The Grave by Katherine Anne Porter
"The Grave" by Katherine Anne Porter is a poignant short story that explores themes of childhood innocence, loss, and the complexities of life and death through the experiences of two siblings, Miranda and Paul. Set against the backdrop of their family's evolving burial practices, the narrative begins with the exhumation of their grandfather’s remains, reflecting the possessiveness of their grandmother and the shifting bonds of family. While playing near the old burial ground, the children discover treasures in the open graves: Miranda finds a silver dove, while Paul uncovers a gold ring. Their playful exchange of these items leads to a deeper exploration of their identities and desires, particularly for Miranda, who begins to grapple with her emerging femininity and societal expectations.
As the story unfolds, a pivotal moment occurs when Paul skins a rabbit and uncovers its unborn young, which serves as a catalyst for Miranda's awakening to the realities of life, death, and her own burgeoning consciousness. The narrative shifts forward nearly twenty years, where a chance encounter with a marketplace in a foreign land triggers vivid memories of that fateful day, illustrating how childhood experiences shape one's understanding of the world. Overall, "The Grave" intricately weaves together the themes of memory, innocence, and the cyclical nature of life, inviting readers to reflect on how the past informs the present.
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The Grave by Katherine Anne Porter
First published: 1935
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of work: 1903 and about 1923
Locale: A Texas farm and a foreign city
Principal Characters:
Miranda , a nine-year-old girl; later a grown womanPaul , her twelve-year-old brother
The Story
The corpse of Miranda and Paul's grandfather has been exhumed three times since his death in about 1870. Twice it was removed by their possessive grandmother and reburied, first in Louisiana and then on her farm in Texas. After the grandmother's death, the land where the burial ground lies is sold, and the grandfather—along with the other occupants of the family cemetery—is removed by his descendants to a public cemetery to lie beside his widow for eternity.
One day following the last exhumation, Miranda, nine years of age, and Paul, who is twelve years old, are hunting for rabbits and birds. Crossing the fence into the old burial ground, they notice the open graves. Miranda leaps into the pit that had held her grandfather's bones and finds a small silver dove. Excited by her discovery, she climbs out to show the dove to Paul, who, in another grave, has found a gold ring. Miranda instinctively wants the ring, Paul the dove, so the two exchange their treasures. Realizing that they are trespassing on land that is no longer theirs, they return to the other side of the fence and pick up their guns. As they walk, Paul declares that the first dove or rabbit they see is his, and Miranda asks if she can have the first snake. The gold ring, now glistening on Miranda's "grubby thumb," shifts her attention from hunting to her boyish clothes; suddenly she resents her overalls and sockless feet and longs to put on a thin, becoming dress.
Just as Miranda decides that she should tell her brother about her change of mind and return home, Paul shoots, without Miranda's competing, and kills a rabbit. After stripping the skin—to be used as a coat for Miranda's dolls—and noticing the animal's bloated belly, he tells Miranda the rabbit was going to have babies. Cutting through the flesh and then into the scarlet bag, Paul exposes a bundle of tiny rabbits, each wrapped in a thin scarlet veil. He removes the veils and reveals their almost featureless blind faces, and Miranda asks to see them. Touching one and noticing the blood running over them, she trembles without knowing why. Seeing the unborn rabbits, which remind her of kittens and human babies, Miranda loses some of her former ignorance and begins to feel a formless intuition in her mind and body. She at once decides not to keep the skin, and Paul buries the babies back in the womb, wraps the loose skin around the body, and hides it in the bushes. With a confidential tone, Paul implores Miranda to keep the event a secret.
One day, nearly twenty years later, as Miranda is picking a path along a market street in a strange city of a strange country, a vendor holds up a tray of dyed candies in the form of little creatures, including birds and rabbits. The candy, in combination with the market's piles of raw flesh and wilting flowers, evokes the memory of that long-ago day, which springs to her mind with such vivid clarity that it stuns her. Until this day, she had remembered the episode only vaguely as the time she and Paul had found treasure in the opened graves. At this moment, the dreadful vision dims, and Miranda imagines young Paul standing in the blazing sunshine, smiling soberly, and turning the silver dove over in his hands.
Bibliography
Austenfeld, Thomas Carl. American Women Writers and the Nazis: Ethics and Politics in Boyle, Porter, Stafford, and Hellman. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Katherine Anne Porter: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.
Brinkmeyer, Robert H. Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
Busby, Mark, and Dick Heaberlin, eds. From Texas to the World and Back: Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2001.
Fornataro-Neil, M. K. "Constructed Narratives and Writing Identity in the Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter." Twentieth Century Literature 44 (Fall, 1998): 349-361.
Givner, Joan. Katherine Anne Porter: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Hartley, Lodwick, and George Core, eds. Katherine Anne Porter: A Critical Symposium. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969.
Spencer, Virginia, ed."Flowering Judas": Katherine Anne Porter. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Stout, Janis. Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Walsh, Thomas F. Katherine Anne Porter and Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.