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. He walked through the streets of colored town as naturally as he walked to work. 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. He was a tall dignified man who dressed in a white suit and always had a Stetson hat on his head or in his hand. If we must look for hidden meanings, perhaps the symbolical would be a better avenue to explore than the historical. (qtd. Usually there would be shade trees to stretch out under and cool off, but there were none here. Me and Benz tight as a pair of shoes. The whole shed shook with laughter, given the reference to his feet, and from that day on I was home free and part of the gang. As I have already mentioned, my grandfather lies at the heart of these memories. The workers, all black men, would let us sit on the blocks of ice waiting to be crushed. 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. 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. They are just playing out a role for the simple joy of pretending, and will soon return to themselves. Hazel is pregnant, and William is baffled by her changing attitude (she would not speak and her eyes glowed). The Wide Net has been one of my favorite stories for at least forty years. the citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. By Alexa's traffic estimates bigpicture.net placed at 30,366 position over the world, while the largest amount of its visitors comes from India, where it takes 35,646 place. Eudora Welty is comically playing on the popular refrain that such a collection of rural men and boys could be found only in the Deep South. In 1940 she had accepted the offer of Diarmuid Russell (son of the Irish poet George Russell) to be her agent. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). He hated fighting, but he had never lost a fight, and all his rivals had given up trying. 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. 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. Subscribe for more videos like this: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=92YplusWhen Eudora Welty read at 92Y on April 22, 1985, it had been 32 y. Williams dive is not a baptism for the faint-hearted. At least the small boys have names that set them apart. The grown-up Doyles and Malones are fixed in their undefined identities forever. The storm in The Wide Net seems bent more on celebration than punishment, however. In The Wide Net there are too many myths to make a whole. In 1940 she had accepted the offer of Diarmuid Russell (son of the Irish poet George Russell) to be her agent. 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. Summary of The Wide Net by Welty. They are just playing out a role for the simple joy of pretending, and will soon return to themselves. 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). Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of "The Wide Window" by Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler). She begins by describing a milestone in her childhood, a gift of the ten-volume, There were the fairy talesGrimm, Andersen, the English, the French, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and there was Aesop and Reynard the Fox; there were the myths and legends, Robin Hood, King Arthur, and St. George and the Dragon, even the history of Joan of Arc; a whack of. We may remember his prayer: If only the golden bough/Might shine for us in such a wilderness! (Vergil, 166). Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Other 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. In fact, it is not a baptism at all. It had blossomed overnight during the boom years of the twenties. 25I began this paper with a confession. 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. I benefited from these books as much as anyone. William goes out one night with two friends, gets drunk and lies all night in a ditch playing the harmonica. The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. To me, there is more irony than history in the name William Wallace. Robbie is right to be frightened. Orlando: A Harvest Book, 2006. William Wallace has done the real catching, unless of course, it has been Hazel herself. Right before it begins in force, a holy-ghostly benediction or aeolian charma wind touched each man on the forehead (Welty, Collected Stories 182)reassures the reader that all will be well, at least for the time being. 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). In the afternoons my friends and I would go down to the icehouse where sacks of ice were filled for the professional fishing boats. When William dives into the river, and emerges transformed, the myth-minded reader may then think once more of the. 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. They talked sometimes about a black giant named Foots. He was a black deputy who had saved Hurstons letters and manuscripts from a fire after her death. Grady is already a sort of father to Brucie. The never forgetting is another gift of becoming oneself, the power of memory. The narration continues to speculate how (who knew?) I wanted to talk to him, so my mother invited him over to the house. They marvel over the snake, but seem to feel satisfied by their feast. Robert Fitzgerald. When we went to the movies on Saturday night, we would never hesitate to stop outside the county jail across the street from the Sunrise Theater. There is certainly no question that Williams dive to the bottom of the river brings him up a new man. 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 plays his role well, lost in his own performance, an unstoppable gramophone of platitudes, talking just to hear himself talk, but sometimes, almost despite himself, repeating nuggets of wisdom that bear directly on the quest itself: Were walking along in the changing-time. We may take this with a grain of salt, but the fascination with Scottish heroes in the South would have made the name of William Wallace a common choice. Beanie deserves his own story. When later on I read Faulkners praise of natural courtesy I thought of Foots at once. Apparently, there was one male survivor of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. 33In this respect, my grandfather was a rare exception. 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. After all, there were some brilliant minds at work on the subject, minds who could spot a stereotype or a caricature a hundred miles away, and there was much to learn. Carrying his great string of fish, he enters at the head of the party into Dover which now looked somehow like new after the rain (Welty, Collected Stories 184). 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. There seemed to be a force in the family that drove it to act or speak out, with or without the common consensus. Its going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog thats ripe and have fresh meat to eat. I was not surprised he had been a good friend of Hurston, but I never found any reference to him in the standard biographies. 1. Eudora Welty: A Biography. Are there many other collections of the time framed with a stronger cry against the harsh realities of human fate? The narration speculates on what he experiences in the solitude of the river bottom: So far down and all alone, had he found Hazel? When the search party spies a large water snake, a local legend everyone knows as the King of Snakes, William Wallace stares him down. 90). review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. publication online or last modification online. Rereading 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. When was Delta Wedding set?? Old Doc reminds me of the old men in another great modern folk story, The Weavers Grave, by the Irish writer Seumas OKelly. The white families, like my own, had migrated there from their farms in South Georgia in the hope of improving their prospects. date the date you are citing the material. Of course writing her autobiography is a proof of that power, but Eudora Welty goes further. Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Voir la notice dans le catalogue OpenEdition, Plan du site Crdits Flux de syndication, Politique de confidentialit Gestion des cookies, Nous adhrons OpenEdition Journals dit avec Lodel Accs rserv, Vous allez tre redirig vers OpenEdition Search, Special Issue: Representation and Rewriting of Myths in Southern Short Fiction, Converging Toward the Human: Myth and Theory in "The Wide Net" (and me), It 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). They all belong together in the Mississippi chorus line, until William Wallace finally breaks away on his own. Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. The only shade was provided by a long tin shed next to the sludge bin. After all, there were some brilliant minds at work on the subject, minds who could spot a stereotype or a caricature a hundred miles away, and there was much to learn. 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. Neither does Eudora Welty in her autobiography, and she is one of the most southern writers who ever existed. Backus, locally known as Beanie. But I could not remember that it had revealed the slightest interest in the South as a subject of focus or reflection. Myths and legends and symbols are filled with wisdom, but it is the human spirit which has done the filling, and not the other way around. . 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. I was fifteen years old, and was the only white in the group of workers. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever really lost (Welty, One Writers Beginnings 90). 20Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. 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. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. As Welty adds in her autobiography, there were Edna Earles all over the South. 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. The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. The pounding is musical, given that Eudora Welty is playing the instrument, but it can be felt all through the story, from the ironic chord of the first three words all the way to the final throb of the last line. I saw it 26 years ago and I wish it was on tonight. Its going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog thats ripe and have fresh meat to eat. 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. He himself would have been too modest to mention it. New York: Signet Classics, 1961. I loved the music, the food, the voices, the family stories, and to this day I cannot imagine life without them. 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. cite this page as follows: "the wide net - summary"enotes publishinged. Even though there is no southern history in the story, surely his name is steeped in historical associations. Like my grandfather, Beanie was color blind as far as race was concerned. They talked sometimes about a black giant named Foots. That was only part of the legend. [] Magnolia and live-oak never die. William Wallace takes the lead back to Dover, and back to Hazel who has never left their house. He is more at ease with the helpless wild creature of the woods than with Hazel at home. It was written forty years after The Wide Net but I was gratified to find her speak of myth and memory in a way that confirmed what I thought I had found in the story. Salesforce has a wide range of tools that can be integrated with it to boost productivity. Download the entire The Wide Net study guide as a printable PDF! Me and Benz tight as a pair of shoes. The whole shed shook with laughter, given the reference to his feet, and from that day on I was home free and part of the gang. Later in the story a violent storm with a blast of wind covers the entire search party with wet leaves. 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 name of Edna Earle comes from the heroine of the most popular novel in the South after the Civil War, by Augusta Jane Evans. Download PDF More from Eudora Welty From the. 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 Malones are indistinguishable from each other, and so are the Doyles. Myth and meaning in that book are indivisible. Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts. 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. They have to go and get the wide net, though, and that belongs to a man called Doc. 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. Now a host of biblical allusions begin to prevail over the Greek and Roman. 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. When William Wallace gets home, he notices a night rainbow over his house, though it clearly hadn't rained there. 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, Collected Stories 180). eNotes.com I like to think too, along these same lines, that the comic folklore of the first half of the story makes his solitary dive in the Pearl River, and his transformation, more unpredictable, and thus more human. [] Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. 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. In leaving you now, I am reminded of an old story out of Georgia. Sir Walter Scott celebrated both William Wallace and Bonnie Prince Charles, the latter in the most popular series of historical novels ever written, the Waverly novels. 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. Twain, Mark. [] Any day now the change will come. The Wide Net and Other Stories deliberately refuses to shy away from vice, racism, pride, self-indulgence, and violence. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow. His name was Patrick Duval. CRM is one of the top technology investments that organizations can make. 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