Jilting Of Granny Weatherall

The short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter takes place on the evening of Granny’s death while her children surround her. She reflects on her life and what she still has left to do as she realizes that the end is near. Her consciousness comes and goes while the reader learns about some of the hardships she has faced throughout her life. As death approaches, Granny realizes that God is not there and she must move into the afterlife alone. Some factors of the story that need to be considered in order to understand the story are how Granny is jilted, how afterlife is foreshadowed, and what characteristics death possesses. One of the main ideas of the short story involves how Granny is jilted, meaning that she has been rejected or abandoned by a lover. The first time Granny experienced being jilted was by George, who she had planned to marry. In the story, she claims to have put on a white veil and set out a cake for the wedding, but he never showed up. Throughout her life she tried to forget this pain, but while she is on her deathbed the memories come back to her. She wants George to realize that he didn’t ruin her life and that she was okay without him, as …show more content…
As Granny passes away, her body is considered to be a mass within an endless amount of darkness, where the darkness curls around the light to swallow it up. The light represents her life and existence, while the darkness represents death as it takes it way from her. Darkness is also shown as a characteristic of death when Granny blows out the light from the candle as she dies. Once there is no more light, death has arrived. It is possible that her last name of Weatherall symbolizes how she has been forced to weather all of the things that life has thrown at her, but as the darkness keeps showing up around her and gets closer and closer, she has reached the point of her death and can no longer fight the