Katherine Anne Porter Essays (Examples)

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Essay
Katherine Anne Porter the Life
Pages: 5 Words: 1404

In 1930, she published her first short story anthology, Flowering Judas and Other Stories, which was highly praised by critics. Flowering Judas is the story of young American woman during the Marxist Revolution in Mexico, who advances the cause of Marxism and helps the political prisoners, but becomes disillusioned while doing so. It is the story of a woman who can't make a real commitment to life. The story ends with a nightmare, in which the woman eats the blossoms of a Judas tree, betraying herself and her cause. Porter once said that this was her favorite story.
Porter remarried in 1926 to a man named Ernest Stock, but her marriage only lasted a year. etween the years of 1910 and 1926, she suffered numerous miscarriages and a stillbirth. After Stock affected her with gonorrhea, she had a hysterectomy in 1927.

Porter never became a mother. This operation was something that…...

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Bibliography

Flanders, Jane. (1979). Katherine Anne Porter's Feminist Criticism: Book Reviews from the 1920's. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 44-48: University of Nebraska Press.

Givner, Joan. (1982). Katherine Anne Porter: A Life. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.

Liberman, Myron M. (1971). Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

PBS. (2007). Katherine Anne Porter. Retrieved from the Internet at  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/porter_k.html .

Essay
Theft by Katherine Anne Porter the Setting
Pages: 1 Words: 482

Theft by Katherine Anne Porter
The setting of the story "Theft" made by Miss Porter is the city New York. The character of the story is a writer and reviewer; such as Miss Porter and the time that has been defined in the tale is the beginning of the Great Depression of the l930s. The story that symbolizes all the property was the stolen reward, which was appropriately made of gold cloth. Thus, the theft of the prize signifies the conflict between the "haves" and the "have-nots."

About the book

Miss Porter being the author of the story neither given a simple conflict in the tale nor a reader can easily comes up to a simplistic definition of the problem. Thus, here the character and heroine of the novel who as a young woman owns the reward has little else opportunity. In fact, she was too close to starving and was even poorer…...

Essay
South Katherine Anne Porter Flannery
Pages: 4 Words: 1160

Both Mrs. opewell and her daughter ulga are judgmental, but for different reasons. Mrs. opewell is middle class and has tenants on her farmland. She only wants "good country people" as tenants. In her estimation, "good country people" are stereotypically poor, "salt of the earth" types with no pretensions about them. They are not educated, but they do not behave in ways Mrs. opewell would find embarrassing. For this reason, she is happy with her current tenants: "Mrs. opewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two of the finest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady that she was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody…" (p. 1991). Mrs. Freeman is acceptable company because she is someone who readily agrees with Mrs. opewell while entertaining her, and Mrs. opewell can feel superior to her, which O'Connor exposes in a…...

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Hulga and her mother are at odds for more than one reason. Hulga has a doctorate in philosophy, while Mrs. Hopewell sees girls going to school to "have a good time" (p 1994), not to necessarily get a degree. In the mid-1950's, it is still unconventional for women to have careers or seek advanced degrees. Hulga would like to be a professor if not for her poor physical condition. While Mrs. Hopewell sees herself as enlightened in her attitude towards the poor "good country people," Hulga sees her mother as vapid: "Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not?'" Hulga, in her own mind, is the only intelligent one. She is highly educated, and she is enlightened enough to be an atheist.

O'Connor heavily criticizes these judgmental attitudes regarding intellectualism and class through the character of Manley Pointer, who fools both Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga. Pretending to be a Bible salesman, he seems to typify every quality Mrs. Hopewell finds endearing in "good country people": "…I know I'm real simple. I don't know how to say a thing but to say it. I'm just a country boy….People like you don't like to fool with country people like me!'" (p 1995). He portrays himself as uneducated, extremely poor, and unpretentious, and his lack of education is further characterized through his pronunciation of words like "intraduce" (p. 1995) and "don'tcher" (p. 2001). When Manley treats Hulga as if she is desirable -- something no man has expressed towards her before -- Hulga finds his "simpleness" intriguing and fantasizes about enlightening him: "…she very easily seduced him and…had to reckon with his remorse. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind" (p. 1998). She wants to overpower him both physically and intellectually. But Pointer gets the last laugh.

It is Pointer who seduces Hulga. After he tricks her into taking off her leg and steals it, he lets her know that he, too, is an atheist: "you ain't so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!'" (p. 2003). Hulga has perceived him as being a simple, uneducated young man, but he outsmarts her and

Essay
Katherine Porter's The Grave Many
Pages: 7 Words: 2009

In a sense, Paul buried it when he buried the rabbit. She will look back at that place and see it as a time when things shifted in her world. Miranda lost the tomboy little girl and exchanged her for a girl facing all the pains and pitfalls of adulthood. Again, it is impossible to find blame in this tale. Miranda wanted to see the bunnies as much as Paul wanted to kill the rabbit. Perhaps Porter dismissed the memory because in real life, her bother was punished. In reality, he could not have stopped her from looking. The bright light shining behind his 12-year-old face is a symbol of redemption. As an adult, Porter can see why she told on her brother and she can also see how the event could not have played out any other way. The symbols in this story help us see these truths.
"The…...

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Works Cited

By Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr. "On the Conclusion of the Story." Ebsco Resource Database.Web.

5 Apr. 2010.

DeMouy, Jane Krause. "Male and Female He Created Them." Katherine Anne Porter's Women:

The Eye of Her Fiction. University of Texas Press, 1983. Gale Group, 2001. Literature

Essay
Hell Hath No Fury Like
Pages: 3 Words: 1052

hen Granny, in the wanderings of her mind, thinks she is still a young wife and mother, the hard work Granny is accustomed to doing on a daily basis, even while resting, comes through, "there was always so much to be done, let me see: tomorrow," thinks Granny. Even now Granny takes pride in the neatness of her home, as she lies there, although she worries about the lost, resting love letters, stashed away fearing about being seen as silly, when individuals go over her personal possessions after she is gone.
Granny thus accepts her eventual death, even while she worries about the arrangement of the hairbrushes on the bedside table. She had expected to die at age sixty, now she is eighty. She "had spent so much time preparing for death there was no need for bringing it up again." But Granny wishes to control how she is remembered.…...

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Works Cited

Porter, Katherine Anne. "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall." Full text available 28 Feb 2005 at http://people.morrisville.edu/~whitnemr/html/the%20Jilting%20of%20Granny%20Weatherall.htm

Essay
Disillusionment and Negativity in Flowering Judas
Pages: 5 Words: 1518

Digging Deeper: Flowering Judas and Barn Burning ProposalIn the stories \\\"Flowering Judas\\\" by Katherine Anne Porter and \\\"Barn Burning\\\" by William Faulkner, the characters are portrayed with a distinctive negative style that strongly influences the narratives and themes. These negative traits can be seen as personal flaws but they are also important in understanding the characters lives, natures, identities, and decision-making, along with the conflicts within each story. In a sense, their negative styles define them and also define the world around them. Digging deeper into them can explain much about them and their conflict.\\\"Flowering Judas\\\" - Laura and BraggioniIn \\\"Flowering Judas,\\\" Laura is portrayed with an intriguing blend of commitment and profound detachment. While she is involved in the revolutionary activities in Mexico, her interaction with others is characterized by a lack of genuine emotional engagement. An example of this is her interaction with the young revolutionary, Eugenio. Even…...

Essay
Greasy Lake Gregory Clayton Greasy Lake Is
Pages: 6 Words: 2125

Greasy Lake
Gregory Clayton

"Greasy Lake" is one of the most notable, readable and critically acclaimed contemporary short stories written by T. Coraghessan Boyle. The fact that he took the a line and an idea from the iconic, venerable rock star Bruce Springsteen has gained Boyle's book a lot of press although the story stands on its own as a piece of biting social satire, mixed with humor and drenched in bad behavior, felonious sexual behaviors, and alcohol. Not all critics praise this story, however, because though well written, it is very dark, sometimes it stretches credulity a bit too far, and the behavior of the characters is mindlessly violent and morally bankrupt.

The Greasy Lake Story

"…Thirty-three percent of teenagers experience problems at home, school, work or the in community stemming from substance abuse. The fact that teenagers become addicted more quickly than adults contributes to these problems… between 1977 and 1987 [the…...

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Works Cited

Boyle, T. Coraghessan. Greasy Lake & Other Stories. New York: Penguin, 1986.

Colorado State University. "Family: Adolescent Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse." Retrieved

June 11, 2011, from  http://www.ext.colostate.edu .

Hennessy, Denis. "Thomas Coraghessan Boyle." American Short-Story Writers Since World

Essay
Truman Capote the Life the
Pages: 10 Words: 2786

I had to go into town on Saturdays to the dentist and I joined the Sunshine Club that was organized by the Mobile Press Register." He goes on to tell about entering a work of writing on the children's page publication, which he had called "Old Mr. usybody." The first installment of his writing appeared in a Sunday edition under his real name, which was Truman Streckfus Persons. The second installment never was published after the townspeople figured out he in actuality ' was serving up local scandal as fiction'. (Compote in Interview)
Capote and Writing Technique

When asked the question of "Are there devices one can use in improving one's technique? Capote answered by stating, "Work is the only device I know of. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then…...

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Bibliography

Epstein, Joseph (2004) a Lad of the World, "Truman Capote and the Cost of Charms" Vol. 101 Issue 12 (Dec 12-2004) Online available at www.weeklystandard.com.

Truman Capote (nd) Speaking of Stories From the Page to the Stage [available Online at www. Speakingofstories.org]

Truman Compote, the Art of Fiction (nd) the Paris Review No. 17

Capote, Truman. A Christmas Memory. New York: Random House Inc., 1956.

Essay
Women's Role
Pages: 1 Words: 495

Setting of Two Turn of the Century Feminist Tales
The use of irony in both tales

Women today

Women's Role in "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "A Story of an Hour"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short tale "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Katherine Anne Porter's short story "A Story of an Hour" both depict the constrained lives of middle-class women. The protagonist of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is driven mad when she is refused her books and the healthy aspects of her daily life as a rest cure, after the woman has given birth to her first child. The rest cure merely kindles the illness within her. In "A Story of an Hour," a woman with a bad heart is denied all of the aspects of life that make life worth living, such as travel and adventure, for fear the excitement will cause her to have a heart attack.

Ironically, the woman at the end of "A Story…...

Essay
The Grotesque Fiction of Flannery O Connor
Pages: 3 Words: 996

Flannery OConnor: Annotated BibliographyCiuba, Gary M.Desire, Violence & Divinity in Modern Southern Fiction: Katherine AnnePorter, Flannery O\\\'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Walker Percy. LSU Press, 2007.This book is helpful in understanding the role that violence plays in OConnors fiction. There is a violent confrontation in Everything That Rises and there is a moment of passion in Good Country People that ends with theft. Both stories leave the reader with many questions, and Ciuba helps to explain the framework that one can use to explain OConnors fiction in order to make sense of it. The book explores the themes of desire, violence, and divinity that are related in this southern fiction and that permeate the narratives of these authors. Ciuba uses the paradigm of mimetic violence that was developed by critic Ren Girard, and with that he looks at how individual human nature is shaped by environmental influences and how these authors expose…...

Essay
Revelation in Flannery O Connor's Good Country People
Pages: 5 Words: 1618

Everything That Rises Meets Good Country PeopleThe characters and situations of Flannery OConnors stories give a unique glimpse into a grotesque world of the Southa world that OConnor used to draw meaning about the moment of grace that touches and changes characters lives forever (Fitzgerald). To do this, she often focused on the relationship between mystery and manners in everyday Southerners lives, but did so in a way that relied on exaggeration and usually some form of violence. This is true of her stories Good Country People and Everything That Rises Must Converge. In these two stories, OConnor visits the moment of grace, where some form of violence takes place and characters are faced with a realization of the consequences of their actions and the extent to which they are alone, i.e., disconnected from the higher power. OConnor does a great deal more, as well, and this paper will show…...

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