English 1302.W1
Literary Analysis Essay
French, Bruce A. “Granny Weatherall: A Life of Quiet Depression.” Short Story Criticisms 43
(2001): 63-76. Literary Resource Center. John F. Moss/Palmer Memorial Lib., Texarkana, TX. 24 March 2010 <http://go.galegroup.com.dbproxy.tamut.edu/ps/dispBasicSearch.do?prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=txshracd2571>.
Blake, Robert G. “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised
Edition (2004). Literary Reference Center. John F. Moss/Palmer Memorial Lib., Texarkana, TX. 24 March 2010 <http://web.ebscohost.com.dbproxy.tamut.edu/lrc/search?vid=8&hid=102&sid=45cca199-58f7-49d0-9ae8-bdcdfd361c1b%40sessionmgr114>.
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” …show more content…
This is the story of the last day of her 80 years spent on Earth. In Granny Weatherall’s final hours, she’s surrounded by her children while she ponders her death and thinks about her life. Soon her thoughts begin to reluctantly turn to the incident that occurred more than 60 years ago; her ex-fiancé George jilted her and left her at the altar. In semi-conscious state, that past and the present come together and she begins to see people and objects in the room in new forms and identities. The presence of death soon creeps into her mind and causes her to think of an earlier time when she was sick and dying and how she spent too much preparing for it. She then considers all the food she cooked, all the clothes she cut and sewed, and all the gardens she made, and came to the conclusion that she was satisfied with that. The once again, the unwanted thoughts of the day she was jilted enter her thoughts. For 60 years, she prayed to forget about that day and about him. As her children hovered over her, she decided that it was time to settle things between her and George. The ever disappearing border between past and present begins to blur even more as Granny slips into her last minutes of life. Granny slips even closer to death as the priest gives her, her last …show more content…
Her fear of wasting food could easily suggest her fear of wasting life. Her anxiety about food seems to be from when she had to throw away her wedding cake when she lost George, the man she loved more than anything. Granny constantly warns about them losing things, that they shouldn’t waste they’re life away. She fears that she’s wasted her own life and doesn’t want her children to do the same. As she died, she believed that her life was wasted and she realizes that “there is no god to reward for having weathered all” (French par.