南开大学_外国语学院_美国文学课件The_Jilting_of_Granny_____Weatherall.ppt

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall Katherine Anne Porter (15 May 1890 – 18 September 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. She is known for her penetrating insight; her works deal with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil. The setting for The Jilting of Granny Weatherall is the bedroom where Granny Weatherall is dying, though most of the action occurs in Grannys head. Told as a stream-of-consciousness monologue, it is the story of the last day in the eighty-year-old womans life. In her final hours with her surviving children around her bed, Granny Weatherall reconsiders her life and ponders her impending death. Almost against her will, her thoughts return to an incident that occurred more than sixty years earlier: She was left standing alone at the altar when her fiance George jilted her. George left her at the wedding, with the cake and guests, and Granny never let go of the memory. This memory is what dominates her thoughts as she nears death. At the end of the story as she asks God for a sign and doesnt get one, she feels that now God has jilted her. She blows out the light, and her life and the story are over. Porter gradually reveals the details of the jilting through Granny Weatheralls fragmented recollections. In Granny Weatheralls semi-conscious state, the past mingles with the present and people and objects take on new forms and identities. stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individuals point of view by giving the written equivalent of the characters thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions. Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative (and at times dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose dif