Essay On The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

Kristina Bell
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”
As we grow closer to our death, we seem to ask ourselves two simple questions: Am I happy with my life and what could I have done to make it better? Every day, someone dies wishing they’d finished something they didn’t or that they had treated someone better, and so on. In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”, Granny Weatherall was one of those people. She just could not let go of the past. Katherine Anne Porter used the theme of denial, the motif of wastefulness, and the symbol of the color blue to show how Granny Weatherall felt about the way she lived her life. The story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter takes place in a room in Granny Weatherall’s daughter, Cornelia, house where Granny Weatherall is dying, but most of the action takes place in her head.
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
rights. The sights and sounds begin to mingle with her memories. She finally starts slipping into Death’s clutches, and asks God for some sign of the afterlife. When she receives no sign, Granny is jilted again by a betrayal that surpasses the first and she loses her faith in God. One of the most important literary elements of this story is the theme of denial. Throughout the story Granny Weatherall seems to be in denial about her life and character. Granny refuses to believe that she’s dying and insists that she’s over the man, George, which jilted those many years ago. According to Robert G. Blake, “…she never totally got over the shock and disappointment of George’s rejection” (paragraph 6). Throughout the story, Granny Weatherall has to keep reminding herself that she had a great life with her husband, John, and how she’s completely forgotten about George. But the fact that she has to keep repeating that she’s over George and the fact that she “saved George’s letters suggests how much he continued to mean to her in her heart and how the pain of her jilting remained with her for sixty years” (Blake par. 6). Granny also denies the fact that she treats Cornelia terribly and won’t admit to the fact that she regrets some parts of her life. Since Granny Weatherall won’t admit to her children that she was actually too hard on them, they never get the satisfaction of hearing an apology before she dies. She seems to blame everyone else but herself for her confusion and keeps denying the fact that’s she sick. Although Granny’s denial is bad, there are some good aspects to it. Her denial is what kept her alive and able to live, thrive and provide for her kids. Because of Granny’s refusal to acknowledge her pain and broken-heart, she’s been able to live her life. Not many people look at this, but throughout the story Granny Weatherall also made many references to wasting things, especially food; so herein lay the motif of wastefulness.
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.
5). The last thing, Is the symbolism of the color blue. There is no one that really talked about this, but it comes up a lot in the story. Each blue in the story seems to represent a time in her life when she transitioned into a new life. Like when she was a young adult, she used to tidy and organize her house. She had white containers with blue labeling, which to her meant that “cleanliness – as well as orderliness—was next to Godliness” (French par 15). The blue-turned-black eyes of John’s picture, is the way she seemed to feel about her marriage. She felt like she was married to the wrong man. The most important blue is the blue on Cornelia’s lampshade. They represent Granny Weatherall’s ease into her death. Most people only talk about the most obvious things, like of course Granny Weatherall’s denial, which is very important, but they also talk about the significance of God in the story. Granny Weatherall never came to terms and accept the way she lived her life. Instead, she denied everything until she died.