Seay
English III Honors
February 19, 2010
Katherine Anne Porter Here is a woman who put things straight through the will of God. Katherine Anne Porter did it all, and chose perfection of life and of work. She worked as a critic, a singer, an actress, and most importantly of all a writer. Through numerous marriages, divorces, deaths, and personal crises, Porter established herself as accomplished author. Porter’s collection of works includes: short stories, short storie collcetions, short novels, novels, and essays. Katherine Anne Porter brought her reader’s into her stories by using precise details and symbols, a clear-cut insight into human behavior, and the darker side of the human spirit. She used her life, experiences, and morals to help shape the way of her stories to her life, comparable to the novel, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Katherine Anne Porter was born Callie Russell Porter on May 15, 1890, in Indian Creek, Texas. She was the fourth child of five from parents, Harrison Boone Porter and Mary Alice Jones Porter. Her mother died when she was only two, later she blamed her father for the death of her mother, who had given birth to five children in eight years. Porter was then raised by her father and paternal ,grandmother Catharine Ann Skaggs Porter, a stern disciplinarian whose reminiscences of the Civil War and tales of her family's past were Porter's first introduction to the art of storytelling. She died in 1901 when Porter was eleven, but her strong character provided a model for grandmothers in her stories. Later in life Porter changed her name to Katherine Anne Porter because of her grandmother and the influence she had on Porter. After the familys death the Porters moved to several different towns in Texas and Lousiania, and Porter bagan to change, and disassociated from schooling. Porter was raised in Louisiana and educated in many different free schools