The Grave By Katherine Anne Porter Analysis

Improved Essays
In Katherine Anne Porter’s story “The Grave,” she explores one of the inescapable moments in all living thing’s existence: death. Through the story of the two protagonists, she shows that our innocence is truly gone once it clashes with the end of life. Once we are exposed and accept the existence of death and allow it to defeat our purity, then we are truly adults exposed to the realities of this world. Paul and Miranda are two young siblings living their lives as they always do. Their family has had to deal with relocations of deceased family members’ graves, leaving empty holes in the ground where their relatives once peacefully rested. Upon exploring the former graves, the two discover two trinkets inside their grandparents’ graves: …show more content…
The dove he now possesses was the screw head from his grandfather’s coffin, a direct object from his final resting place. This is ironic since the siblings are out hunting this very species of bird. Doves symbolize innocence itself, as doves are pure and gentle birds that are often associated with life. Hunting these birds is almost like saying you are out to destroy life and only wish to find death. Unlike his sister, Paul is very interested in killing instead of fooling around. He shows more matureness than Miranda who only enjoys “pulling the trigger and hearing the noise,” the pistol makes upon use, further showing her more present innocence. Hunting is a sport always resulting in death for the targeted victim and having such young kids go through such a task is rather odd in today’s society. Paul is out to kill doves like the one from his grandfather’s grave and “he [wants] to be certain he…[makes the kill].” When Paul took this trinket from his grandfather’s grave, it was almost an omen from the deceased man. That omen being that upon prying the dove from the dirt of the dead, you will soon realize that when you kill a creature in real life, it’s death will show you that now that you’ve witnessed and interfered with death yourself, you will no longer be a

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Death Of A Moth Analysis

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Death is inevitable. It is an inescapable, daunting, truth which most living species dread in life. The feeling of uncertainty and pain evokes fear among people. Two similar essays, “The Death of a Moth” and “The Death of the Moth” both accurately depict the nature of life and death in a descriptive and detailed manner.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Book Thief Narrative

    • 1279 Words
    • 6 Pages

    This is a unique story about how an adolescent girl copes with harsh circumstances, and it is narrated by Death himself. In the beginning, Death visits two children who are traveling to a foster home by train. The brother is why he came, whereas the sister, Liesel, is mourning. She…

    • 1279 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While upon first glance her corpus seems to be filled with elementary age written material- one word titles such as “Poppies”, “Ponds”, and “Daisies”, and seemingly undersized poems- Mary Oliver’s sharp observation of the natural world and all it’s inhabitants allows her to transcend and creatively tackle some of the toughest topics to pen, such as death and the meaning of life, in a way that allows readers of every age to grapple with and discern her conclusions. Many of her poems captured in her Pulitzer Prize winning collection “New and Selected Poetry” feature her rapturous lyricism covering her absent apprehension about what will happen after she takes her last earthly breath. Through her use of symbolism, light and dark imagery, and allusion in her poem “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” (page 99), Oliver argues that death is not something that should preoccupy human fears but should rather be accepted by all.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    These stories demonstrate that such feelings are natural and do not need to dominate the person’s thinking. “Lives of the Dead” has a considerable application beyond the confines of the storyteller and those people close to him. O’Brien talks about the value of storytelling and imagination as a way to deal with past pain and regret, and such advice might well be useful to other people who have similar feelings. This story essentially is the climax of all the others in terms of the lessons it conveys. Imagination is the ultimate way for O’Brien to deal with death, and it encourages us to think of ways to deal with death that may seem odd to other people, but that work for us.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The persona experiences a change in demeanour triggered by death’s ugliness. Her realisation of an ‘obscene death’, is re-enforced by the gruesome imagery of ‘bundle of stuff that dropped and dribbled’. The personas inability to refer to…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Issues In Scoot Gardeners

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Scot gardeners enduring novel the dead I know addresses many issues common to humanity these include death and impact on individuals, identity, survival, dementia and responsibility through the use of a central character who is struggling with his life the reader fully explores how these issues are expressed Throughout the book Aaron deals with a multitude of problems but probably the biggest one that he had to face in the book was responsibility of caring for his mother with looking after her and while maintaining a job to pay for all the necessary In the novel after dropping out of school Aaron finds a job as a funeral directors assistant which at the best of time would not be the easiest jobs to accomplish at the best of times being able…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Resignation” Vs. “After the Burial” “Resignation” by Longfellow and “After the Burial” by Lowell differ significantly in the treatment of the author’s daughters’ deaths. For example, Longfellow’s poem is hopeful, while Lowell’s is hopeless. Longfellow believes his daughter is protected in Heaven and that one day he will get to see her in “celestial grace.” He commands a positive outlook by boldly stating, “Let us be patient!”…

    • 1420 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the short story Going, the author Amy Hempel writes about a man who was in a car accident that caused him to remember certain smells that linked to specific memories and experiences. All the memories and smells that come back to the character are ones that revolve around death. In the short story the author’s main subject is death and how hard that topic can be. Some individuals tend to be careless and do not see the potential hazards until after they cause damage while other are vigilant. The author utilizes concepts of death, sarcasm, irony, paradoxes, and symbolism throughout the short story to reveal that death may seem far but in reality it’s inevitably close.…

    • 979 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pretty How Town

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages

    “One day anyone died I guess busy folk buried them side by side (Cummings 556).” Here again it shows how even in death that no one cares and they're already focused on getting back to their lives. Death is saddening no matter the person and this story shows the people as emotionless robots. This story was written to identify a problem in the present day society.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Frankenstein Respect

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Respecting the dead 151,600 people die every single day, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Both common and natural, death is something that has an impact on everyone at some point in their life. In the books “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, death frequently occurs and impacts the characters and their story. The dead deserve respected regardless of the way they lead their life or die for the sake of the family members and loved ones, all human beings deserve some respect after they die, and, because treating the dead inadequately could lead to conflict. Everyone who passes away has some sort of family, friends or people who they have impacted.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    William Shakespeare said, “The eyes are the window to your soul.” In the Postmodern literary world, characters’ souls battle loss, alienation, isolation, and purposelessness. William Faulkner made a career out of exploring the darker side of life in the rural South and gave readers a glimpse of the social, economic, and racial prejudices his characters endured and hopelessly struggled to escape. This state of hopelessness defines the plight of the Bundren family in Faulkner’s classic As I Lay Dying. Dying matriarch Addie Bundren’s worn eyes, which “look like lamps blaring up just before the oil is gone” (45) reflect life’s losing battle she has come to embrace.…

    • 1074 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Literature has proved to have very skewed opinions of death and the journey after. In some cases, writers portray a journey that is filled with coldness, regret, and sadness and in others, writers create a sense of warmth, reflection, and gratitude. Emily Dickinson chooses the later when she wrote the story that would later be titled “Because I could not stop for Death”, a story that depicts the journey that Death takes the speaker on towards the afterlife and immortality. From the very first line of the poem, readers understand that the poem is about death. The speaker notes how though she could not stop for Death, “He kindly stopped for me” (2).…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    For many people, death is one of the scariest things they will have to face. Why? Because they do not know what will happen after they die; will they go to Heaven, or will they be reincarnated? No one is, or can be, certain of what happens and arguably, this could be the main basis of religion. The question of what happens after death is a common theme expressed through many works of literature, such as Obasan by Joy Kogawa, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane, and the poem “At the River Clarion” by Mary Oliver.…

    • 1647 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García-Márquez, Márquez uses structure and magical realism to make Santiago’s death inevitable, highlighting the idea that fate is inescapable, and that it outweighs ideals such as truth or justice. In part one, the reader learns that the novel is written from what seems to be the perspective of an old friend of Santiago’s who is piecing together the events leading up to Santiago’s death, 27 years after Santiago has died. The narrator puts together the events as told by many different people, relying on their memories to gain a clearer picture of what occurred all those many years ago. As such, the information given to the reader is often contradictory and unreliable, which creates ambiguity…

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Death is a frequently explored theme in poetry. Despite the prevalence of this theme, each poet has their own distinct viewpoint about it and portray it in such a way that reflects their beliefs. These differences are both in attitude towards death as well as the point of view of the speaker. Some authors take on an optimistic portrayal of death whereas others use a pessimistic perspective. Point of view can be either through the eyes of someone who has died or someone who has lost a loved one.…

    • 1296 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays

Related Topics