This outlined the principal concepts and it defined . Then there are the other adult members of the search party, the six Doyle brothers and their dogs, and the eight Malone brothers, eight giants with great long black eyelashes (Welty. cite this page as follows: "the wide net - summary"enotes publishinged. This was not because it was dangerous, or unseemly; it was simply against the code. Of course the well-trained reader races through the possibilities and may stop on his way to consider the myth of the golden bough in the, . Orlando: A Harvest Book, 2006. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. Press in the Library of Southern Civilization series. One day on a summer trip to Homerville, my mother took me to a field in the countryside and showed me two old tombstones under a tree. Corrections? Even the trees have bones that crack when lightning strikes. Old Doc reminds me of the old men in another great modern folk story, The Weavers Grave, by the Irish writer Seumas OKelly. He walked on. He made a sign for me to follow him in what was now a blind tunnel steaming with sweat and humidity. I walked with him often on his way to his office in the courthouse down by the river. Print. In those days the post office had a small shop that sold tobacco and newspapers. Trans. See production, box office & company info. There is Virgil of course, living up to his name (but only in the mind of the reader, we need to remember) in that he is there to guide William on his quest, to keep him on the track, as he says. But the real proof of his character came at noon, when we all stopped to have lunch. The shifting from one realm to another is a constant possibility. They marvel over the snake, but seem to feel satisfied by their feast. And after a few minutes she took him by the hand and led him into the house, smiling as if she were smiling down on him (Welty, Collected Stories 188). 7William Wallace Jamieson, the first words of the story, and a name I will return to, is a young man who has been married to his wife, Hazel, for a year. He could lift hundred-pound sacks of fertilizer with each hand. New York: A Lisa Drew Book, 2004. It will not be lost on the reader that the structure of The Wide Net roughly follows the same literary source, proceeding from hell, to purgatory, and finally to paradise. William Wallace has done the real catching, unless of course, it has been Hazel herself. There is Old Doc, the local wise man who owns the net. He took me in and introduced me to each worker by name. Hazels name evokes the Celtic symbol of wisdom and the source of life hidden in underground water. It was, however, filled with southerners. [] Any day now the change will come. Just as William Wallace is beset on all sides by a welter of signs, until he forgets the name of the Pearl River and takes his dive to the bottom, the reader is mystified by the dazzling parade of mythical allusions until he too reaches the same place. [] Magnolia and live-oak never die. I learned that several young ancestors had been killed fighting for the Confederacy or had died soon after the war from disease. The absence of history serves the same purpose, I believe, as the excessive abundance of symbol and myth the reader must negotiate before setting his sights on the inner spirit William Wallace possesses to exist all by himself. When they reach the river Old Doc remarks that the world has been turned to gold by the autumn sun: today, in October sun, its all goldsky and tree and water. Hickory tree there will be yellow. A more distant past was hidden behind the Spanish place names and the faces of the Seminole Indians who worked as cowboys on the ranches. What touched me more, and what I remember best now, were the lives around me while growing up. "The Burning" digs so deep that it verges on becomingas exemplified hereone of the most ferocious of the very few examples of genuinely Expressionist literature by a famous American short story author. Her reaction is more than understandable. He had earned the name by winning a juke joint contest for having the biggest feet in Florida. . Timeless stories from our 172-year archive handpicked to speak to the news of the day. 1 Mar. One day on a summer trip to Homerville, my mother took me to a field in the countryside and showed me two old tombstones under a tree. 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. And finally, on the last page, memory is evoked again, this time in words to be engraved in stone: Of course the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memorythe individual human memory. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Wide-Net-and-Other-Stories. Still, if I should apologize, I do. They were later given to the University of Florida. . Of course these signs and symbols enrich the story at the same time they divert William Wallace from his search. I grew up during segregation, but the racism was subdued, and codified down to a syllable and a glance. It runs in our family, Robbie says (Welty. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. He towered over the others, who were all big and tough. I had suspected something like this as a boy, but now it was confirmed. The Wide Net (1987) Plot Showing all 0 items Jump to: Summaries It looks like we don't have any Plot Summaries for this title yet. They all belong together in the Mississippi chorus line, until William Wallace finally breaks away on his own. 14The second half of the story is rich in events, but the outcome is never in doubt. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. The never forgetting is another gift of becoming oneself, the power of memory. The packet switching technology was essential to the development of . I could easily call to mind other memories that would deepen and darken the story. Williams dive is not a baptism for the faint-hearted. I loved the music, the food, the voices, the family stories, and to this day I cannot imagine life without them. There seemed to be a force in the family that drove it to act or speak out, with or without the common consensus. 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. This blend of domestic realism with mythology and ancient fertility tales is characteristic of the entire collection, in which ordinary people are somehow connected to the myths of other cultures. I was not surprised he had been a good friend of Hurston, but I never found any reference to him in the standard biographies. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. Omissions? Shortly after I finished graduate school and began to read more widely about the South I learned that Zora Neale Hurston had lived her last years in my home town, and was buried there. He hated fighting, but he had never lost a fight, and all his rivals had given up trying. They all carried their classic illustrations. 178). The Rebellion failed, and Bonnie Prince Charles escaped to become another legend of Scottish resistance. As for me, being known as his grandson allowed me, and my two cousins who lived in his house, special status among the blacks, and a carelessness about crossing the color line. An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella The Ponder Heart. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Seeing I was struggling with my bucket and shovel, he came right over and helped show me the right way to do it. I located myself in these pages and could go straight to the stories and pictures I loved (Welty. They talked sometimes about a black giant named Foots. 181). When Mother Nature, with majestic abandon, unleashes a storm for the ages (or the makers of myths) to show who will always rule the roost, William Wallace is not deterred or disturbed. PBS please bring this back. 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. publication online or last modification online. Like my grandfather, Beanie was color blind as far as race was concerned. 1. When he returned to his house, he found Hazel was not there, and she'd left a note saying that she had gone to drown herself in the river and that he'd be sorry for his behavior. But more than anything, in rereading the story I realized that my own fading or forgotten memories about growing up in the South had somehow dictated my choice, and that the mythic failures, or inadequacies, of The Wide Net to match the intractable selfhood of the living individual clearly harmonized with my own experience. I say this because when The Wide Net and Other Stories came out as a single volume in 1943, Time Magazine published a review that claimed that the stories were about as human as a fish. Eudora Welty was never much affected by reviews, good or bad, but this one raised her hackles, and she wrote to Diarmuid Russell: I saw the Time review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. I had not forgotten the references to history and to historical figures in some of the stories of The Wide Net and Other Stories, notably First Love, and A Still Moment, to name the most powerful. It was told by Alexander Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy. 35I met Foots the first day I was hired to work in a local fertilizer plant for the summer. Jamieson takes a bit more twisting to unravel a historical connection. 20Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. Here is the same confused hodgepodge of myth and fable we can find in The Wide Net. They are the wonderful fictions out of which an adult life finally emerges, but never forgets. But they remain children, and act their age. The town was a typical Florida collection of frame houses, shady streets, and sandy alleys held together by a compact center of brick banks, churches, cafes, shops, and one movie theater, on the western side of the river within walking distance of the ocean to the east. 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. Hazel wands were traditionally used as dowsing rods. 45Of course writing her autobiography is a proof of that power, but Eudora Welty goes further. His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightn. 179). She is in her early twenties (an age we might give to William Wallace) when she discovers the gift of memory, and in her seventies when she confirms it: Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. He was a big man, steady and straight despite his age, and must have been a formidable force in making an arrest. His grandfather had been branded by the devil in a storm, Lightnin drawed a pitchfork right on our grandpappys cheek, stayed till he died (Welty, Collected Stories 183). William Wallace will soon demonstrate a stronger will in a more heroic gesture than catching a rabbit. Lush, precise, and unpredictable in every line, The Wide Net is one of the greatest odes to the natural world ever written. The human drama is my main concern, however, and the one day in the life of William Wallace, wild as it is, is much easier to summarize. CSNET bridged between the original (closed) ARPANET and the NSFNET (open) by . Aeneas needs the golden bough to allow him to safely travel through the underworld to find his father. She could have easily searched out one of the old Backus crowd willing to share the memory of Beanies role in the funeral and the missing headstone. It is a plunge into the inner depths that strains every fibre of his being, and tests his spirit to the limit. What I want to single out is not his place in the community, which was central, but his difference from most of the adult white men I knew and observed. I should make it clear it was not the quality of the scholarship in what I read that puzzled me, but my consternation in not finding anything of my own life in the popular myths contained in the books. She continues several pages later: It is our inward journey that leads us through timeforward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. He had never been given much credit for his act, though in the recent biography of Hurston, by Valerie Boyd, written long after my visit home, he is singled out for praise (436). I learned that several young ancestors had been killed fighting for the Confederacy or had died soon after the war from disease. 16What is missing in my account of rereading the story is my misremembering the total absence of southern history, a conspicuous absence. For much of the story at least, William Wallace and the other characters are closer to the simple stock figures of song and legend than they are to men and women in the real world. And we fished for the same fish from the same piers in the inlet. 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. It was the county seat, so there were a few imposing public buildings. Myth and meaning in that book are indivisible. 28What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. The Collected Stories. 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. He possesses an old mans horde of lifelong certitudes. Physically, he was everything the legend had promised. Boys, he said, I didnt run, but I did some mighty high walking. I hope I have not run away from the myth of the South, but I admit I may have done some high walking. Thank you for the indulgence, and the invitation. There is no great central Southern myth in The Wide Net. But I must have half-remembered that the potency of the mythic, including a few old southern folktales or legends, does play a key role in the story, especially by pounding the pedal throughout on the truth that no myth, potent or not, can ever measure up to one mans solitary predicament. review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. No wonder Eudora Welty was ready to lash out if anyone else showed the same dimwittedness as the reviewer in. The only shade was provided by a long tin shed next to the sludge bin. He had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by defying convention, but I do not think his prestige in the white community was ever at risk. Eudora Welty is a master of subjective impressionism, but there is not an escapist reflex in all her work. It is enough to make Virgil sigh with despair: when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign (Welty. In. 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 no longer fears Hazels mother, and turns away without a flinch when she appears. Its going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog thats ripe and have fresh meat to eat. 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