They marvel over the snake, but seem to feel satisfied by their feast. His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightn. 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. Now a host of biblical allusions begin to prevail over the Greek and Roman. That was only part of the legend. 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. Print. Forkner has also published three books on John James Audubon: Journals and Selected Writings in the Penguin Nature Classics series, with an introduction and editorial commentary; and two in Europe: the two-volume Journaux et Rcits (Atalante and the City of Nantes), a comprehensive collection of Audubons writings in French, newly translated, with a full biographical introduction and editorial commentary, and the John James Audubon Portfolio (Edition de la Main Fleurie) which includes an introduction, a selection of Audubons letters, and forty-eight reproductions of Audubons original watercolors printed on hand-made paper designed to replicate the paper used in the early nineteenth century. This is the advantage of relying on memory rather than myth when digging back for the truth. I could easily call to mind other memories that would deepen and darken the story. Word Count: 385. When they reach the river Old Doc remarks that the world has been turned to gold by the autumn sun: today, in October sun, its all goldsky and tree and water. Einstein activity capture is a powerful productivity-boosting tool that is integrated with Salesforce. My grandfather, as I will discuss later on, was one of the reasons I had trouble with the grand southern myths I discovered at the university. There is Old Doc, the local wise man who owns the net. An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella The Ponder Heart. 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. He walked on. This was not because it was dangerous, or unseemly; it was simply against the code. 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. They stamped the ground and pawed each other, more like horses than men. 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. Ed. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. They are just playing out a role for the simple joy of pretending, and will soon return to themselves. He was a black deputy who had saved Hurstons letters and manuscripts from a fire after her death. It is a plunge into the inner depths that strains every fibre of his being, and tests his spirit to the limit. Summary of The Wide Net by Welty. It was a huge success, a romantic tome so overwritten and full of adjectives that Eudora Welty in her autobiography says her mother told her it used to be recommended to take it out with a chair when watering the roses. Eudora Welty is a master of subjective impressionism, but there is not an escapist reflex in all her work. in Marrs 70-71). Print. I met Foots the first day I was hired to work in a local fertilizer plant for the summer. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. He saw that the bodies of the frozen birds had fallen out of the trees, and he fell down and wept for his father and mother, to whom he had not said good-bye (Welty, First Love, Collected Stories 168). Learn about student-produced podcasts by reading and discussing the article "Students and Teachers, From K to 12, Hit the Podcasts.". Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. This is the truth that William Wallace discovers by himself, and somehow memory, lost and found, is crucial to the discovery. But the history of the South itself came to me mainly through the stories I heard in my family. Summary. He no longer fears Hazels mother, and turns away without a flinch when she appears. The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. At least this is true of the first half of The Wide Net. The second half is a different matter entirely and herein lies one of the genial transformations that The Wide Net performs as naturally and as completely as one season turns into another. Later in the story a violent storm with a blast of wind covers the entire search party with wet leaves. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. He loves to pontificate, and spends most of the day talking and giving advice. But I could not remember that it had revealed the slightest interest in the South as a subject of focus or reflection. Of course these signs and symbols enrich the story at the same time they divert William Wallace from his search. 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 Wide Net has been one of my favorite stories for at least forty years. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics. But more than anything, in rereading the story I realized that my own fading or forgotten memories about growing up in the South had somehow dictated my choice, and that the mythic failures, or inadequacies, of The Wide Net to match the intractable selfhood of the living individual clearly harmonized with my own experience. When he wakes up he affirms his new sense of power and potency by tying a catfish to his belt and launching into a wild Dionysian dance. There is the miraculous catch of fish, and the hymns William and Virgil hear while walking back home: They were having the Sacred Harp Sing on the grounds of an old white church glimmering there at the crossroads, far below. When William arrives alone at his house, he sees something he had never seen, a rainbow at night (Welty, Collected Stories 187). 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. and I believe I could find stories, old ones & new ones, and beliefs and songs and violent events all over the place to show what the life here is, to my belief Think of all the people who would be in my bookwonderful Indians to start with, and the Indian tales are beautiful and dramatic and very touching some of themand Aaron Burr & Blennerhassett, and Lafayette, and Audubon, and Jefferson Davis, and the bandits and Lafitte the pirate, and all kinds of remarkable people. 26I am ready to plead, however. Knowing Eudora Weltys love of Ireland and the Irish, the echo is surely deliberate. But even children are sensitive to the boundary between the real and the fictional, and would hate to hear their father repeat the soliloquies of Hamlet from breakfast to bedtime even if he made a living as an actor. 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. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In the title story, a man quarrels with his pregnant wife, leaves the house, and descends into a mysterious underwater kingdom where he meets The King of the Snakes, who forces him to confront the darker mysteries of nature. 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. 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. After all, where else can I look for a better source? 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). Old Doc reminds me of the old men in another great modern folk story, The Weavers Grave, by the Irish writer Seumas OKelly. The storm in The Wide Net seems bent more on celebration than punishment, however. . The last date is today's When he surfaces he is still in shock: And when William Wallace came up it was in an agony from submersion, which seemed an agony of the blood and of the very heart, so woeful he looked (Welty. The Great Wide Sea (2008), a novel by M. H. Herlong, follows sixteen-year-old Ben Byron, who mourns the loss of his mother with his younger brothers, Gerry and Dylan, while spending a year at sea.As Ben processes his grief, he clashes with his father, until he mysteriously vanishes from the boat one morning. I could easily call to mind other memories that would deepen and darken the story. Summary Themes Questions & Answers Analysis Characters Quotes Start Free Trial . The second is the date of He walked through the streets of colored town as naturally as he walked to work. They all carried their classic illustrations. Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the C got through the L in a Coca-Cola sign (Welty, Collected Stories 171). And finally, on the last page, memory is evoked again, this time in words to be engraved in stone: Of course the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memorythe individual human memory. 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. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc, 1980. The never forgetting is another gift of becoming oneself, the power of memory. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. There doesn't seem to be a regularization effect from very high depth in residual net- works as wide networks with the same number of parameters as thin ones can learn same or better representations. 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. The more common it is, however, the less likely it can be seized upon for special consideration. 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. We may remember his prayer: If only the golden bough/Might shine for us in such a wilderness! (Vergil, 166). I learned my grandfather had been instrumental in having him named the first black deputy in the county. During the wars of Scottish independence in the thirteenth century, William Wallace was the great leader and hero, whom popular tradition in the mists of time has now elevated to mythical proportions. Of course these signs and symbols enrich the story at the same time they divert William Wallace from his search. . Vergil. We saw the same films at the same movie theater, even though the whites sat downstairs and the blacks up in the balcony. 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. As far as living space was concerned, however, the town was strictly divided into white and black, and though the blacks were often seen in the white district, there were few whites who ventured into colored town. Robert Fitzgerald. 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. It syncs contacts, emails, and events from email tools to Salesforce. And finally, on the last page, memory is evoked again, this time in words to be engraved in stone: Of course the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memorythe individual human memory. He could lift hundred-pound sacks of fertilizer with each hand. Here time, also, is subject to confluence. It had blossomed overnight during the boom years of the twenties. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. 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). When he escaped he went back to his native state of Georgia and lived to a ripe old age. He took me in and introduced me to each worker by name. As a matter of fact, he was a pillar of the community. He has recovered his memory too, and with it, we know now, a new power of self-direction, decision, and acceptance. One was the Florida artist A.E. publication in traditional print. Eudora Welty: A Biography. 171). Geographically, I had lived outside as a boy in the steamy heat of southern Florida. Sometimes referred to as a "network of networks," the Internet emerged in the United States in the 1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the early 1990s. It was perfect for riding out on the sand dunes at night, and for taking friends to the honky-tonks to hear one of our classmates wail out his versions of the old standards of Hank Williams and the brand new songs of Jerry Lee Lewis. eNotes Editorial. 6It would not be amiss at this point to give a brief account of what happens in The Wide Net. It might help set the stage for those of you who have never read it, or who, like me before I took it up again, may have to struggle to remember the details of an earlier reading. 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. The narration speculates on what he experiences in the solitude of the river bottom: So far down and all alone, had he found Hazel? 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. This paper reviews the history, the goals, the organisation and the components of CSNET (the Computer Science Research Network). I 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. Jump-start your essay with our outlining tool to make sure you have all the main points of your essay covered. He is more at ease with the helpless wild creature of the woods than with Hazel at home. , notably First Love, and A Still Moment, to name the most powerful. Hazel wands were traditionally used as dowsing rods. I had suspected something like this as a boy, but now it was confirmed. I was not surprised he had been a good friend of Hurston, but I never found any reference to him in the standard biographies. Soon, people begin to ask if the fish are for sale, and William Wallace sells them. The memory is a living thingit too is in transit. The one I want to tell about my grandfather concerns another man involved in the Zora Neale Hurston saga. I loved the music, the food, the voices, the family stories, and to this day I cannot imagine life without them. 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. Ben Forkner was a Professor of English at the University of Angers where he taught Southern and Irish literature, directed the English Department, and founded the Journal of the Short Story in English. 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. 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. 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. 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. In The Wide Net, William Wallace must make his own way, and history, southern or otherwise, mythical or not, does not provide him (or the reader) with any guidelines. At this point the mythic and symbolic allusions begin to overwhelm, but I believe, as you know by now, that their very proliferation throws into high relief the singular nature of one mans all too human crisis. 28What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. in Marrs 70-71). Are there many other collections of the time framed with a stronger cry against the harsh realities of human fate? It is enough to make Virgil sigh with despair: when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign (Welty. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow. Beanie deserves his own story. Walker Percy has written somewhere that a boy who has a Hamilton from his grandfather is a true son of the South, and I still have mine. She could have easily searched out one of the old Backus crowd willing to share the memory of Beanies role in the funeral and the missing headstone. Think of another name in The Wide Net, Edna Earle. 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