Engraved in large letters beneath the names was the single word: Murdered. These were the graves of her maternal grandparents who had been viciously axed to death by two men looking for easy prey and a few dollars. There is certainly no question that Williams dive to the bottom of the river brings him up a new man. When later on I read Faulkners praise of natural courtesy I thought of Foots at once. 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, . Faced with the most serious crisis of his young life, William at least has the resourcefulness to ask help from one of his friends from the night out, Virgil Thomas, and they set out to borrow the wide net from Old Doc, and to gather other members of the community to help drag the river. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. The Malones are indistinguishable from each other, and so are the Doyles. William must will himself into a new man, and as a Jamieson, he must cease being a perpetual son, and affirm his status as a father. Later in the story a violent storm with a blast of wind covers the entire search party with wet leaves. Summary of The Wide Net by Welty. The narration speculates on what he experiences in the solitude of the river bottom: So far down and all alone, had he found Hazel? Hazels name evokes the Celtic symbol of wisdom and the source of life hidden in underground water. This outlined the principal concepts and it defined . I have talked about William Wallace and The Wide Net, but I have said little about the assigned subject, the myth of the South. William goes out one night with two friends, gets drunk and lies all night in a ditch playing the harmonica. 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. One was the Florida artist A.E. 39These were some of the memories humming in my head when I began reading the books about Southern myth in Chapel Hill. And I found a note to myself slipped in the pages of my old single volume edition of the collection relating Eudora Weltys initial concept of writing a fictional history of the Old Natchez Trace. 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 Aeneid. He was a big man, steady and straight despite his age, and must have been a formidable force in making an arrest. Foots waited until they were all inside. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. There is, however, a simpler explanation, of the South to be sure, but leaving the story still uncomplicated by history. At least this is true of the first half of The Wide Net. The second half is a different matter entirely and herein lies one of the genial transformations that The Wide Net performs as naturally and as completely as one season turns into another. During the wars of Scottish independence in the thirteenth century, William Wallace was the great leader and hero, whom popular tradition in the mists of time has now elevated to mythical proportions. I have tried to explain, to myself more than to anyone else, that the multiplication of myth and legend in The Wide Net is there, in all its rich jumbling, to nudge the reader elsewhere. What touched me more, and what I remember best now, were the lives around me while growing up. The packet switching technology was essential to the development of . 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. review but they say those things just because I happen to live in the southbut nobody else had better say I am unhuman (qtd. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. eNotes.com, Inc. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. When he surfaces he is still in shock: And when William Wallace came up it was in an agony from submersion, which seemed an agony of the blood and of the very heart, so woeful he looked (Welty. Jamieson takes a bit more twisting to unravel a historical connection. Aeneas needs the golden bough to allow him to safely travel through the underworld to find his father. Hickory tree there will be yellow. 38I do not want to leave the impression that my grandfather was in any sense a rebel or an outsider. CSNET bridged between the original (closed) ARPANET and the NSFNET (open) by . New York: Signet Classics, 1961. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. Print. The one I want to tell about my grandfather concerns another man involved in the Zora Neale Hurston saga. When I was invited to speak about the myth of the South, the thought of Weltys The Wide Net, came to my mind in a flash. We may remember his prayer: If only the golden bough/Might shine for us in such a wilderness! (Vergil, 166). Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer. They catch a baby alligator and the Malone brothers insist that they want to keep it. 32But I digress, drifting with the memory. deliberately refuses to shy away from vice, racism, pride, self-indulgence, and violence. The grown-up Doyles and Malones are fixed in their undefined identities forever. Published in ACM SIGCOMM 83. 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, Collected Stories 184). In The Wide Net there are too many myths to make a whole. I could easily call to mind other memories that would deepen and darken the story. When later on I read Faulkners praise of natural courtesy I thought of Foots at once. 4Rereading The Wide Net brought many of these memories back to mind, and it brought back to mind too my dismay in Chapel Hill at fitting them into a theory of myth, or even at weaving them into a common pattern of southern identity. 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. The Wide Net has been one of my favorite stories for at least forty years. 28What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. The black families had moved in the same direction to escape their hard lives as sharecroppers and a harsher form of racial discrimination. William Wallace has done the real catching, unless of course, it has been Hazel herself. I had suspected something like this as a boy, but now it was confirmed. And I found a note to myself slipped in the pages of my old single volume edition of the collection relating Eudora Weltys initial concept of writing a fictional history of the Old Natchez Trace. 15The story ends with Hazel calling his name from the bedroom. Of course writing her autobiography is a proof of that power, but Eudora Welty goes further. 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. Walking down Orange Avenue he stopped in each of the three barber shops to tip his hat and say hello, and then picked up his daily cigar at the post office. Updates? 179). Print. When Virgil finds a string of beads in the river, he gives them to Sam and Robbie. William Wallace knows now that Hazel holds the secret mystery that will continue to make him more of his own man, and he is willing to follow her lead as long as it takes: He climbed to his feet too and stood beside her trying to look where she looked. A reality that is, perhaps, a level or two beneath the conventional mode of realism. 2On rereading the story I soon realized that my instincts had not failed me completely. The second date is today's When she allows William his ritual role of thinking himself the man of the house by letting him tamely slap and spank her, the reconciliation is complete. in Marrs 70-71). It is enough to make Virgil sigh with despair: when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign (Welty. 29A few of these stories were comic, but most of them dwelled on hardship and tragedy. Even though there is no southern history in the story, surely his name is steeped in historical associations. 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. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. Now that I have tried to do justice to my rereading of the story, which was, and is, my main purpose throughout these reflections, there should be no objection if I back up a bit and mention a few of the memories I carried with me when I entered the new world of the Old South at the university. 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. I like to think too, along these same lines, that the comic folklore of the first half of the story makes his solitary dive in the Pearl River, and his transformation, more unpredictable, and thus more human. A man and a woman, unknown to each, but sharing the commonality of being from the North, meet in New Orleans and commence upon a strange tour that almost verges on the romantic, but gets only as far as one hesitant kiss. He was a black deputy who had saved Hurstons letters and manuscripts from a fire after her death. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. More important to my purpose here, however, they did help me throw some light on the pluralities of myth and legend that had confused me when I had first read The Wide Net. I realize this is a self-indulgent proposition, but to be honest, I no longer have much faith in finding the definitive myth of the collective South. Grady is already a sort of father to Brucie. The Wide Net, short-story collection by Eudora Welty, published in 1943. LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House. Right after he got back, though, some of his old friends met him at a local tavern and asked him if it were true that he had run away from the fight. In those days the post office had a small shop that sold tobacco and newspapers. The original ( closed ) ARPANET and the NSFNET ( open ) by books about southern myth in Hill. 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