects to die every day they wake up? Sure, one knows they are going to die, but they don’t wake up planning it to happen that day. Aside from that, it stood out to me that Granny Weatherall didn’t fail to mention that she thought she was going to die once before during her sixties. From this near death experience, she somehow, in my opinion, allowed herself to think she was invisible and immortal simply because she managed to survive.
When writing poetry, there are many descriptive methods an author may employ to communicate an idea or concept to their audience. One of the more effective methods that authors often use is linking devices, such as metaphors and similes. Throughout “The Elder Sister,” Olds uses linking devices effectively in many ways. An effective image Olds uses is that of “the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,” (5) providing a link to the mother’s expectations for her children. She also uses images of water and fluidity to demonstrate the natural progression of a child into womanhood. Another image is that of the speaker’s elder sister as a metaphorical shield, the one who protected her from the mental strain inflicted by their mother.
After stopping to eat, the Grandmother convinces her son Bailey to take a detour; the car crashes, afterwards; they encounter the serial killer and then he kills the entire family. Throughout the story, the Grandmother exemplifies that she may be egocentric, so O 'Connor 's character of the Grandmother feels that When she sees the little black boy who was not wearing pants, she proceeds to call him a "pickaninny" and "a negro". Then she puts herself in higher position, claiming that he doesn’t have pants because she felt that black people don’t have things like they do in the country. 50 's were a time of discrimination against black people because they could not receive a high paying job, education, and vote. She does not believe change which is shown in conversations with the kids and with Red Sammy.
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
In the short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter and “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin both authors make a strong connection between lightness and darkness as symbols throughout the story. Dark and Light can represent two opposing forces, whether good and evil or love and hate. In both stories light is used to show calmness and positive elements while darkness is used to show personal problems and negative elements. In “Sonny’s Blues” the narrator discovers his brother getting arrested for selling and using heroin. The lightness and darkness in this story is used to show the transition from Sonny’s childhood to his adulthood. In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” the lightness and darkness is used to show the stages in Granny’s life. Both authors use these symbols as transitions in the characters life.
Granny Weatherall is prideful and has a need for control. In contrast, Miss Emily lives in a fantasy land and is obstinate. Like anyone dealing with trauma, Miss Emily and Granny must find a way to deal with it. Their differing personality traits dictate how their coping mechanisms. Granny Weatherall pushes away the hurt, and Miss Emily denies it in favor of clinging to a fantasy. Granny Weatherall and Miss Emily may both have skeletons in their closets, but what they have done with them is what separates the
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” was written in a style known as stream of consciousness. It must be understood that the confusion occurring in the structure of the writing, as well as the thought processes of the narrator, stem from the lack of lucidity of the narrator as she is led to her death. As for the structure of the writing, this piece of literature was written from the point of view of combined limited omniscient and interior monologue, meaning both third and first person (Rosemary). Moreover, in order to begin to understand the cultural and social elements of this short story, one must first comprehend the timeline that accompanies the drifting mind of the protagonist. The earliest piece of substantial information that is known is that the main character was jilted when she was twenty years of age. ...
First, I would like to make some broad generalizations about Katherine Anne Porter’s stories. The selections of stories that I have read could be considered stories about transition, passage from an old world to a new. There is a prolific amount of life and death imagery related to changes from slavery to freedom, aristocracy to middle-class, and birth to death. Her stories contain characters from several generations and the narratives move through out this multi-generational consciousness. The stories are as much about antitheses as the move from tradition to modernity or new ideas/ideals. The narrative perspectives illustrate the chasm between old and young/old and new.
The first word is almanac. “…the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child…reading jokes from the almanac, laughing and talking to hide her tears” (923). It was a distraction to what it actually symbolized; passing time. The almanac tells her, “I know what I know” (924). The power of the almanac is suggested here; it does not only predict weather change-“the rain that beats on the roof of the house” (923), but it also foretells the emotions she would be feeling-“her equinoctial tears”. The almanac eventually tells her it is “time to plant tears”, which is a way of the grandmother knowing she is permitted to let go and move forward. Next is stove. The plot of the story revolves in the kitchen where the stove is placed. She feels at ease in her kitchen and seems to spend most of her time there. She “puts more wood in the stove” (924) when she feels chilly. The feeling of being cold can be associated with death. The stove gives her comfort that the feeling will pass. Last is house. The house resembles the grandmother. The first two lines referring to the house show the external portion. “September rain falls on the house” (923). “…and the rain that beats on the roof of the house” (923). This shows that on the outside, the grandmother is worn out and beaten down because of this loss she is experiencing. We
A stronger foreshadowing is when O’Connor states the reason for the grandmother’s beautiful dress, "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." (11). She herself predicts her own death.
Also the writer uses expressions that many people let blow over their head. For example, granny tells the very young doctor that he should respect his elders, and this is a saying that most have heard many times. The piece points out (with granny’s complex thoughts), that these sayings shouldn’t be taken as a grain of sand, and that there is typically meaning behind what the speaker is saying. This is even more exaggerated for Granny Weatherall because she is dying, and these are a part of the very few words that are audible to other members of the story, so they carry a great significance to granny and her beliefs. As the story continues, Porter makes good use of the first person point of view in showing the aloneness granny is feeling. In her place, as Cornelia is speaking, there is no dialect in the story. While reading, the usage of this point of view is so astounding, that you feel as if you were lying on your deathbed in fear of what was going to happen to you. Granny makes it very clear that she is not scared, though. She claims that she has been through several illnesses and believes she will follow her father in living over a century. As she becomes
Madam Ong Siew Ngoh. My great-grandmother was a graceful, noble lady who knew how fickle life is, changing one’s fortune with a simple snap of the fingers and how easy betrayal comes to some. In my eyes, she is a remnant of the distant past and yet a reminder of the traditions and ideologies that still lingers on into our generation.