The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty

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Recommended: Ideas of symbolism in folktales

The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty's first novel, The Robber Bridegroom, is a combination of fantasy and reality while exploring the duality of human nature, time, and the word man lives in. The union of legend, Mississippi history and Grimms' fairy tales create an adult dream world. Every character in the story has little insight to themselves and how they relate to the world around them. The antics of Mike Fink, the Harps, the bandits, and the Indians closely relate to Mississippi folklore. The blending of actual history and pure fantasy create a much richer form of entertainment. Mike Fink was an American frontiersman who is said to have beaten Davy Crockett in a shooting contest. The Harpe brothers were notorious rustlers and killers in the South. "After being felled by a bullet that paralyzed him, Big Harpe was decapitated; as the decapitation began, Big Harpe is reported to have said, "You're a God Damned rough butcher, but cut on and be damned" (Appel 70). The head was put on a post to warn other outlaws. The duality in man himself is a strong theme in the story. The men who fail to realize that man is a combination of good and evil are unable to succeed in the world around them. The Harps and to a lesser extent Mike Fink follow their most basic instincts to be frontiersmen. They are immersed completely in the lives they led and there is no other way to live. This inability to change is there downfall. The Harps are killed and Mike Fink is relegated to a lowly mail rider. This symbolizes the end of the lawless frontier. Unlike the Harps and Mike Fink, Jamie Lockhart, Clemet and Rosamond Musgrove are torn between two different personas in themselves. Jamie must separate the bandit in hims...

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...Jamie Lockhart and hundreds of people would watch. When he could carry a "dozen oxen" and "laugh at the Indians" (Welty 9). Clement and Mike feel out of place in the new situations they were placed in. The ones that long for the past are the ones that are afraid of the present and future. Clement has a change of attitude the end of the story. After the death of his heartless and ugly wife and he knows his daughter is safe and happy, he looks forward to the future. The characters that succeed in the story are the ones that are able to adjust to there new surroundings and not wholly in a glorious past.

Bibliography:

Graham, Catherine Clark. Southern Accents : The Fiction of Peter Taylor. New York: Peter Lang, 1994.

Taylor, Peter. The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969.

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