Aunt Granny Lith Character Analysis

Accepting the Change In “Aunt Granny Lith” by Chris Offutt, the story is about a married couple that has to sacrifice themselves to save their marriage. Through the process of saving the marriage, the couple, Beth and Casey, become heroes in their world by following the steps of Hero’s Quest by Joseph Campbell. The Hero’s Quest is a journey that transforms anyone who goes through it to become a hero. If anyone wanted to become a hero, one has to change and embrace the change that comes along with the challenge of being the hero, which is the theme of the story. In “Aunt Granny Lith”, the two main characters represent the theme of transformation as they evolve into heroes. Casey, the male hero, undergoes psychological change that changes him entirely. Originally, Casey is shown as strong, masculine guy, who carries a gun on the side of his hip to defend himself (Offutt 134). Then the reader sees Casey change, when he comes out of the cave looking drunk, to this weak and vulnerable man after getting rid of Lith (Offutt 145). The second character that evolves throughout the story is Beth the heroine. Her transformation led her to become stronger than she was, when compared to the one her husband, Casey, went through. She went from being a woman who was embarrassed of

In “The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers”, Joseph Campbell talks about how the hero undergoes a tremendous physiological as well as physical transformation (127). In any story the heroes must undergo a tremendous change to defeat the enemy, in “Aunt Granny Lith the enemy was Lith. This also applies to the theme of the story, because if the characters didn’t want to accept the change, there would have never been any transformation in the passage. The heroes have to undergo an evolution within themselves, and accept the changes in order to become heroes, such as Beth and Casey