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The contradiction, the jilting of Granny Weatherall
The story of the jilting of Granny Weatherall
The contradiction, the jilting of Granny Weatherall
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Control in Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
Control, power, and influence are all things that people strive for throughout their lives. When a powerful person grows old however, their power may slip in spite their attempts to maintain control. An elderly person may feel useless, or they may have feelings of loss, regret, or waste. Issues of aging, control, and feelings of waste are something Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" describes with vivid detail.
The story opens with Granny trying to refuse the care of her doctor. The story is viewed through limited omniscient and through her eyes we see that she feels she is strong enough to care for herself. She sees the doctor as unnecessary and views herself as a well woman. She actually tells the doctor to "Get along and doctor your sick. . . leave a well woman alone. I'll call for you when I want you" (1682). This is the reader's first insight into Granny's stubbornness to receive help of any kind. She also regards the doctor as disrespectful, making comments like "that brat ought to be in knee britches" and "I'd have you respect your elders young man." (1682). She tries to command respect by invoking colloquialism of age equating to wisdom and/or a right to be respected and exercise control over their juniors. When the doctor treats her with patronizing actions Granny dismisses him.
Granny is obviously dealing with a great deal of helpless feelings and looks for a chance for control. Her age and delirium are apparent when the doctor goes to leave and she describes him as floating. She then hears sounds that she can't immediately identify, this another clue to her slowly slipping sanity. The sounds (which she comprehends first as rustling leaves or swishing newspaper) are the doctor whispering with Granny's daughter Cornelia in the doorway. Granny is very displeased with her daughter's brashness to whisper about her in the doorway to her bedroom where there is a chance that she will hear what they're saying.
Granny's displeasure with her daughter reaches far beyond just her whispering in the doorway. Cornelia is the closest character there is an antagonist in this story. When concerning her daughter, Granny can do nothing but criticize the way she does most everything. These criticisms on the surface are simply the reproofs of a picky old woman.
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.
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.
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).
Goren, Paul. "The Two-Party System." Lecture, POL 4737W, Blegen Hall 425, Minneapolis, January 28, 2010.
Granny is having mental flashbacks as death approaches like "a fog rose over the valley" (1296). Granny recalls events throughout her life, from being left at the altar on her wedding day, to losing a child, to coming to grips with her own death as the story reaches a close. All of these recollections and the realization of her death bring together the great ironies of the story, ironies which cause not one but two jiltings for Granny.
A two-party system is a political system in which only two parties have a realistic opportunity to compete effectively for control. As a result, all, or nearly all, elected officials end up being a member in one of the two major parties. In a two-party system, one of the parties usually holds a majority in the legislature hence, being referred to as the majority party while the other party is the minority party. The United States of America is considered to be a two-party system. A two-party system emerged early in the history of the new Republic. Beginning with the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans in the late 1780s, two major parties have dominated national politics, although which particular two parties has changed with the times and issues. During the nineteenth century, the Democrats and Republicans emerged as the two dominant parties in American politics. As the American party system evolved, many third parties emerged, but few of them remained in existence for very long. Today the Democrats and Republican still remain as the dominant parties. These two parties hav...
She is worried that the unstoppable persona she has presented to her children will be demolished if they find those letters. This is further proven in the short story when she scorns her daughter, Cornelia, for “thinking she was dumb, deaf, and blind” (454) after she overhears Cornelia telling her husband that Granny Weatherall was acting like a child and they would have to humor her for the time being. She is already beginning to live out her nightmare. Cornelia, Granny’s least favorite child, pities and tries to humor her. It is only logical for someone with as much pride as Granny to try to control the situation. To elaborate, Granny Weatherall is also a control freak. She beats every threat that comes her way into silence and throws it to the farthest corners of her mind. For example, when faced with the thought of her demise, she rationalizes, “thank God there was always a little margin over for peace: then a person could spread out the plan of life and tuck in the edges orderly” (453). Though on her deathbed, she assumes she cannot die because she is not prepared for death. Metaphorically, she is telling God that she is in control of her fate. Therefore, she believes she
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 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...
The grandmother is the central character in the story "A good man is hard to find," by Flannery O'Connor. The grandmother is a manipulative, deceitful, and self-serving woman who lives in the past. She doesn't value her life as it is, but glorifies what it was like long ago when she saw life through rose-colored glasses. She is pre-scented by O'Connor as being a prim and proper lady dressed in a suit, hat, and white cotton gloves. This woman will do whatever it takes to get what she wants and she doesn't let anyone else's feelings stand in her way. She tries to justify her demands by convincing herself and her family that her way is not only the best way, but the only way. The grandmother is determined to change her family's vacation destination as she tries to manipulate her son into going to Tennessee instead of Florida. The grandmother says that "she couldn't answer to her conscience if she took the children in a direction where there was a convict on the loose." The children, they tell her "stay at home if you don't want to go." The grandmother then decides that she will have to go along after all, but she is already working on her own agenda. The grandmother is very deceitful, and she manages to sneak the cat in the car with her. She decides that she would like to visit an old plantation and begins her pursuit of convincing Bailey to agree to it. She describes the old house for the children adding mysterious details to pique their curiosity. "There was a secret panel in this house," she states cunningly knowing it is a lie. The grandmother always stretches the truth as much as possible. She not only lies to her family, but to herself as well. The grandmother doesn't live in the present, but in the past. She dresses in a suit to go on vacation. She states, "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." She constantly tries to tell everyone what they should or should not do. She informs the children that they do not have good manners and that "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else." when she was a child.
She is a manipulator when it comes to any aspect of her life. Ideally, the grandmother was selfish and care about herself. For instance, when the author has her saying “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady (O’Connor). The author let it be known at that second that the grandmother was only thinking about herself. As if she was traveling with a group of strangers. Throughout the story, the grandmother shows that she can be dishonest towards her family. “She woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady” (O’Conner). The grandmother did this to manipulate the situation causing the ride to be delayed. Thus, she was lying to the children about the secret panel in the house. Therefore, she caused chaos in the car. The author made it seem that the grandmother was very content with that she has caused. Even when she realized that the location of the house that she was referring to was not up that road at all. But she remained quiet or did she know this along. She was quick to judge and tell someone what not to do. But she never turned her eye on herself. That she was selfish and dishonest to her
She only cares for herself and uses her manipulative skills to trick the other characters into doing what she wants. However, she views herself to be of higher moral standings than the other characters. If the grandmother has any lesson for the reader, the lesson is that no matter how tricky one is or how high one holds their standards to be, not everyone gets their way all the
The mock-prison experiment or otherwise known as the Stanford experiment, involves several individuals, some taking on the role of prison guards and others taking on the role of prisoners in an effort to better understand the conflict amongst these two groups. In this experiment, the “prison guards” immediately assumed their roles, without question, as did many of the so-called prisoners. The guards often displayed sadistic and even psychopathic behavior as evidenced by the fact that some to...
Starbucks is currently the industry leader in specialty coffee. They purchased more high quality coffee beans than anyone else in the world and keep in good standings with the producers to ensure they get the best beans. Getting the best beans is only the first part, Starbucks also has a “closed loop system” that protects the beans from oxygen immediately after roasting to the time of packaging. They did this through their invention of a one-way valve which let the natural gasses escape but keeping oxygen out. This gave them the unique ability to ensure freshness and extended the shelf life to 26 weeks. Starbucks isn’t only about the coffee, it’s also about a place where people can escape to enjoy music, reflect, read, or just chat. It is a total coffee experience. The retail outlet has been responsible for much of Starbucks growth and has contributed substantially to their brand equity.
When the word coffee is said, many times the first thing that pops into a person’s head is Starbucks. Starbucks has become a household name and has been in business for over 40 years. They are constantly trying to get into new opportunities to branch out further into the marketplace as to reach more potential customers.