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Katherine Anne Porter's The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

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“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall Analysis” In the short story, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, Katherine Anne Porter uses rhetoric and diction to guide her audience into discovering Granny’s conscious state of mind, accounting for the various situations that over time made her bitter. Granny Weatherall fears her upcoming death, so she attempts to gain authority over her situation by controlling her doctor and her daughter, Cornelia, her primary caretaker. Granny imagines Cornelia as a little girl, as she is in more control of her life contrary to the situation she is in currently. Granny persistently pursues to belittle her illness to prove that she still has youth. That example illustrates death versus life and old versus young. Furthermore, …show more content…

Porter uses figurative imagery and bombast language to illustrate to her audience what Granny visualized. For example, “Then Hapsy melted from within and turned flimsy as gray gauze and the baby was a gauzy shadow (Porter)…” Using the phrase “gray gauze” illustrates, perhaps, what Granny has seen in her hallucination. Furthermore, Porter uses figurative imagery like “Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk leg and double pneumonia (Porter)”? This was a further indication of Granny’s former independence and strength, portrayed by Porter’s use of figurative …show more content…

However, this abandonment still affects Granny, as she promised herself that she would forget him, as the idea of him was a “smoky cloud from hell (Porter).” This occurrence was her first jilt. Her second jilt involved a man named John, who died and left her with their young children. Unfortunately, her final jilt was when Jesus never showed up, even as she was waiting impatiently for a sign. The moment she needed God most, He abandoned her. Soon after, she “stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light (Porter).” Her blowing out of the lamp symbolizes a reflection of her spirit, as she chooses to terminate her life according to her

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