Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" depicts the story of a dying woman's life. Throughout her eighty years of life Mrs. Weatherall has had her fair share of disappointments, heartaches, and unfavorable outcomes. This short story is written in a manner that allows the reader to get an outside view looking in; similar to looking at the story through a window as if being acted out in front of you in the theater. The story is eloquently written and leaves the reader with a sense of familiarity towards the family. The populations of readers who have had the pleasure of experiencing this pathetic story have come to relate their own experiences and disappointments towards the story and have empathetic feelings towards the main character Granny Weatherall. This story has many themes, but when I read it the underlying feeling of understanding and familiarity I related to was heartaches and pain that no amount of time can heal, or make vanish, that they are indeed part of the human condition. Porter, the author of this masterpiece, has chosen the name Weatherall for the main characters' name, throughout this essay, and during of the story we see how the name comes to be of importance. Granny has had a very difficult life and for her last name to be Weatherall, (weather-all means to endure whatever it takes to still be standing strong) is a play on words I think the author put in just to awake the reader. At the beginning of the story we are introduced to an elderly Granny Weatherall who has become bed stricken, stripped of her independence, childlike, and most of all bitter and condescending, to all. As the reader gets further involved into the short story, Porter divulges more clues as how Granny has become the person t... ... middle of paper ... ... for a long time." (517). Twenty years later, she feels shorted, now it has become her time and she knows it, "so my Lord, this is my death and I wasn't even thinking about it. My children have come to see me die" (522), and now she is not ready or prepared for it. She has not yet given her things away to her beloved children. Waiting for her Angel to come whisk her away to the afterlife, she asks God "give a sign" (522), with no response she looks around the room and, "again no bridegroom and the priest in the house, she could not remember any other sorrow, because this grief wiped them all away" (522). Granny feels, "oh, no, there's nothing more cruel than this--I'll never forgive it" (522). Granny passes into the afterlife as peacefully as she can, and she knew that everything she had in life did not come easily, and she earned everything she had accomplished.
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...
Both women were religious, especially in their final moments. Granny Weatherall called upon God to give her a sign before she died, but was left jilted, again. The grandmother from “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, had a conversation with her killer, The Misfit, about Jesus before he killed her. She also called out several times for Jesus before she was killed, and instructed the Misfit to pray. Death was an element that was present in both women’s stories. In “The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall”, her family and friends are essentially playing a waiting game for her death. Granny Weatherall at first does not believe that she is dying, but towards the end of the story, she accepts her fate, and turns to God. Throughout “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, there are constant foreshadows to the families death, such as the family passing a hearse, the family passing a graveyard, and the family driving through a town called “Toomsboro”. The grandmother herself seemed to be prepared for her death, by making sure that she had on a presentable outfit to be found dead in, “…but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print… In case of an accident, anyone
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.
In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter, we learn of an elderly woman who is lying on her death bed watching her life pass before her eyes. We learn, from these flashbacks, how much she has overcome and endured, and how she's put her whole heart into being a mother and wife up until her last breath, when she blew out the candle and rode with her Father in a cart to heaven. It’s this very reason why Porter, in my opinion, chose Granny as the narrator of this story; so we could see the story through her eyes, being able to relate and appreciate it better.
In the story, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, written by Katherine Porter, Granny Weatherall is a character of depth. Her name is synomonous with her character. Three main qualities of her character are her strength, her endurance, and her vulnerability. Her strength is not so much physical but mental. She lies upon her bed contemplating all that she needs to do. Her daughter Cornelia does not even come close to handling affairs as well as she does in her own mind. In addition, she tell the Doctor Leave a well women alone...I'll call you when I need you. She does not like the patronizing position that she finds herself in. The fact that she has already avoided death once seems to add to her image of strength. As we follow her mental ramblings we obtain insight to her character as a woman that has endured heartache as well as hardship.
This essay will contrast a good and evil concept between two different stories. There is an obvious distinction that stands out between the stories; however they are similar in one way. In A Worn Path (Eudora Welty) and A Good Man is Hard to Find (Flannery O’Conner) the one thing that sticks out, is the main character in both stories. The main character in both stories being the grandmother. Grandmothers are of course an important part of the family. In each story we have a grandmother of a different race, appearance, and attitude. In each story the grandmothers take different journeys, but there is one thing they both face being treated disrespected. We live in a world in which the grandmother resides with the family and helps to take care of the grandchildren. In the world today things are different and times are still hard if not harder. We live in a time when respect is no longer earned. Now days it seems as if respect is not as important as it was in earlier years and it is evident in these two stories.
Porter, Katherine Anne. “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Fort Worth: Harcourt, 2000.
The granny and the misfit are two completely opposite characters that possess two different beliefs. The grandmother puts herself on a high pedestal and the way she calls the misfit ‘a good person’ based upon his family background gives the reader an idea of what the grandmother acknowledges to be considered as ‘good’. Self absorbed as sh...
Janie's Grandmother is the first bud on her tree. She raised Janie since she was a little girl. Her grandmother is in some respects a gardener pruning and shaping the future for her granddaughter. She tries to instill a strong belief in marriage. To her marriage is the only way that Janie will survive in life. What Nanny does not realize is that Janie has the potential to make her own path in the walk of life. This blinds nanny, because she is a victim of the horrible effects of slavery. She really tries to convey to Janie that she has her own voice but she forces her into a position where that voice is silenced and there for condemning all hopes of her Granddaughter become the woman that she is capable of being.
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 Jilting of Granny Weatherall," there are two themes. The first is self-pity. The second theme is the acceptance of her death. Both deal with the way people perceive their deaths and mortality in general. Granny Weatherall's behavior is Porter's tool for making these themes visible to the reader. The theme of self-pity is obvious and thoroughly explored early on. As a young lady, Granny Weatherall was left at the altar on her wedding day. As a result, the pathetic woman feels sorry for herself for the rest of her life. She becomes a bitter old woman who is suspicious of everyone around her. This point is shown early in the story when the do Granny Weatherall, the main character in Katherine Anne Porter's The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, is an 80-year-old elderly woman who is at the doorstep of death. There is a sense of disillusionment with Granny that leads readers to develop their own interpretation of her relationship with Cornelia, her daughter As the narrator, Granny unknowingly would paint the picture of Cornelia as nuisance and bothersome. In fact, the reader can rationalize that it is just Cornelia's concern for an ailing mother that creates the situation of her seemingly being there all the time.
Louise, the unfortunate spouse of Brently Mallard dies of a supposed “heart disease.” Upon the doctor’s diagnosis, it is the death of a “joy that kills.” This is a paradox of happiness resulting into a dreadful ending. Nevertheless, in reality it is actually the other way around. Of which, is the irony of Louise dying due to her suffering from a massive amount of depression knowing her husband is not dead, but alive. This is the prime example to show how women are unfairly treated. If it is logical enough for a wife to be this jovial about her husband’s mournful state of life then she must be in a marriage of never-ending nightmares. This shows how terribly the wife is being exploited due her gender in the relationship. As a result of a female being treated or perceived in such a manner, she will often times lose herself like the “girl
“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. ...
Anne Gray Harvey Sexton was a famous poet and playwright of her time. She was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her father was Ralph Harvey who was a successful woolen manufacturer. Her mother was Mary Gray Staples. She was an unwanted third daughter in the family. She was raised in a middle-class environment. Her life remained uneasy due to the fact that her father was alcoholic and her mother has been frustrated by family life. Fighting with her tough family environment, Anne found peace in tying a close relationship with her maiden great-aunt, Anna Dingley, whom she used to call ‘Nana’. Whatever Anne could not share with her parents, she used to discuss with Nana. Anne went through difficult situations because of her parents. She faced a hostile behavior from them and feared that they might abandon her. Later, Nana’s death also gave Anne a big trauma (Sexton 3).
In "The Old Grandfather and His Little Grandson" a grandfather is continuously scolded by his own daughter-in-law for being "useless." He is unable to do many things due to old age. His grandson, Misha, notices this and realizes that his parents will end up like this too. He unintentionally teaches the parents that treating the grandfather like this is wrong. Everyone will end up being in that elderly state. You are not a nuisance just because you cannot do any physical work. All in all the parents wrongfully condescend their elderly parent.