Writing Assignment on

Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"

Note:  If you are going to print this off in one of the KSU public computer labs, you will first need to go into the File menu at the top of your browser, choose Page Setup and click on Black Type, to ensure that colored fonts in this document print out.

If you need to, review the general instructions for Writing Assignments.

For a photograph of the author, check out the links for the course.  There is also an essay by Porter on piece of American history that citizens today should know about, which will give you an idea of part of the framework of values from which Porter approached life.

You should work through the Study Guide to the story before attempting to do the writing assignment that follows.

Write your paper on one of the following topics.

Topic A.  What are we to make of the very end of the story.  Reread carefully the final two paragraphs.  What is Granny Weatherall looking for?  Does she get what she expects?  (Explain what leads us to the answer you give.)

• What is her reaction to this?
  • What does the story provide as a context for suggesting some issues that should occur to us in evaluating her reaction?
    • Finally: how do you react to what happens, on the basis of your reflection upon these issues?

Topic B.  The story shifts back and forth between a limited omniscient point of view and something akin to interior monologue, in which the reader is given the feeling of being immediately immersed in the flow of the protagonist's consciousness - her thoughts and feelings as they follow upon one another by association.  Under these conditions, we (like the character herself) have to construct our idea of what is going on outside her immediate experience from details the emerge within that experience.  Sometimes we as readers are led to follow the implications of leads that Granny herself, given her mental state, never stops to question in any extended way.  

In other words, a story like this proposes a specific sort of game to the reader, namely, to experience the story (at least in reflection or rereading) simultaneously on several levels at once.  We are invited both to identify with Granny Weatherall (to imagine and take on as if it were our own the experiences she is undergoing) and to attend to aspects of the overall situation to which she herself is only dimly aware if not outright oblivious to.  Some of these facts have to do with what is going on in the room around her.  Some on the other hand have to do with what is going on deep within her, in her own "unconscious."  Both of these situations we as readers have to construct in our imaginations on the basis of the direct evidence, which is confined to Granny's memories, fantasies, and incomplete perceptions of what is going on around and within her.

Devote your essay to spelling out some of the important insights you arrive at when you play this game.  Confine your attention, however, to one of the following:

Topic B-1.  Discuss some of the ways in which Porter indicates to us that Granny is trying not to be aware of certain things, i.t., is working to repress consciousness of them.  You might mention a number of these, explain what they have in common, and then focus the rest of your discussion on showing how Porter arranges things to tip the reader off to their presence in moments when they have not risen directly into Granny's awareness.

• Does any of what you come up with affect your feelings towards Granny Weatherall in determinate ways?

Topic B-2.  Summarize what we can infer of what Cornelia's relationship with her mother has been like and of what her experience is during the "present" of the story, i.e., while her mother is dying.  How much is she aware of what Granny is thinking?  Of what sorts of things in her mother's train of thought and feeling on this day is she probably not aware?  (Do you think she would nevertheless be aware of them in general?)  How would her experience of this day be different if she were privvy to everything we as readers are?

• Does any of what you come up with affect your feelings towards Granny Weatherall in determinate ways?

Topic C.  This story is told from a third-person (i.e., a non-participant) point of view that continually slides into expressing (rather than describing) Granny's thoughts and feelings -- quite a wide range of feelings, attitudes, judgments on Granny's part.  What are at least four distinct feelings or attitudes that you find the prose of the story communicates?  (See how this is a question about tone?)  Illustrate each, and try to explain what exactly about the passage you quote (in each case) indicates what you say it does. 

Use what you turn up so formulate a picture of what important internal conflicts the story thus tells us Granny is undergoing, and what are we to understand as the causes or roots of these. 

Conclude by stating how you found yourself feeling towards Granny, given what the story communicates of her experience and situation.  Do you, for example, find yourself torn between feelings towards her that tend in different directions?  Do you find yourself, on balance, settling upon some particular stance towards her, in light of what she has gone through and how she has reacted to it?

  Consult the Study Guide to this story before attempting this writing assignment.

  You may also wish to review the general instructions on writing assignments.

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

   Contents copyright © 1999 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

  This page last updated 25 April 2000.