Right after he got back, though, some of his old friends met him at a local tavern and asked him if it were true that he had run away from the fight. When he wakes up he affirms his new sense of power and potency by tying a catfish to his belt and launching into a wild Dionysian dance. When Alice Walker wrote her essay about finding Hurstons unmarked grave, and lamented the lack of a headstone, she was writing only part of the story. In the title story, a man quarrels with his pregnant wife, leaves the house, and descends into a mysterious underwater kingdom where he meets "The King of the Snakes," who forces him to confront the darker mysteries of nature. An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella The Ponder Heart. Beanie deserves his own story. I had no memory that Welty had tried to dramatize or imply a single overreaching southern identity, cultural, historical, or otherwise. Twain, Mark. The Malones are like horses, and the Doyles are never without their dogs. 183). William Wallace Jamieson, the first words of the story, and a name I will return to, is a young man who has been married to his wife, Hazel, for a year. What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. I loved the music, the food, the voices, the family stories, and to this day I cannot imagine life without them. The development of the World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN, an international scientific organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. Are there many other collections of the time framed with a stronger cry against the harsh realities of human fate? Grady is already a sort of father to Brucie. Still, as Old Doc exclaims to William: Everybody knows Pearl River is named the Pearl River (Welty. It has been a delightful day of adventure on the river for the Malones, the Doyles, and the others (including the reader), but the wide net (a sort of local myth itself) has caught nothing, except a haul of fish, a big eel, old shoes, the baby alligator, and a string of beads. She is one of Hazels cousins. Now that I have tried to do justice to my rereading of the story, which was, and is, my main purpose throughout these reflections, there should be no objection if I back up a bit and mention a few of the memories I carried with me when I entered the new world of the Old South at the university. Me and Benz tight as a pair of shoes. The whole shed shook with laughter, given the reference to his feet, and from that day on I was home free and part of the gang. As far as living space was concerned, however, the town was strictly divided into white and black, and though the blacks were often seen in the white district, there were few whites who ventured into colored town. Here time, also, is subject to confluence. Engraved in large letters beneath the names was the single word: Murdered. These were the graves of her maternal grandparents who had been viciously axed to death by two men looking for easy prey and a few dollars. The father of the white boys is rumored to have drowned in the Pearl River, and the father of the black boys had been struck by lightning and, as Robbie cries out during a storm, was dead three days, dead as that-there axe (Welty, Collected Stories 183). 17She also asks Russell: Do you think I dare to have honest-to-God people walking around in the stories? Word Count: 385. When William Wallace gets home, he notices a night rainbow over his house, though it clearly hadn't rained there. In fact, it is not a baptism at all. Wives and girlfriends would be gathered under the windows, and the banter and singing between them and the men in jail are impossible to exaggerate. Missisippi Delta in 1923. When Virgil finds a string of beads in the river, he gives them to Sam and Robbie. We bought ice cream at the same shop even though there were white and colored water fountains outside on opposite sides of the shop. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. [] Any day now the change will come. His edition of Alexander Stephens prison diary, Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens, was published by L.S.U. I realized that the origins of these myths had to be traced and analyzed, not least of all to better understand their impact on American culture and history. When Mother Nature, with majestic abandon, unleashes a storm for the ages (or the makers of myths) to show who will always rule the roost, William Wallace is not deterred or disturbed. Print. I benefited from these books as much as anyone. Later on I was given an army jeep salvaged from the war. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1990. Walking down Orange Avenue he stopped in each of the three barber shops to tip his hat and say hello, and then picked up his daily cigar at the post office. In my town there were cattle ranches and orange groves to the west, and a small fleet of shrimping boats chugging back and forth on the Indian River to and from the Atlantic. Failed rebellions are choice makers of myths, as another failed rebellion was to prove a century later. 102). Her most acclaimed work is the novel The Optimist's Daughter, which won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1973, as well as the short stories "Life at the P.O." and "A Worn Path.". Beginning as a folktale of the barely possible innocence of a perennial boy with a cow-lick, at a loss and turning in circles, the story right in the middle changes skin, and the boy and the narrative miraculously transform themselves into a one-of-a-kind human triumph. 6It would not be amiss at this point to give a brief account of what happens in The Wide Net. It might help set the stage for those of you who have never read it, or who, like me before I took it up again, may have to struggle to remember the details of an earlier reading. Had he suspected down there, like some secret, the real, the true trouble that Hazel had fallen into, about which words in a letter could not speak Or in a myth, I cannot help adding. Right before it begins in force, a holy-ghostly benediction or aeolian charma wind touched each man on the forehead (Welty. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. I do not want to leave the impression that my grandfather was in any sense a rebel or an outsider. eNotes Editorial. Print. He was on a mission. It begins with the story of a deaf boy whose parents have been killed or captured by the Indians and who is left abandoned in the end, completely alone: He did not know how far he had gone on the Liberty Road when the posse came riding up behind and passed him. Last Updated on June 19, 2019, by eNotes Editorial. But I learned too that the family prided itself on having been against slavery, and on having never owned a slave. When was Delta Wedding set?? Robert Fitzgerald. So I grew up surrounded by southern voices. At least this is true of the first half of The Wide Net. The second half is a different matter entirely and herein lies one of the genial transformations that The Wide Net performs as naturally and as completely as one season turns into another. In The Wide Net, William Wallace must make his own way, and history, southern or otherwise, mythical or not, does not provide him (or the reader) with any guidelines. When he returned to his house, he found Hazel was not there, and she'd left a note saying that she had gone to drown herself in the river and that he'd be sorry for his behavior. Neither does Eudora Welty in her autobiography, and she is one of the most southern writers who ever existed. They catch a baby alligator and the Malone brothers insist that they want to keep it. There is the miraculous catch of fish, and the hymns William and Virgil hear while walking back home: They were having the Sacred Harp Sing on the grounds of an old white church glimmering there at the crossroads, far below. When William arrives alone at his house, he sees something he had never seen, a rainbow at night (Welty. Myths are necessary to our lives and imagination, especially as children. What interests me more as the years go on is the life story of the individual southerner. William Wallace is beset on all sides by distractions, advice, omens, signs of all sorts. The storm in The Wide Net seems bent more on celebration than punishment, however. The Wide Net. His name was Patrick Duval. Even the trees have bones that crack when lightning strikes. He returns to his wife better capable of living a meaningful, fulfilling life. The narration speculates on what he experiences in the solitude of the river bottom: So far down and all alone, had he found Hazel? Myths and legends and symbols are filled with wisdom, but it is the human spirit which has done the filling, and not the other way around. This is the advantage of relying on memory rather than myth when digging back for the truth. Marrs, Suzanne. Ben Forkner, Converging Toward the Human: Myth and Theory in "The Wide Net" (and me),Journal of the Short Story in English, 67|2016, 125-140. 90). Faced with the most serious crisis of his young life, William at least has the resourcefulness to ask help from one of his friends from the night out, Virgil Thomas, and they set out to borrow the wide net from Old Doc, and to gather other members of the community to help drag the river. The group that William finally collects is a motley one, all male, but they are of a kind. It has been a delightful day of adventure on the river for the Malones, the Doyles, and the others (including the reader), but the wide net (a sort of local myth itself) has caught nothing, except a haul of fish, a big eel, old shoes, the baby alligator, and a string of beads. Saying so, I freely admit my pirouetting into The Wide Net does take some special pleading. Hazels name evokes the Celtic symbol of wisdom and the source of life hidden in underground water. I was fifteen years old, and was the only white in the group of workers. 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