she had been filled to the brim with that elation that they all remembered, like their own secret, the elation that comes of great hopes and changes (Welty, Collected Stories 180). I located myself in these pages and could go straight to the stories and pictures I loved (Welty, One Writers Beginnings 8). They all carried their classic illustrations. 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). It was written forty years after The Wide Net but I was gratified to find her speak of myth and memory in a way that confirmed what I thought I had found in the story. Us is the fishes (Welty, Collected Stories 183). 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, Collected Stories 173). They catch a baby alligator and the Malone brothers insist that they want to keep it. 179). 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). 42Myth may help shape an identity, but memory is the single vital source of selfhood, and the key, I believe, to William Wallace and The Wide Net. Despite the help of the search party, the willingness of the community to lend a hand, William Wallace must forget the outside world before he plunges into the inner, and by so doing, he recovers Hazel, who as Old Doc knows, has been there all the time. He surely died the poorest judge in all of Florida, but he did leave me his gold Hamilton watch which had been given him when he retired from working on the railroad as a young man in Georgia. So I grew up surrounded by southern voices. 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. The story works on several levels and gives the viewer no clue as to whether it should be taken seriously at all. The second date is today's The only shade was provided by a long tin shed next to the sludge bin. 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. If all this seems too good to be true, its only because I choose to stop. For one thing, I think I would have trouble arguing to myself, or to my wife and family, that I never existed, even as a boy, yet Eudora Welty is writing in the tradition of the modern folk tale. William Wallace will soon demonstrate a stronger will in a more heroic gesture than catching a rabbit. The white families, like my own, had migrated there from their farms in South Georgia in the hope of improving their prospects. When he wakes up he affirms his new sense of power and potency by tying a catfish to his belt and launching into a wild Dionysian dance. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. Old Doc lives on a hill and can usually be found in his rocking chair. publication online or last modification online. But there were no old plantations or slave quarters, and no signs to mark the battles of the Civil War since there had been no battles. We may remember his prayer: If only the golden bough/Might shine for us in such a wilderness! (Vergil, 166). They are just playing out a role for the simple joy of pretending, and will soon return to themselves. The shock will take a little time to absorb, but he has now found himself, and is beginning to embrace his new role as a father. These were some of the memories humming in my head when I began reading the books about Southern myth in Chapel Hill. 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. Neither does Eudora Welty in her autobiography, and she is one of the most southern writers who ever existed. Foots waited until they were all inside. Weltys mother refused to have a copy in her house. After all, where else can I look for a better source? Later on I was told that the killers were black men, and that members of our family had made sure they were given a fair trial. Soon, people begin to ask if the fish are for sale, and William Wallace sells them. Log in here. The Wide Net and Other Stories deliberately refuses to shy away from vice, racism, pride, self-indulgence, and violence. He had earned the name by winning a juke joint contest for having the biggest feet in Florida. He himself would have been too modest to mention it. It is a plunge into the inner depths that strains every fibre of his being, and tests his spirit to the limit. 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. The Malones are indistinguishable from each other, and so are the Doyles. Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #201055. References to babies, for example, can be found everywhere, from the little man on the toy-like train, to the baby alligator, all the way to the corn shuck doll waiting by itself on the bench back in Dover. After politely answering my questions about the Hurston papers, he turned to me and spoke for a good thirty minutes about my grandfather. I was fifteen years old, and was the only white in the group of workers. To begin with, the southern world I grew up in, a small coastal town in Florida in the years after WWII, was not all that representative of the South. 30But these Georgia tales were of the kind that Eudora Welty describes as old and complete in Asphodel, one of the short stories in The Wide Net. An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella The Ponder Heart. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. As I have already mentioned, my grandfather lies at the heart of these memories. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The Pearl River is the prime example in The Wide Net and therefore the source of selfhood that will save William Wallace. Hazel wands were traditionally used as dowsing rods. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty was published in 1980. Sunlight was scarce and each turn of the river took one deeper into a ripe darkness smelling of frog spawn and wild magnolia. 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. She is one of Hazels cousins. The fact that William Wallace allows them to come even though they are too young to be of much help may imply that the value of his own fatherhood is beginning to dawn on him. Hazels name evokes the Celtic symbol of wisdom and the source of life hidden in underground water. Furthermore, wide networks can successfully learn with a . If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original 28What was missing in this southern town was southern history, or at least any striking display of history. Hickory tree there will be yellow. Foots was in charge. 15The story ends with Hazel calling his name from the bedroom. The shifting from one realm to another is a constant possibility. He could lift hundred-pound sacks of fertilizer with each hand. When was Delta Wedding set?? She is one of Hazels cousins. His name was Patrick Duval. In many respects he cherished the community as much as his family, but it had to be the whole community, white and black. One was the Florida artist A.E. And, to tell the truth, the details are daunting, especially as we are led down the old Natchez Trace towards the Pearl River, deeper and deeper into southern river country, a vast cradle of natural wonder that teems with vitality and mystery. In The Wide Net, William Wallace must make his own way, and history, southern or otherwise, mythical or not, does not provide him (or the reader) with any guidelines. 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. We may take this with a grain of salt, but the fascination with Scottish heroes in the South would have made the name of William Wallace a common choice. My mother had met her and gave me the names of several people who had been her friends. with a celebration of memory that for her has now become a personal creed, and has allowed her to begin her life as a writer. He saw that the bodies of the frozen birds had fallen out of the trees, and he fell down and wept for his father and mother, to whom he had not said good-bye (Welty, First Love, Collected Stories 168). 1 Robbie is right to be frightened. The Aeneid. The river never seems the same, yet even when William Wallace forgets its name, its ageless identity is never in question: The winding river looked old sometimes, when it ran wrinkled and deep under high banks where the roots of trees hung down, and sometimes it seemed to be only a young creek, shining with the colors of wildflowers (Welty, Collected Stories 178). It was the county seat, so there were a few imposing public buildings. The one I want to tell about my grandfather concerns another man involved in the Zora Neale Hurston saga. I did recall that it had fascinated (and puzzled) me by mixing together a multitude of myths and legends, reaching far and wide in time and in place, including the local and the regional. We may take this with a grain of salt, but the fascination with Scottish heroes in the South would have made the name of William Wallace a common choice. At least the small boys have names that set them apart. Summary. And if my commentaries, such as they are, do make me vulnerable to all sorts of criticism, especially when judged by the principles of pure scholarship (principles I would be the first to preach), at least I cannot be faulted on what I say about my own autobiography. Robert Fitzgerald. Sunlight was scarce and each turn of the river took one deeper into a ripe darkness smelling of frog spawn and wild magnolia. Already a member? After all, for William it is only October and the baby will not be born until April (fall and rebirth go hand in hand in this story). Saying so, I freely admit my pirouetting into The Wide Net does take some special pleading. Delta Wedding in 1946. There is the miraculous catch of fish, and the hymns William and Virgil hear while walking back home: They were having the Sacred Harp Sing on the grounds of an old white church glimmering there at the crossroads, far below. When William arrives alone at his house, he sees something he had never seen, a rainbow at night (Welty. Physically, he was everything the legend had promised. 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. But I could not remember that it had revealed the slightest interest in the South as a subject of focus or reflection. In. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc, 1980. Then he announced Boys, look right here, the Judge is his granddaddy. William Wallace has done the real catching, unless of course, it has been Hazel herself. The Great Wide Sea (2008), a novel by M. H. Herlong, follows sixteen-year-old Ben Byron, who mourns the loss of his mother with his younger brothers, Gerry and Dylan, while spending a year at sea.As Ben processes his grief, he clashes with his father, until he mysteriously vanishes from the boat one morning. Now a host of biblical allusions begin to prevail over the Greek and Roman. The town was neatly divided into black and white neighborhoods, but my grandfathers house had been deliberately chosen because it was right on the border between the two and my cousins and I played and talked with black children every day. It is more of a distraction than a signpost, unlike, I would be the first to admit, the names of Virgil and Hazel, more fixed in their roles. Hazel is pregnant, and William is baffled by her changing attitude (she would not speak and her eyes glowed). An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella, . eNotes Editorial. 8The group that William finally collects is a motley one, all male, but they are of a kind. I was not surprised he had been a good friend of Hurston, but I never found any reference to him in the standard biographies. cite this page as follows: "the wide net - summary"enotes publishinged. One of the most famous sons of a James was Bonnie Prince Charles, son of James Stuart, grandson of King James II, and leader of the final Jacobite Rebellion in the middle of the eighteenth century to restore the Scottish Stuarts to the throne of England and Scotland. This was not because it was dangerous, or unseemly; it was simply against the code. Orlando: A Harvest Book, 2006. No police, no first responders, no telephones, no helicopters just the local men and boys with an old fish net. . When he escaped he went back to his native state of Georgia and lived to a ripe old age. 16What is missing in my account of rereading the story is my misremembering the total absence of southern history, a conspicuous absence. 2On rereading the story I soon realized that my instincts had not failed me completely. It was, however, filled with southerners. Print. Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to interconnect. 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. May 1942 issue Download PDF From the Archive. 180). He is holding fast to a little green ribbon of plant, root and all (Welty. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. 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. They talked sometimes about a black giant named Foots. Once again, however, we cannot escape the fact that names are chosen for us. 44Here 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. His edition of Alexander Stephens prison diary, Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens, was published by L.S.U. In my town there were cattle ranches and orange groves to the west, and a small fleet of shrimping boats chugging back and forth on the Indian River to and from the Atlantic. 34I think my grandfathers reputation helped me too in an experience that will stay with me as long as I live. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge (Welty, One Writers Beginnings 102). The Wide Net. The second half of the story is rich in events, but the outcome is never in doubt. 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. The pounding is musical, given that Eudora Welty is playing the instrument, but it can be felt all through the story, from the ironic chord of the first three words all the way to the final throb of the last line. As a matter of fact, he was a pillar of the community. In The Wide Net, William Wallace must make his own way, and history, southern or otherwise, mythical or not, does not provide him (or the reader) with any guidelines. He plays his role well, lost in his own performance, an unstoppable gramophone of platitudes, talking just to hear himself talk, but sometimes, almost despite himself, repeating nuggets of wisdom that bear directly on the quest itself: Were walking along in the changing-time. William Wallace has done the real catching, unless of course, it has been Hazel herself. Word Count: 385. Physically, he was everything the legend had promised. He has proven his love to her by spending the whole day looking for her, and he has also bonded with his friends and other other men during the process. 45Of course writing her autobiography is a proof of that power, but Eudora Welty goes further. What was her first novel and when was it published? He told me that my grandfather had told him he had left Georgia to come to Florida because he hated the way blacks were treated. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/1781. But Hazel is no rabbit as Virgil makes clear: Anybody can freeze a rabbit, that wants to he says, and promptly chases the rabbit away: Was you out catching cotton-tails, or was you out catching your wife? (Welty, Collected Stories 172). eNotes.com, Inc. Eudora Welty is comically playing on the popular refrain that such a collection of rural men and boys could be found only in the Deep South. In one of her early letters to him she wrote about her desire to write a Mississippi book: She also asks Russell: Do you think I dare to have honest-to-God people walking around in the stories? This is fatalism raised, or lowered, to farce, but points to a fear of being victimized by mysterious forces (without and within) that William Wallace himself must struggle against, and defeat. 21His full name is William Wallace Jamieson. CRM is one of the top technology investments that organizations can make. William Jamieson comes home one night from being out with friends and finds a note from his pregnant wife, who is threatening suicide by jumping off bridge He calls his friends and they go to the river searching for her, they also recruit bystanders to help out . 27Even as I write, the memories come flooding, but two or three should be enough to make my case. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. The name of Edna Earle comes from the heroine of the most popular novel in the South after the Civil War, by Augusta Jane Evans. The story recounts how Sister, the intelligent and ironic narrator, comes to fall out with her family over incidents arising from her younger sister Stella-Rondo's sudden reappearance in their small southern town, minus her husband and with a two-year-old "adopted" child in tow. note:when citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. This is the advantage of relying on memory rather than myth when digging back for the truth. 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. date the date you are citing the material. Beginning as a folktale of the barely possible innocence of a perennial boy with a cow-lick, at a loss and turning in circles, the story right in the middle changes skin, and the boy and the narrative miraculously transform themselves into a one-of-a-kind human triumph. The group that William finally collects is a motley one, all male, but they are of a kind. The Wide Net. 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. Old Doc reminds me of the old men in another great modern folk story, The Weavers Grave, by the Irish writer Seumas OKelly. 23Think of another name in The Wide Net, Edna Earle. Instead of one of the more conventional pieties, here was a crying out to both God and man against injustice. The second is the date of This paper reviews the history, the goals, the organisation and the components of CSNET (the Computer Science Research Network). The more common it is, however, the less likely it can be seized upon for special consideration. He has recovered his memory too, and with it, we know now, a new power of self-direction, decision, and acceptance. Bigpicture.net registered under .NET top-level domain. The story ends with Hazel calling his name from the bedroom. The one I want to tell about my grandfather concerns another man involved in the Zora Neale Hurston saga. I realized that the origins of these myths had to be traced and analyzed, not least of all to better understand their impact on American culture and history. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Wide Net has been one of my favorite stories for at least forty years. He lets the little infant plant fall free, and from now on the search is over. Subscribe. Myth may help shape an identity, but memory is the single vital source of selfhood, and the key, I believe, to William Wallace and The Wide Net. Despite the help of the search party, the willingness of the community to lend a hand, William Wallace must forget the outside world before he plunges into the inner, and by so doing, he recovers Hazel, who as Old Doc knows, has been there all the time. 18Since William Wallace cannot be contained in any single myth, or even in a multitude of myths, it should not have surprised me that he is able to exist untouched by history, or at least untouched by a southern identity usually defined and distinguished as being overwhelmed and overdetermined by history. 20Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. In those days the post office had a small shop that sold tobacco and newspapers. Other people join in too. 40I 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. 13There is certainly no question that Williams dive to the bottom of the river brings him up a new man. It is enough to make Virgil sigh with despair: when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign (Welty. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. But there is an even better reason not to insist too much on the historical significance of names in The Wide Net. Names are chosen for us, not the other way around, and The Wide Net insists upon individual choice as the primary measure of character. date the date you are citing the material. The workers, all black men, would let us sit on the blocks of ice waiting to be crushed. 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