Although “The Grave” seems to be about two children playing in their grandfather’s grave, it is actually about the realization of gender roles, coming of age, and mortality. Katherine Anne Porter wanted the reader to look beneath the surface of the story to find the many different underlying meanings. The main character Miranda is faced with the cold hard truth that life isn’t always sweet and pleasant as she watches her brother kill and skin a pregnant rabbit.
Being a nine-year-old tomboy Miranda doesn’t think twice about going off hunting with her brother, Paul. As well as never putting a second thought into wearing her overalls, even though in the year 1903 young ladies were supposed to be wearing dresses. At least until the day she and
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She actually put it in the back of her mind and tried to never think of it again until she is walking in the market and she smells the same smell that she smelled the day they played in the graves “It had a pleasantly sweet, corrupt smell”. An Indian vender had also put a tray of treats shaped in baby animals in her face as well this horrified her. This horrified her because it reminded her of the day that she was no longer a carefree innocent child, but she had taken her first steps to becoming a woman. This could have also upset her because she is now twenty-nine in the story and it does not mention that she has any babies of her own. In the early1900’s women were having children in their late teens, early twenties. With her being almost thirty years old it is safe to say she is probably cannot or will not have any children. Being a woman especially during this time period it was important for a young girl to be married off and to have children, it was part of their womanly duties. For a woman to not carry out these duties she was considered an old maid and possibly a failure as a woman. The very end of her memory she sees her brother being twelve years old again turning the silver dove in his hand over and over again with a “pleased, sober smile in his eyes”. Since the dove always symbolizes peace, this is implied that she can finally be at peace with the memory of the day that her childhood innocence was torn from
This article is a narrative. It does not aim to analyse the topic. It describes the author's experiences at the mortuary and the resulting disturbing thoughts she had.
One of the first things readers notice when they read Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Grave” was her use of vivid details. Miranda’s clothes are described in specific details: She was wearing her summer roughing outfit: “dark blue overalls, a light blue shirt, a hired man’s hat, and thick brown sandals.” Through her use of detail, Porter creates her dominant impression about Miranda’s feelings on female decorum as shameful. Porter describes Mirandas meeting with “old women. . . who smoked corn-cob pipes” she met along the road:
In the short stories “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter, the main characters both endure a failure in romances and both take poor steps in dealing with them. In “A Rose for Emily,” the story can be described as a romantic horror because of the situations and actions taken by the main character, Emily. Emily depicts the traditional “American South” of the age and how the small town gossip is used to further her issues. She has numerous examples of disappointment in her life, capping it all out with her failure of love with Homer Barron. Ironically, Homer is depicted as being from the North, putting an “opposites attract” theme in the reader’s mind; while the story ends with Emily poisoning Homer. In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” the story is read in a lighter fashion. It involves the main character, Granny Weatherall, and her triumph through time and love. Granny fights for love and strength for her kids, despite being “jilted” by George at the alter and the issues and pains that come with that memory. Although Granny married, and had children, she never seemed to live down the fact of her being “jilted” by George. Death is an idea that both stories start, and end with. This theme helps to depict the struggles of both women with their actions taken after both of them being
The presence of death in the novel looms over the characters, making each of them reflect on the
“I still recall… going into the large, darkened parlor to see my brother and finding the casket, mirrors and pictures all draped in white, and my father seated by his side, pale and immovable. As he took no notice of me, after standing a long while, I climbed upon his knee, when he mechanically put his arm about me and with my head resting against his beating heart we both sat in silence, he thinking of the wreck of all his hopes in the loss of a dear son, and I wondered what could be said or done to fill the void in his breast. At length, he heaved a deep sign and said: “Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a
“As I Lay Dying”, is a well known novel, written by William Faulkner, who tells a story about a dying mother and her one last dying wish. The Bundren family tries to attempt to grant the mother’s, Addie Bundren, last wish but each character had his or her selfish reasons for actually traveling to where Addie Bundren wished to be buried at. The journey to Jefferson burial grounds had the Bundren’s helping one another through the different situations that occurred, but also the Bundren family had many differences between each character that caused betrayal to one another.
The story The Coffin Quilt: The Feud between the Hatfield and the McCoys is about choosing between family and what is right. Ann Rinaldi writes about main character Fanny McCoy and her family’s rivalry between the Hatfields. This character doubles as the narrator and protagonist. Fanny lives in Kentucky during the early 1800’s. Her family consists of her sisters and her brothers as well as her mother and father. Fanny deals with much conflict as the plot thickens. Although Fanny is only seven at the beginning of the novel she has to begin to learn whether she should choose between her family and her beloved sister Roseanna. As Fanny grows to the mature age of sixteen she has to make decisions that could further affect her relationship between her family and her future.
In William Faulkner’s world, what is often portrayed as morbid can also be taken as tongue-in-cheek by the reader, especially when it comes to his most beloved and troubled clan, the Bundren family. Throughout the novel, the Bundrens are beset by numerous, unfortunate burdens on their journey to bury their nine-day-dead mother, most of which find the reader both wincing and giggling at the same time. I will be using the new critical approach for my paper, which treated literary texts as autonomous and divorced from historical context in order to bring the focus of literary studies back to the analysis of the texts. New Critics also intended to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention, cultural and historical frameworks, and moralistic bias from their analysis. Through New Critical analysis, readers can discern how different themes in the work come together to complete the novel as a whole; in this case, the theme of black comedy plays a large role in controlling the otherwise dark moments in the novel, creating a spectrum of emotion that completes the experience of the reader. By implementing humor into the macabre circumstances of the treatment of Addie’s body, Anse using his wife’s funeral for personal gain, and Dewey Dell’s quest for an abortion, Faulkner uses black comedy in order to lighten the theme of death in his Southern Gothic literature.
When Death stops for the speaker, he reins a horse-drawn carriage as they ride to her grave. This carriage symbolizes a hearse of which carries her coffin to her grave a day or two after her death. As they ride, they pass, “the School… / the Fields of Gazing Grain— / [and] the Setting Sun—” (lines 9-12). These three symbolize the speakers life, from childhood in the playgrounds, to labor in the fields, and finally to the setting sun of her life. When the speaker and Death arrive at the house, it is night.
Marie, who is a product of an abusive family, is influenced by her past, as she perceives the relationship between Callie and her son, Bo. Saunders writes, describing Marie’s childhood experiences, “At least she’d [Marie] never locked on of them [her children] in a closet while entertaining a literal gravedigger in the parlor” (174). Marie’s mother did not embody the traditional traits of a maternal fig...
Before they reach the restaurant, the grandmother points out six fenced gravestones in a field.... ... middle of paper ... ... This plea-bargaining draws to a climax when the Grandmother says “Why, you’re one of my babies.
In “Home Burial,” Robert Frost uses language and imagery to show how differently a man and a women deal with grief. The poem not only describes the grief the two feel for the loss of their child but also the impending death of a marriage. Frost shows this by using a dramatic style set in New England.
Addie Bundren, the wife of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor southern family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest son, Cash, puts all of his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin, which he builds right in front of Addie’s bedroom window. Although Addie’s health is failing rapidly, two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, leave town to make a delivery for the Bundrens’ neighbor, Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters have been tending to Addie. Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. The youngest Bundren child, Vardaman, associates his mother’s death with that of a fish he caught and cleaned earlier that day. With some help, Cash completes the coffin just before dawn. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his mother is nailed shut inside a box, and while the others sleep, he bores holes in the lid, two of which go through his mother’s face. Addie and Anse’s daughter, Dewey Dell, whose recent sexual liaisons with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her pregnant, is so overwhelmed by anxiety over her condition that she barely mourns her mother’s death. A funeral service is held on the following day, where the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand outside on the porch talking to each other.
Gorham, Deborah. A. A. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Martineau, Harriet.
In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, characterization, specifically through the multitude of narrators, transforms an otherwise pedestrian plot into a complex pilgrimage to the truth. As I Lay Dying is told from the perspective of fifteen different characters in 59 chapters (Tuck 35). Nearly half (7) of the characters from whose perspective the story is narrated are members of the same family, the Bundrens. The other characters are onlookers of the Bundrens’ journey to bury their mother, Addie. Each character responds to the events that are unfolding in a unique way and his or her reactions help to characterize themselves and others.