Later on I was told that the killers were black men, and that members of our family had made sure they were given a fair trial. Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts. Its a Mississippi backwoods flash mob and its just a heck of a lot of fun. "The Wide Net - Quotes" eNotes Publishing Ed. 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. Eudora Welty is comically playing on the popular refrain that such a collection of rural men and boys could be found only in the Deep South. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. 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. Remember that (Welty. There seemed to be a force in the family that drove it to act or speak out, with or without the common consensus. 178). He returns to his wife better capable of living a meaningful, fulfilling life. I think my grandfathers reputation helped me too in an experience that will stay with me as long as I live. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. Her reaction is more than understandable. Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #201055. 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. New York: Signet Classics, 1961. A reality that is, perhaps, a level or two beneath the conventional mode of realism. 173). The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. In leaving you now, I am reminded of an old story out of Georgia. As Mr Duval finished, and stood up to leave, he reached out to me and shook my hand: Your granddaddy was the only white man I ever loved.. The web value rate of bigpicture.net is 49,209 USD. It did not cost much to have a horse and a small motor boat. When I was invited to speak about the myth of the South, the thought of Weltys The Wide Net, came to my mind in a flash. But I could not remember that it had revealed the slightest interest in the South as a subject of focus or reflection. The narration continues to speculate how (who knew?) He plays his role well, lost in his own performance, an unstoppable gramophone of platitudes, talking just to hear himself talk, but sometimes, almost despite himself, repeating nuggets of wisdom that bear directly on the quest itself: Were walking along in the changing-time. in Marrs 70-71). Knowing Eudora Weltys love of Ireland and the Irish, the echo is surely deliberate. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. If all this seems too good to be true, its only because I choose to stop. After all, there were some brilliant minds at work on the subject, minds who could spot a stereotype or a caricature a hundred miles away, and there was much to learn. 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. It was written forty years after The Wide Net but I was gratified to find her speak of myth and memory in a way that confirmed what I thought I had found in the story. What interests me more as the years go on is the life story of the individual southerner. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge (Welty. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. William Wallace is beset on all sides by distractions, advice, omens, signs of all sorts. Full Time Paid Internship Job Summary: Be a part of an innovative team and culture The Physical and Post-Production Technology department is responsible for a wide array of technologies across Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm, and various other Walt Disney groups. That was only part of the legend. 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. Boys, he said, I didnt run, but I did some mighty high walking. I hope I have not run away from the myth of the South, but I admit I may have done some high walking. Thank you for the indulgence, and the invitation. eNotes.com Einstein activity capture is a powerful productivity-boosting tool that is integrated with Salesforce. When William dives into the river, and emerges transformed, the myth-minded reader may then think once more of the. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. Soon after his triumphant dive, William Wallace smiles for the first time, and falls asleep, but not for long. We saw the same films at the same movie theater, even though the whites sat downstairs and the blacks up in the balcony. It had blossomed overnight during the boom years of the twenties. The Wide Net. Like the theater, like the wearing of masks, like the playing of games, myths are ways of trying out the world, testing other lives, often for the sheer joy of forgetting our own predicament. 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. The story works on several levels and gives the viewer no clue as to whether it should be taken seriously at all. in Marrs 70-71). Saying so, I freely admit my pirouetting into The Wide Net does take some special pleading. He goes inside and there is Hazel! But the shifting, or loss of identity, is a constant threat. She claims that she was hiding when he read her letter, and he spanks her, insisting that she say she'll never do it again. The town was a typical Florida collection of frame houses, shady streets, and sandy alleys held together by a compact center of brick banks, churches, cafes, shops, and one movie theater, on the western side of the river within walking distance of the ocean to the east. 2. She is one of Hazels cousins. [] Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. 2023 . 44Here is the same confused hodgepodge of myth and fable we can find in The Wide Net. They are the wonderful fictions out of which an adult life finally emerges, but never forgets. Among everything else, he was generous almost to a fault. 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. Robbie worries about lightning. He has coedited (with Patrick Samway) four anthologies of Southern literature: Stories of the Modern South (Penguin), Stories of the Old South (Penguin), A Modern Southern Reader (Peachtree) and A New Reader of the Old South (Peachtree). She begins by describing a milestone in her childhood, a gift of the ten-volume Our Wonder World on her sixth or seventh birthday: There were the fairy talesGrimm, Andersen, the English, the French, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and there was Aesop and Reynard the Fox; there were the myths and legends, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and St. George and the Dragon, even the history of Joan of Arc; a whack of Pilgrims Progress and a long piece of Gulliver. Hazel is pregnant, and William is baffled by her changing attitude (she would not speak and her eyes glowed). The storm in The Wide Net seems bent more on celebration than punishment, however. It will not be lost on the reader that the structure of The Wide Net roughly follows the same literary source, proceeding from hell, to purgatory, and finally to paradise. [] Magnolia and live-oak never die. Ed. And the final story in The Wide Net (and thus the collection itself) concludes with the portrait of a young woman who is rejected, and is forced to face absolute desolation and a serial rape. I walked with him often on his way to his office in the courthouse down by the river. County judges are elected, and he never lost an election because there was never any opposition. He walked through the streets of colored town as naturally as he walked to work. William goes to get his friend, Virgil, with whom he'd spent the night carousing, and the pair of them round up some neighborhood men to drag the river. Eudora Welty is comically playing on the popular refrain that such a collection of rural men and boys could be found only in the Deep South. 26I am ready to plead, however. William Wallace has done the real catching, unless of course, it has been Hazel herself. The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. Both his grandfather and his father were struck by lightning. The Rebellion failed, and Bonnie Prince Charles escaped to become another legend of Scottish resistance. Portail de ressources lectroniques en sciences humaines et sociales, Flannerys Ghost: Paradigms of the Holy Ghost in Three Stories by Flannery OConnor, The Journal of the Short Story in English: presentation, Joycean Drama and the Remaking of Yeats's Irish Theatre in Ivy Day in the Committee Room", Catalogue des 609 revues. At least the small boys have names that set them apart. 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. Still, casting around for something to say about the way the South (from within and without) seems to have been designed, destined, or doomed, to generate a mythic vision, or visions, often in contradiction with each other, my thoughts could not help going back to The Wide Net.. 102). His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightn. 15The story ends with Hazel calling his name from the bedroom. William Wallace will soon demonstrate a stronger will in a more heroic gesture than catching a rabbit. 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. Omissions? But I learned too that the family prided itself on having been against slavery, and on having never owned a slave. But the town itself was lively and busy and relatively sheltered from the poverty and misery that remained a plague throughout the greater South even in the 1950s. Failed rebellions are choice makers of myths, as another failed rebellion was to prove a century later. 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. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold. Immediately William Wallace looked down, as though he thought of Hazel with the shining eyes, sitting at home and looking straight before her, like a piece of pure gold, too precious to touch (Welty, 176). Word Count: 385. 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. But they remain children, and act their age. It was, however, filled with southerners. When William dives into the river, and emerges transformed, the myth-minded reader may then think once more of the Aeneid, and of the river Lethe which the original Virgil tells us must be imbibed by dead souls in order for them to be reborn. I had suspected something like this as a boy, but now it was confirmed. Eudora Welty is a master of subjective impressionism, but there is not an escapist reflex in all her work. The town was neatly divided into black and white neighborhoods, but my grandfathers house had been deliberately chosen because it was right on the border between the two and my cousins and I played and talked with black children every day. Later in the story a violent storm with a blast of wind covers the entire search party with wet leaves. But the history of the South itself came to me mainly through the stories I heard in my family. The river never seems the same, yet even when William Wallace forgets its name, its ageless identity is never in question: The winding river looked old sometimes, when it ran wrinkled and deep under high banks where the roots of trees hung down, and sometimes it seemed to be only a young creek, shining with the colors of wildflowers (Welty. 3. Review and critique podcasts produced by other students as a basis for creating their own segments. He saw that the bodies of the frozen birds had fallen out of the trees, and he fell down and wept for his father and mother, to whom he had not said good-bye (Welty, First Love, Collected Stories 168). He no longer fears Hazels mother, and turns away without a flinch when she appears. I learned that several young ancestors had been killed fighting for the Confederacy or had died soon after the war from disease. Foots waited until they were all inside. Usually there would be shade trees to stretch out under and cool off, but there were none here. 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