凯瑟琳-安-波特简介分解.ppt

Theme Betrayal God and Religion Death Betrayal The idea of betrayal is a central theme underlying many of Porter’s stories. At the heart of “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” are Granny’s memories of her betrayal by George, who abandoned her at the altar some sixty years earlier. God and Religion Many readers have suggested that the ultimate betrayal of Granny involves God and that the story is primarily a portrait of a woman at the end of her life facing a devastating spiritual crisis. When Father Connolly comes to visit Granny Weatherall on her deathbed, she is cordial to him. It is stated that Granny “felt easy about her soul.” Yet, his arrival seems to trigger Granny’s most vivid and painful memories of the day sixty years earlier when she was left by her fiance. Death Granny Weatherall struggles against death, and though she lacks the strength to get out of bed, denies even being ill. The final image in the story — of Granny blowing out a candle — evokes the notion that her life is coming to an end. Yet, there is no sense of closure to Granny’s life, no sense that the conflicts raised in her memories have been resolved. The final realization in the story is that “there was no bottom to death, she couldn’t come to the end of it.” What’s the stream of consciousness? Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow, tracing a character’s fragmentary（断断续续的） thoughts and sensory（感觉的） feelings. Stream of consciousness is characterized by a flow of thoughts and images, which may not always appear to have a coherent structure or cohesion. The plot line may weave in and out of time and place, carrying the reader through the life span of a character or further along a timeline to incorporate the lives (and thoughts) of characters from other time periods. Examples of stream of consciousness Virginia Woolfs