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. [] Magnolia and live-oak never die. 176). Lush, precise, and unpredictable in every line, The Wide Net is one of the greatest odes to the natural world ever written. 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. They have to go and get the wide net, though, and that belongs to a man called Doc. 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 white families, like my own, had migrated there from their farms in South Georgia in the hope of improving their prospects. 5I do not mean to suggest that I find anything of myself in William Wallace, nor in his search for Hazel. 40I have tried to explain, to myself more than to anyone else, that the multiplication of myth and legend in The Wide Net is there, in all its rich jumbling, to nudge the reader elsewhere. There seemed to be a force in the family that drove it to act or speak out, with or without the common consensus. . The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. We saw the same films at the same movie theater, even though the whites sat downstairs and the blacks up in the balcony. But there were no old plantations or slave quarters, and no signs to mark the battles of the Civil War since there had been no battles. William Wallace keeps diving down to search for Hazel until, finally, the group decides to stop and cook some of the fish they've got for a meal. 30But these Georgia tales were of the kind that Eudora Welty describes as old and complete in Asphodel, one of the short stories in The Wide Net. 25I began this paper with a confession. He had earned the name by winning a juke joint contest for having the biggest feet in Florida. He was on a mission. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of "The Wide Window" by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler). 3Though I have spent much of my professional life reading and thinking about southern identity and the historical versions of the Old and New South, I really did not encounter anything resembling a theory of the South as a land of myth and mythmaking before I began my graduate studies at Chapel Hill. They stamped the ground and pawed each other, more like horses than men. They were later given to the University of Florida. And, to tell the truth, the details are daunting, especially as we are led down the old Natchez Trace towards the Pearl River, deeper and deeper into southern river country, a vast cradle of natural wonder that teems with vitality and mystery. 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 shifting from one realm to another is a constant possibility. An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella, . He is holding fast to a little green ribbon of plant, root and all (Welty, Collected Stories 181). More important to my purpose here, however, they did help me throw some light on the pluralities of myth and legend that had confused me when I had first read The Wide Net. I realize this is a self-indulgent proposition, but to be honest, I no longer have much faith in finding the definitive myth of the collective South. What I want to single out is not his place in the community, which was central, but his difference from most of the adult white men I knew and observed. William Wallace is beset on all sides by distractions, advice, omens, signs of all sorts. I would agree, and I did try to explore its implications as I reworked my way through the story. When she allows William his ritual role of thinking himself the man of the house by letting him tamely slap and spank her, the reconciliation is complete. 2 Virgil of course is Dantes guide in The Divine Comedy through the Inferno and most of Purgatory. I should make it clear it was not the quality of the scholarship in what I read that puzzled me, but my consternation in not finding anything of my own life in the popular myths contained in the books. When Virgil finds a string of beads in the river, he gives them to Sam and Robbie. 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. She is one of Hazels cousins. 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. Though she is changing every day, she has really not changed at all. When he escaped he went back to his native state of Georgia and lived to a ripe old age. 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. Foots waited until they were all inside. in Marrs 70-71). in Marrs 70-71). originally published: New York : Harcourt Brace and Company 1943 We offered this copy of the first edition in our Catalog 119. reference info. The roses needed a lot of water. 21His full name is William Wallace Jamieson. Physically, he was everything the legend had promised. It runs in our family, Robbie says (Welty, Collected Stories 183).1 This is fatalism raised, or lowered, to farce, but points to a fear of being victimized by mysterious forces (without and within) that William Wallace himself must struggle against, and defeat. Myths are necessary to our lives and imagination, especially as children. Still, the shock of my initial consternation never left me, thus my impulse to turn back to Eudora Welty and my memory of The Wide Net and its mysteries when I was invited to talk about the great myths of the South. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow. And I found a note to myself slipped in the pages of my old single volume edition of the collection relating Eudora Weltys initial concept of writing a fictional history of the Old Natchez Trace. And after a few minutes she took him by the hand and led him into the house, smiling as if she were smiling down on him (Welty, Collected Stories 188). There is certainly no question that Williams dive to the bottom of the river brings him up a new man. Backus, locally known as Beanie. That was only part of the legend. William must will himself into a new man, and as a Jamieson, he must cease being a perpetual son, and affirm his status as a father. 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. William Wallace takes the lead back to Dover, and back to Hazel who has never left their house. She had just published a masterpiece of modern realism in which dream and the inner world are as vividly brought to life as the outside, but this is an affirmation of the living human mind, not an evasion. It had blossomed overnight during the boom years of the twenties. Hickory tree there will be yellow. Williams dive is not a baptism for the faint-hearted. 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. There is, however, a simpler explanation, of the South to be sure, but leaving the story still uncomplicated by history. She had just published a masterpiece of modern realism in which dream and the inner world are as vividly brought to life as the outside, but this is an affirmation of the living human mind, not an evasion. Then he announced Boys, look right here, the Judge is his granddaddy. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. I say this because when, 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. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and livesthe old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead (Welty. I think my grandfathers reputation helped me too in an experience that will stay with me as long as I live. . Eudora Welty (April 13, 1909 - July 23, 2001) was an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays, best known for her realistic portrayal of the South. 27Even as I write, the memories come flooding, but two or three should be enough to make my case. 35I met Foots the first day I was hired to work in a local fertilizer plant for the summer. William Wallace will soon demonstrate a stronger will in a more heroic gesture than catching a rabbit. His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightn. In leaving you now, I am reminded of an old story out of Georgia. Of course these signs and symbols enrich the story at the same time they divert William Wallace from his search. with a celebration of memory that for her has now become a personal creed, and has allowed her to begin her life as a writer. They are just playing out a role for the simple joy of pretending, and will soon return to themselves. 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. Though she is changing every day, she has really not changed at all. To begin with, the southern world I grew up in, a small coastal town in Florida in the years after WWII, was not all that representative of the South. Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. He walked on. note:when citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. I could easily call to mind other memories that would deepen and darken the story. 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. All of these stories were about life around the old family farms and houses back in Homerville, Georgia, not far from the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. Summary of The Wide Net by Welty. Both his grandfather and his father were struck by lightning. The roses needed a lot of water. Einstein activity capture is a powerful productivity-boosting tool that is integrated with Salesforce. Marrs, Suzanne. . He surely died the poorest judge in all of Florida, but he did leave me his gold Hamilton watch which had been given him when he retired from working on the railroad as a young man in Georgia. The workers filed in, one by one with their lunch bags, and sat down on a wooden bench. Jump-start your essay with our outlining tool to make sure you have all the main points of your essay covered. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. 1 Robbie is right to be frightened. They are just playing out a role for the simple joy of pretending, and will soon return to themselves. Given her love of Hurston, a spell had been cast, and the promise of a new myth stopped her in her tracks. 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). He walked on. Hazel wands were traditionally used as dowsing rods. 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. Log in here. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Learn about student-produced podcasts by reading and discussing the article "Students and Teachers, From K to 12, Hit the Podcasts.". Eudora Welty is a master of subjective impressionism, but there is not an escapist reflex in all her work. Though I have spent much of my professional life reading and thinking about southern identity and the historical versions of the Old and New South, I really did not encounter anything resembling a theory of the South as a land of myth and mythmaking before I began my graduate studies at Chapel Hill. At least the small boys have names that set them apart. All of these stories were about life around the old family farms and houses back in Homerville, Georgia, not far from the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. The Wide Net and Other Stories (1943), The Golden Apples (1949), and The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories (1955) are collections of short stories, and The Eye of the Story (1978) is a volume of essays. 8The group that William finally collects is a motley one, all male, but they are of a kind. I had fished and hunted in the great inland swamps, and had built rafts of giant bamboo to ride with my friends down the St Lucie River, surely as haunting and as hidden away as the Pearl River in The Wide Net. The alligators slept with the water lilies and the night-blooming cereus, and the Spanish moss fell in thick curtains on both banks. The Wide Net has been one of my favorite stories for at least forty years. HIGHLIGHTS who: February et al. I learned my grandfather had been instrumental in having him named the first black deputy in the county. 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. 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, Collected Stories 178). 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. 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. If all this seems too good to be true, its only because I choose to stop. 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. He is holding fast to a little green ribbon of plant, root and all (Welty. Since William Wallace cannot be contained in any single myth, or even in a multitude of myths, it should not have surprised me that he is able to exist untouched by history, or at least untouched by a southern identity usually defined and distinguished as being overwhelmed and overdetermined by history. Aeneas needs the golden bough to allow him to safely travel through the underworld to find his father. 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. The grown-up Doyles and Malones are fixed in their undefined identities forever. They catch a baby alligator and the Malone brothers insist that they want to keep it. Here time, also, is subject to confluence. It did not cost much to have a horse and a small motor boat. This was not because it was dangerous, or unseemly; it was simply against the code. 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. The more common it is, however, the less likely it can be seized upon for special consideration. He had never been given much credit for his act, though in the recent biography of Hurston, by Valerie Boyd, written long after my visit home, he is singled out for praise (436). They marvel over the snake, but seem to feel satisfied by their feast. 39These were some of the memories humming in my head when I began reading the books about Southern myth in Chapel Hill. In Life on the Mississippi, one of Eudora Weltys favorite books, Twain makes the outrageous, though irresistible, claim that Scott and his historical romances helped cause the Civil War by promoting a mythical vision of history, and by shaping the southern character: It was Sir Walter Scott that made every gentleman in the South a Major or Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations Sir Walter Scott had so large a hand in making the southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible (266). He could lift hundred-pound sacks of fertilizer with each hand. They talked sometimes about a black giant named Foots. 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. The name of Edna Earle comes from the heroine of the most popular novel in the South after the Civil War, by Augusta Jane Evans. It was, however, filled with southerners. The second is the date of He told me that my grandfather had told him he had left Georgia to come to Florida because he hated the way blacks were treated. He goes inside and there is Hazel! Summary Themes Questions & Answers Analysis Characters Quotes Start Free Trial . What I remember most about growing up was the joy of being outside for most of the day in a sort of tropical paradise. But these Georgia tales were of the kind that Eudora Welty describes as old and complete in Asphodel, one of the short stories in. Each visitor makes around 4.39 page views on average. 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. But there were no old plantations or slave quarters, and no signs to mark the battles of the Civil War since there had been no battles. "The Burning" digs so deep that it verges on becomingas exemplified hereone of the most ferocious of the very few examples of genuinely Expressionist literature by a famous American short story author. Salesforce has a wide range of tools that can be integrated with it to boost productivity. William goes out one night with two friends, gets drunk and lies all night in a ditch playing the harmonica. , one of Eudora Weltys favorite books, Twain makes the outrageous, though irresistible, claim that Scott and his historical romances helped cause the Civil War by promoting a mythical vision of history, and by shaping the southern character: It was Sir Walter Scott that made every gentleman in the South a Major or Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations Sir Walter Scott had so large a hand in making the southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible (266). The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. I began this paper with a confession. 31He was the county judge, famous for his fairness in court, and loved by everyone who knew him, thus by the entire town. 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. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1990. Even though there is no southern history in the story, surely his name is steeped in historical associations. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. Downtown black and white mingled and spoke with each other every day. 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. One of the most famous sons of a James was Bonnie Prince Charles, son of James Stuart, grandson of King James II, and leader of the final Jacobite Rebellion in the middle of the eighteenth century to restore the Scottish Stuarts to the throne of England and Scotland. 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