the wide net summary
There seemed to be a force in the family that drove it to act or speak out, with or without the common consensus. Us is the fishes (Welty, Collected Stories 183). 9Other than Old Doc, the characters making up the search party include two sets of young brothers, the white boys, Brucie and Grady Rippin, and the black boys, Sam and Robbie Bell. When William Wallace gets home, he notices a night rainbow over his house, though it clearly hadn't rained there. Of course these signs and symbols enrich the story at the same time they divert William Wallace from his search. The thing about this part of the country in the great days is that people like Aaron Burr, J.J. Audubon, Lorenzo Dow, and goodness knows who, were as thick as blackbirds in the pie, and once the pie is opened, they are going to begin to sing (qtd. But Hazel is no rabbit as Virgil makes clear: Anybody can freeze a rabbit, that wants to he says, and promptly chases the rabbit away: Was you out catching cotton-tails, or was you out catching your wife? (Welty, Collected Stories 172). Hazels name evokes the Celtic symbol of wisdom and the source of life hidden in underground water. I did recall that it had fascinated (and puzzled) me by mixing together a multitude of myths and legends, reaching far and wide in time and in place, including the local and the regional. 19Her reaction is more than understandable. It had blossomed overnight during the boom years of the twenties. Brainstorm a list of topics for a podcast. Among everything else, he was generous almost to a fault. New York: A Lisa Drew Book, 2004. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. 4Rereading The Wide Net brought many of these memories back to mind, and it brought back to mind too my dismay in Chapel Hill at fitting them into a theory of myth, or even at weaving them into a common pattern of southern identity. Of course these signs and symbols enrich the story at the same time they divert William Wallace from his search. It seemed odd to me too when I began thinking about the challenge of adding anything new to a debate that as we all know began long before the South became the South. Print. References to babies, for example, can be found everywhere, from the little man on the toy-like train, to the baby alligator, all the way to the corn shuck doll waiting by itself on the bench back in Dover. William Wallace knows now that Hazel holds the secret mystery that will continue to make him more of his own man, and he is willing to follow her lead as long as it takes: He climbed to his feet too and stood beside her trying to look where she looked. HIGHLIGHTS who: February et al. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. Whenever Walter Scott is mentioned in the context of the South, Mark Twains theory of the Civil War and the southern imagination immediately leaps to mind. It did not cost much to have a horse and a small motor boat. Old Doc lives on a hill and can usually be found in his rocking chair. He made a sign for me to follow him in what was now a blind tunnel steaming with sweat and humidity. Summary of The Wide Net by Welty. Print. The one I want to tell about my grandfather concerns another man involved in the Zora Neale Hurston saga. 176). As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge (Welty. No wonder Eudora Welty was ready to lash out if anyone else showed the same dimwittedness as the reviewer in. review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. 183). Nature is the wide-open playground of both good and evil, and it is best to be wary when the thunder roars. There is, however, a simpler explanation, of the South to be sure, but leaving the story still uncomplicated by history. Robbie is right to be frightened. The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. Already a member? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). What touched me more, and what I remember best now, were the lives around me while growing up. 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 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. 183). The Aeneid. Still, if I should apologize, I do. Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. Subscribe. 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. I say this because when The Wide Net and Other Stories came out as a single volume in 1943, Time Magazine published a review that claimed that the stories were about as human as a fish. Eudora Welty was never much affected by reviews, good or bad, but this one raised her hackles, and she wrote to Diarmuid Russell: I saw the Time review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. But they remain children, and act their age. They were later given to the University of Florida. 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. Old Doc reminds me of the old men in another great modern folk story, The Weavers Grave, by the Irish writer Seumas OKelly. Sunlight was scarce and each turn of the river took one deeper into a ripe darkness smelling of frog spawn and wild magnolia. Recollections contains a fifty-page biographical essay by Forkner. The Malones are like horses, and the Doyles are never without their dogs. This is the advantage of relying on memory rather than myth when digging back for the truth. He returns to his wife better capable of living a meaningful, fulfilling life. Scottish heroes and William Wallace Jamieson of The Wide Net, surely, we might be tempted to think, the combination brings southern history into the story despite all evidence to the contrary. May 1942 issue Download PDF From the Archive. They created a protocol, HyperText Transfer Protocol ( HTTP ), which standardized communication between servers and clients. The memory is a living thingit too is in transit. 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. 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. What impressed me most was the incongruity of seeing such a stark inscription on a Baptist tombstone. My mother had met her and gave me the names of several people who had been her friends. 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. He hated fighting, but he had never lost a fight, and all his rivals had given up trying. Later on I was given an army jeep salvaged from the war. 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.. I located myself in these pages and could go straight to the stories and pictures I loved (Welty. The grown-up Doyles and Malones are fixed in their undefined identities forever. A man named William Wallace Jamieson has a pregnant wife called Hazel, and he's been going out a lot lately until finally, one night, he stays out all night. For much of the story at least, William Wallace and the other characters are closer to the simple stock figures of song and legend than they are to men and women in the real world. note:when citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. Now us got scales, Sam cried out. There is Old Doc, the local wise man who owns the net. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The workers, all black men, would let us sit on the blocks of ice waiting to be crushed. It was, however, filled with southerners. So I grew up surrounded by southern voices. 12Once William and Virgil have gathered everyone together, they take the wide net and all set out walking down the Old Natchez Trace. I said earlier that the town was segregated, but with little visible racial tension. But the shifting, or loss of identity, is a constant threat. Download PDF More from Eudora Welty From the. 1943. There is Virgil of course, living up to his name (but only in the mind of the reader, we need to remember) in that he is there to guide William on his quest, to keep him on the track, as he says. Timeless stories from our 172-year archive handpicked to speak to the news of the day. eNotes.com, Inc. In the afternoons my friends and I would go down to the icehouse where sacks of ice were filled for the professional fishing boats. Apparently, there was one male survivor of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. There is no great central Southern myth in The Wide Net. But I must have half-remembered that the potency of the mythic, including a few old southern folktales or legends, does play a key role in the story, especially by pounding the pedal throughout on the truth that no myth, potent or not, can ever measure up to one mans solitary predicament. 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. Since in the South, as I had finally learned in Chapel Hill, history tends to breed myth as a kind of natural law, I needed at least to consider the question. She is one of Hazels cousins. If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original I had suspected something like this as a boy, but now it was confirmed. A more distant past was hidden behind the Spanish place names and the faces of the Seminole Indians who worked as cowboys on the ranches. The human drama is my main concern, however, and the one day in the life of William Wallace, wild as it is, is much easier to summarize. I would agree, and I did try to explore its implications as I reworked my way through the story. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. 24But there is an even better reason not to insist too much on the historical significance of names in The Wide Net. Names are chosen for us, not the other way around, and The Wide Net insists upon individual choice as the primary measure of character. Robbie worries about lightning. There is Virgil of course, living up to his name (but only in the mind of the reader, we need to remember) in that he is there to guide William on his quest, to keep him on the track, as he says. 42Myth may help shape an identity, but memory is the single vital source of selfhood, and the key, I believe, to William Wallace and The Wide Net. Despite the help of the search party, the willingness of the community to lend a hand, William Wallace must forget the outside world before he plunges into the inner, and by so doing, he recovers Hazel, who as Old Doc knows, has been there all the time. We bought ice cream at the same shop even though there were white and colored water fountains outside on opposite sides of the shop. There I was shocked to learn I may have been born into a myth, despite myself. Ben and his brothers continue their voyage while developing different theories about . In. 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.. Weltys mother refused to have a copy in her house. A more distant past was hidden behind the Spanish place names and the faces of the Seminole Indians who worked as cowboys on the ranches. Even the trees have bones that crack when lightning strikes. Old Doc reminds me of the old men in another great modern folk story, The Weavers Grave, by the Irish writer Seumas OKelly. publication online or last modification online. AccueilNumros67ArticlesConverging Toward the Human: Myth 1It might seem odd to find me turning to Eudora Weltys story The Wide Net the day I learned I had been invited to respond to the theme of Southern myth (the all-purpose, made-to-order, sempiternel Southern myth). [] Any day now the change will come. He was on a mission. Finding an Edna Earle in The Wide Net is like finding a magnolia tree in Mississippi, and should not force us to go back to St Elmo, heaven forbid. If there are two dates, the date of publication and appearance Remember that (Welty. His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightnin drawed a pitchfork right on our grandpappys cheek, stayed till he died (Welty. 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. He lets the little infant plant fall free, and from now on the search is over. 10The Malones are like horses, and the Doyles are never without their dogs. He was a black deputy who had saved Hurstons letters and manuscripts from a fire after her death. What was her first novel and when was it published? I had not forgotten the references to history and to historical figures in some of the stories of The Wide Net and Other Stories, notably First Love, and A Still Moment, to name the most powerful. 36There is one more story about my grandfather that I need to relate. 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). Packet switching was thought of as a better and faster method to transfer data than the hardware solution to the problem, i.e., the circuitry. Though she is changing every day, she has really not changed at all. When he comes back the next morning, Hazel is gone, and he finds a letter from her telling him she has gone to drown herself in the river. What interests me more as the years go on is the life story of the individual southerner. she had been filled to the brim with that elation that they all remembered, like their own secret, the elation that comes of great hopes and changes (Welty, Collected Stories 180). Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. History and Overview of CSNET (PDF: 156KB) by Peter J. Denning, with Anthony Hearn and C. William Kern. The more common it is, however, the less likely it can be seized upon for special consideration. 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. Two dates, the less likely it can be seized upon for special.... Of selfhood that will save William Wallace gets home, he was a black deputy had! 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