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Essay on The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty

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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 …show more content…

Rosamond is looking forward to the future, to be free from her stepmother and experience love besides that between father and daughter. The story is loaded with cruel and horrible acts. Mike Fink tries to kill Jamie and Clement for bags of gold; Clement's first wife dies after seeing their son thrown into boiling water by Indians, Kentucky Thomas is killed leaving his ugly wife to marry Clement, an Indian girl is raped and killed by Little Harp, and Rosamond is raped by Jamie. All of these acts are overpowered, however, by the humor of the characters. The three main characters represent clear opposites in their own characters. Rosamond is beautiful and pure but could not tell the truth to save her life. Clement is a planter who is restless and loves to travel. Jamie is a criminal as well as a bridegroom. Their outside appearance can undermine the opinions of others. "If being a bandit were his breadth and scope, I should find him and kill him for sure," said he. "But since in addition he loves my daughter, he must be not the one man, but two, and I should be afraid of killing the second. For all things are double, and this should keep us from taking liberties with the outside world, and acting too quickly to finish things off. All things are divided in half-night and day, the soul and body, and sorrow and joy and youth and age, and sometimes I wonder if even my own wife has not been the one person all the time, and I loved her

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