Granny Weatherall: A Deeper Analysis
In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter the character Granny Weatherall has an interesting past that molds her personality. Granny Weatherall has many layers to her character, ranging from a loving mother to an independent woman who refuses help when she needs it most. Her life is constantly changing, and with it her personality and view on life shifts as well. The short story is told through Granny Weatherall’s eyes in her last moments of life. Being the independent woman she is, it is hard for her to grasp the fact she is dying and there is nothing she can do to stop it, so she recollects on the parts of her life that developed her personality. Granny Weatherall’s complex personality
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The woman has an intense love for her children and husband, which only adds further to her character depth. Granny Weatherall originally had an intense love for her fiance George, which later shifted to spite, until George jilted young Ellen Weatherall and left her at the alter. Luckily the love of her live, John, was there as Granny Weatherall fell into his arms. The love between John and Granny was apparent even in the beginning of their relationship as John “is, in short, the only man in the story who might have cursed and threatened to kill the faithless groom” due to George’s betrayal of Granny Weatherall (Meyers). Granny had an endless amount of love for John, and after John passed away the love she held for him never faded. She also obtains her revenge for George’s cowardice by living happily, and “Her attitude toward George sixty years later proves that she did not forget the jilting, but that she had led a happy life, with a man and children, in spite of it” (Laman). By displaying how the love for her husband keeps her strong, Granny is able to shift her love from John to her children, in which she only wants the best for. Granny Weatherall’s love for her children is displayed by her drive for her children to be as successful as possible, for example, Granny’s eldest daughter Cornelia. In Granny Weatherall’s final moments, she thought of the woman Cornelia has become and thought to …show more content…
After losing her child Hapsy at a young age, Granny was struck with grief; However, Mrs. Weatherall never let her daughter’s death ruin her. With the help of her family and her religion, Granny was able to survive the tragedy. Unfortunately the loss of her child did continue to haunt her, even while Granny was in her death bed. Granny, in her final moments, imagined Hapsy present in the room. With Granny’s passion for her religion, this could be interpreted as a sign from God, due to the fact that “the conventional Christian notion that Christ’s appearance at the moment of peaceful death will confirm the believer’s life to have been purposeful” (Estes). One thing that Granny always wanted was to see her daughter again, and while her vision of Hapsy was not Christ himself, it could be seen as a sign of Christ rewarding Granny Weatherall for all the good she has done. Not only does Granny Weatherall have the perseverance to get through being left at the altar and having her daughter die, but she is able to survive the death of her husband John. After losing so much that is dear to Mrs. Weatherall, she is able to dust herself off, care for herself and her children, her land, and persevere to strive for success. Granny even tried to move past her death as she stated, “My children have come to see me die. But I can’t, it’s not time. Oh, I always hated surprises. I
The tone of this story seems to portray Granny’s bitterness, which is seen during a part of her consciousness when she hears her daughter and the doctor whispering, “Wait, wait, Cornelia,
In this story, the grandmother seems to consider herself as the leader of the family. She seems to think of herself as having higher standards than other people, and therefore, she is quick to pass judgment on others. For example, she tells the children’s mother and father, “You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be bored. They never have been to Tennessee” (O’Connor 436).” The grandmother is a very opinionated, talkative, narcissistic, and manipulative woman who frequently controls the other family members. She is the one who calls attention to the fact that a dangerous criminal is on the loose and is located on the route to Florida. Apparently the grandmother thinks this information can compel the father and mother to change their traveling plans. The grandmother seems to cares only about her own wants and desires and has little interest in the wants and desires of
Granny Weatherall is characterized as a very old lady who is extremely stubborn and bedridden. Granny Weatherall is a sickly old lady in denial. She believes that she is not sick although she is lying on her deathbed. Her life consisted of two men and her children with them. Granny Weatherall remembers her first love, John, leaving her at the altar. She later marries George who she has many
God alienates her two times, but the one that really gets to her is the second time. Granny says, “For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in the house. She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away”(628). God did not help her throughout her life as she looked for signs.
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.
576). The character of the boy is described as early pubescent which permits the reader to deduce on what he fully knows regarding life, love, and lust. An unreliable narrator, however, is a narrator that we perceive to be misleading, self-deceptive, deluded or deranged. Porter articulately depicts Granny Weatherall to be most of these in “The Jilting...” particularly when the reader encounters an interaction between Granny, also referred to as Ellen, and her daughter Cornelia, “tell Hapsy to take off her cap. I can’t see her plain.” The reader is later made aware of the circumstance that Hapsy, one of Ellen’s children, has died. Once more, half-way through the story, Granny displays how truly jumbled by reality she is when she tells Cornelia that she won’t see the doctor again because “he’s only been gone three minutes” and her daughter informs Granny and the reader, “That was this morning, Mother. It’s night now.” (p. 80). These exchanges highlight how much Granny Weatherall is as an untrustworthy narrator. Opposed to “Araby”, which is told in first person from the perspective of the young boy, “The Jilting…” is disconcertingly told in limited third person by which we can see inside the mind of only Granny Weatherall; as such, when Granny is lucid, the story proceeds in sequential order.
The Grandmother, for example, initially appears as a typical Southern matriarch, concerned with propriety and appearances. But in the end, her dishonesty and self-serving goals have tragic results. O'Connor's characterization of the grandmother functions as a lens through which to analyze the complexity of morality. As she states, "Nobody's killed in this story, but I'm fixing to be" (O'Connor 131). The Grandmother embodies both the superficial piety of Southern respectability and the underlying moral bankruptcy that plagues the characters in O'Connor's world.
The depiction of human faith is shown through the grandmother. This can be shown through her actions. This is a story that represents good versus evil. God’s grace versus the devil. Both the grandmother and the Misfit are saved by the end of the story. “ His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant”. I believe at this moment God manifested himself into the grandmother. God used his grace to touch both the Misfit and the grandmother. “The old lady mumbled not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her”. At this point, I believe that as the grandmother denies Christ she is also denying herself. She denies her beliefs of having a glamorized life and being better than others. The realization brings her to her knees. She was looking for grace from God as well as forgiveness.She knew that at this point she would die. I believe that the grandmother wanted forgiveness because in some way she felt responsible for the death of her family. Through the final part of the story, we can hear the grandmother continually calling her son's name Billy, Billy. This was her way of apologizing to her son even though he was
Ultimately, Granny Weatherall shows herself to be an independant and strong-willed woman. However, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" does not focus on Granny's exterior beng, but rather her interior thoughts and emotions. This personal and in-depth characterization of Granny reveals that her need to be completely independant is the result of being abandoned at an altar by a man she loved. As a young adult, Granny let down her guard in order to communicate her unadulterated love for George. The act of George rejecting Granny's vulnerability caused her intense pain, leaving her "blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away."
The Grandmother identifies herself as having the best values. She completely overdresses for the trip in a "navy straw hat and collars and cuffs, so that if there was an accident, people would know she was a lady" (368). The narrator points out that she looks down upon other people as well. In the beginning of the story, she criticizes the mother for "not taking the children to different parts of the world and being broad" (367), and tells John Wesley that he "should be more respectful of his native state and his parents" (368). Despite being so judgmental, the Grandmother never criticizes her own dishonesty, hypocrisy, and selfishness. When she criticizes John Wesley about the state, she calls a little black boy "a cute pickaninny" (368) in the same sentence. She later says that little black kids do not have things like they do and that "if she could paint, she would paint that picture" (368). The Grandmother paints this picture later with a romantic story of the good old days on the Southern plantations. Her definition of a good man is even flawed. The narrator says she would have married Edgar Teagarden because "he was a gentleman who bought Coca-Cola stock, making him a rich man" (369). In the end, when the Misfit is killing her family members one by one, she tells him to pray for himself. But she never once prays for her own family or begs the Misfit to spare them. She is even dramatic when she pulls a handkerchief out to fan herself and tells the Misfit "you wouldn't kill a lady would you" (373), effectively trying to save herself instead of her family.
This act left Granny alone to deal with the humiliation and scarlet mark of the jilting. This feeling is important as this occured in an age where women were expected to marry and bear children and work within the home. Although Granny did eventually marry, have a family and find happiness within her marriage this experience with George caused her to place a larger value on future experiences of desertion. As Granny Weatherall lie in her doctor bed Cornelia, Granny’s daughter, and the young doctor gives Granny a warning that her body is failing as they try to get her to see that she doesn’t have the strength and abilities that she once had but all Granny can do is reflect on how she “pulled through milk- leg and double pneumonia” (64) and envisioning herself standing up on her feet when in fact her “bones are felt loose, and floated around in her skin” and Doctor Harry is [floating] “like a balloon around the foot of the bed” (64) and she is having thoughts that “if they’d let me lie in peace and get rested” (68)
This theme of social facade and hypocrisy is seen throughout The Jilting of Granny Weatherall in the character of the grandmother. For example, the grandmother had an illegitimate child,
But John dies so early unfortunately. John “would be a child beside her if she saw him now. ”(Porter 565). However, Addie doesn’t love her husband, Anse, and she delivers Jewel whose biological father is not Anse during their marriage. Anse does not love her back, either.
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
The book “Animal Farm” written by George Orwell is a story about animals having plans to dismantle Mr. Jones’ cruelty forced upon them and to create a fair animal society. Soon after Major leader of this plan perished, the pigs took over leadership, and were corrupted by power. The pigs say, “ Man is the only real enemy we have.” The pigs maked seven commandments that all animals have to follow, but then start to break them. Also, the pigs are working the animals harder now than ever and give them the same amount of food. Finally, the pigs turn against their most important rule, start to hurt the other animals and begin to act like humans.