The Point and View of Dying A short story gives the reader an opportunity to experience a work of literature in a short amount of time. This also leaves the author with less runway to get their key message and points across in their story. There are many different literary concepts or elements that an author may use based on the type of story they are telling. Point of view is one concept that can influence how a story is perceived by the reader based on who is telling the story. First person point of view implies the author is the one narrating the story; while third person point of view implies the narrator is an observer or external narrator (Shakel and Ridl 146-147). This is a high-level explanation of point of view, but gives a base …show more content…
It is about a woman who was jilted in her youth and left at the alter by the man she was supposed spend the rest of her life with. She ends up marrying someone else and having children, but the story implies she led a challenging life and is a strong and independent woman. An article written about Porter states:
Perhaps the most imaginatively written death scene in American literature was penned by Katherine Anne Porter. In a story called “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” from Porter’s first collection, The Flowering Judas, she chronicles the final hours of an aging matriarch as she experiences the disorienting effects of a fraying consciousness while she travels through the stages of dying. (Sauls) Porter’s subjective experiences with her own grandmother were the catalyst for her stories. Learning more about this author’s past explains her perspective not only on the characterization of the Granny Weatherall, but also the point of view and perspective she has on illness and death. According to …show more content…
This sets the tone for the conflict of emotion that is to come further in the story. Granny revisits her past and thinks about who she was after “the jilting” which further develops her strong and independent character. Porter writes, “She had fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires with just a negro boy to help. That changed a woman” (435). This image shows physically and mentally her strength. At the end of the story, “Granny laid curled down within herself, amazed and watchful, staring at the point of light that was herself; her body was now only a deeper mass of shadow in an endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and swallow it up. God, give a sign!” (Porter 439). The words used “curled,” “darkness,” “deep mass” illustrate the despair and pain of what is happening to