From Betrayal To Reconciliation

Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)'s steady and exalted reputation as a shortfiction writer in America rests upon a relatively small output. In recent years, she hasbecome one of the most popular American writers with Chinese critics and theresearch on her is growing wider, deeper and done from a multitude of perspectives.Though the areas of her religious view and her symbolism have been touched upon bya couple of scholars, the search for a unifying religious theme in her representativeworks from the biblical archetypal perspective has never been attempted, whichbecomes the objective of the present thesis.The feasibility of the attempt lies in: 1. Her insistence that all her stories are"fragments of a much larger plan" which agrees with the practice of reading several ofher stories as a whole for a unifying religious theme and the cosmic view of literatureheld by archetypal criticism. 2. Her heavy use of Christian symbolism to convey herperception of the religious crisis of her times and her quest for new spiritual supportafter that. 3. Her fondness of and deftness at the stream of consciousness technique,which weaves reality and the characters' dreams, where archetypes abound. 4. Herinterest in the subject of dying and death, that precious occasion for man to explorethe world after death and the meaning of life, from which philosophy and religionstem.Based on a survey of Porter's major stories, the thesis assumes that three of herrepresentative works, namely, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"(1930), "FloweringJudas"(1930), and Pale Horse, Pale Rider(1939), all typifying the above-mentionedfeatures, form a sequence in which a unifying religious theme may be traced through astudy of the employment and displacement of certain biblical archetypes. By doingthat, the thesis also ventures that Porter's attitude to religion, which seems ambivalentto many previous critics, can be unified by Christian humanism.The thesis begins with an account of the archetypal theories, especially NorthropFrye's. His main propositions are that literary criticism should acquire a total coherence based on a hypothesis about literature itself, and that the primary source ofthis coherence is the recurrence, with various degrees of "displacement", of certainarchetypes in literature of all periods and cultures. In his masterpieces Anatomy ofCriticism(1957) and The Great Code(1982), Frye presents a grand scheme ofarchetypal images and archetypal narratives, drawing heavily on the Bible."Displacement" is a term used by him to denote the adaptation of myth and metaphorto literary works of morality or plausibility. The study of displacement may reveal alot about the theme of a literary work.From the biblical archetypal perspective, "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"conducts a tragic narrative of the heroine Granny Weatherall from life to death, fromfirm faith in to bitter betrayal by God on her last day through the replacement of thedesire for apocalyptic imagery by the reality of demonic imagery in and outside hermind. The displacement of the bride of Christ archetype by Granny not onlyreinforces the theme of the betrayal of man by God, but also suggests, however lateand minute it may seem, man's effort to assert himself after the death of God."Flowering Judas" continues the narrative of "The Jilting of Granny Weatherali"by presenting an ironic portrayal of a group of betrayers of God dedicated to thesecular religiofi of revolution. The prevailing imagery here is a demonic parody of theapocalyptic one, with three of the characters: Braggioni, his wife and Eugenioparodying Jesus Christ, and the heroine Laura a parody of his loyal disciple. Mostprominently, in the nightmarish dream of Laura at the end of the story, she participatesin cannibalism, which constitutes a parody of holy communion. The nightmare revealsto her the horrible nature of her way of living and implies the possibility of comic riseto the ironic narration.The narrative of Pale Horse, Pale Rider follows the U-shaped comic pattembased on the displacement of the myth of the death and rebirth of Jesus Christ,incorporating that of the Adam and Eve myth, through which the redemptive power ofearthly love in a Godless world is foregrounded. The journey into and out of deathwhich gave Miranda an unexpected glimpse of the apocalyptic heaven and gave thedominant gray color a precious glow shows that love in this world may lead man back to God. In it, lies the reconciliation of man and God, humanism and Christianity.On the surface, the change from mutual betrayal to final reconciliation betweenman and God reflects Porter's changing attitude towards religion from skepticism anddisillusionment to regression. However, the God she regresses to, or is reconciled with,is no longer the personal one who teaches Granny to bear the sufferings of this worldto trade for eternal happiness after death. Rather, it is the spirit of God that connoteslove, which is consistent with the advocacy of human needs, capacities andthis-worldly orientation of humanism. The common emphasis on love by Christianityand humanism provides the basis for the reconciliation of man and God. Aretrospective look at the three stories reaffirms that Christian humanism which hasChristianity as its form but is humanistic in content has been Porter's constant choicewhen it comes to religion. Granny failed to go to heaven after death, just as she hadled a loveless life. The degeneration of Braggioni and Laura is caused not so much bytheir desertion of Christianity as by their failure to love other human beings. OnlyMiranda found the harmony between man and God in the harmony among lovinghuman beings.The thesis concludes that through the employment and displacement of biblicalarchetypes, the three representative stories of Porter's express a unifying religioustheme: the mutual betrayal of man and God in the 20th century western world andtheir reconciliation in Christian humanism. Porter's resort to Christian humanism for away out of the religious crisis after the death of a personal God is representative ratherthan accidental, because in theology, Christian humanism emerged at about the sametime as the writing of these stories.