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. Print. I learned my grandfather had been instrumental in having him named the first black deputy in the county. He is more at ease with the helpless wild creature of the woods than with Hazel at home. 183). They all carried their classic illustrations. Still, going back to William Wallace, I can hear someone somewhere asking about his name. 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. Downtown black and white mingled and spoke with each other every day. I learned my grandfather had been instrumental in having him named the first black deputy in the county. In. Backus, locally known as Beanie. Soon, people begin to ask if the fish are for sale, and William Wallace sells them. Both his grandfather and his father were struck by lightning. Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to interconnect. 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. [] Any day now the change will come. In The Wide Net there are too many myths to make a whole. 43When I finished rereading The Wide Net I reread Eudora Weltys autobiography, One Writers Beginnings. The shifting from one realm to another is a constant possibility. 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, Collected Stories 187). 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. Aeneas needs the golden bough to allow him to safely travel through the underworld to find his father. The storm in The Wide Net seems bent more on celebration than punishment, however. 32But I digress, drifting with the memory. 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. 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). He was on a mission. 2. William goes to get his friend, Virgil, with whom he'd spent the night carousing, and the pair of them round up some neighborhood men to drag the river. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and livesthe old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead (Welty. Then group returns to town, everyone carrying their heavy strings of fish. Think of another name in The Wide Net, Edna Earle. He walked through the streets of colored town as naturally as he walked to work. 16What is missing in my account of rereading the story is my misremembering the total absence of southern history, a conspicuous absence. They have to go and get the wide net, though, and that belongs to a man called Doc. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1990. He himself would have been too modest to mention it. 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. This paper reviews the history, the goals, the organisation and the components of CSNET (the Computer Science Research Network). 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. Subscribe. . Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. When William dives into the river, and emerges transformed, the myth-minded reader may then think once more of the. 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. 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). They stamped the ground and pawed each other, more like horses than men. Physically, he was everything the legend had promised. I was fifteen years old, and was the only white in the group of workers. They catch a baby alligator and the Malone brothers insist that they want to keep it. 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. 1 Robbie is right to be frightened. It had blossomed overnight during the boom years of the twenties. He walked on. Last Updated on June 19, 2019, by eNotes Editorial. 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. This was her 3rd book of fiction, another collection of stories; published in 1943 after the Robber Bridegroom. 33In this respect, my grandfather was a rare exception. 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). 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. There is, however, a simpler explanation, of the South to be sure, but leaving the story still uncomplicated by history. He hated fighting, but he had never lost a fight, and all his rivals had given up trying. 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. Welty, Eudora. Ignorant as I was, I had no doubt I was southern, born and bred. It is enough to make Virgil sigh with despair: when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign (Welty. 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. Since 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. Still, if I should apologize, I do. [] Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. They created a protocol, HyperText Transfer Protocol ( HTTP ), which standardized communication between servers and clients. He is holding fast to a little green ribbon of plant, root and all (Welty. Nature is the wide-open playground of both good and evil, and it is best to be wary when the thunder roars. 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. Mendelian randomization (MR) harnesses genetic variants as instrumental variables (IVs) to study the causal effect of exposure on outcome using summary statistics from genome-wide association studies. 3. Review and critique podcasts produced by other students as a basis for creating their own segments. The only shade was provided by a long tin shed next to the sludge bin. 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. And we fished for the same fish from the same piers in the inlet. Its a Mississippi backwoods flash mob and its just a heck of a lot of fun. Williams dive is not a baptism for the faint-hearted. It is a plunge into the inner depths that strains every fibre of his being, and tests his spirit to the limit. Recollections contains a fifty-page biographical essay by Forkner. (qtd. The memory is a living thingit too is in transit. 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. 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. Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the C got through the L in a Coca-Cola sign (Welty, Collected Stories 171). 36There is one more story about my grandfather that I need to relate. 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,, (and thus the collection itself) concludes with the portrait of a young woman who is rejected, and is forced to face absolute desolation and a serial rape. Eudora Welty could use myth otherwise, as she does in such works as her masterpiece The Golden Apples. 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. So I grew up surrounded by southern voices. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer. The Collected Stories. Aeneas needs the golden bough to allow him to safely travel through the underworld to find his father. 172). But the town itself was lively and busy and relatively sheltered from the poverty and misery that remained a plague throughout the greater South even in the 1950s. The Wide Net. Myth and meaning in that book are indivisible. What interests me more as the years go on is the life story of the individual southerner. Backus, locally known as Beanie. Job Description Summary: The Executive Assistant is responsible for the management of the Chamber's database and assisting the President & CEO with the day-to-day management of the Chamber office, including governance . Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. Robert Fitzgerald. 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. New York: A Lisa Drew Book, 2004. 180). They talked sometimes about a black giant named Foots. N 102 Library of America Series. This is the advantage of relying on memory rather than myth when digging back for the truth. They stamped the ground and pawed each other, more like horses than men. 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. Still, the shock of my initial consternation never left me, thus my impulse to turn back to Eudora Welty and my memory of The Wide Net and its mysteries when I was invited to talk about the great myths of the South. 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. 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. 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. If all this seems too good to be true, its only because I choose to stop. PBS please bring this back. Geographically, I had lived outside as a boy in the steamy heat of southern Florida. 24But 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. Sam wore them around his head, with a knot over his forehead and loops around his ears, and Robbie Bell walked behind and stared at them (Welty, Collected Stories 179). AccueilNumros67ArticlesConverging Toward the Human: Myth 1It might seem odd to find me turning to Eudora Weltys story The Wide Net the day I learned I had been invited to respond to the theme of Southern myth (the all-purpose, made-to-order, sempiternel Southern myth). This outlined the principal concepts and it defined . Saying so, I freely admit my pirouetting into The Wide Net does take some special pleading. Failed rebellions are choice makers of myths, as another failed rebellion was to prove a century later. Soon after his triumphant dive, William Wallace smiles for the first time, and falls asleep, but not for long. But I digress, drifting with the memory. 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. , notably First Love, and A Still Moment, to name the most powerful. 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. 46I have talked about William Wallace and The Wide Net, but I have said little about the assigned subject, the myth of the South. Furthermore, wide networks can successfully learn with a . Summary Themes Questions & Answers Analysis Characters Quotes Start Free Trial . Had he suspected down there, like some secret, the real, the true trouble that Hazel had fallen into, about which words in a letter could not speak Or in a myth, I cannot help adding. Now a host of biblical allusions begin to prevail over the Greek and Roman. Remember that (Welty, Collected Stories 176). The Wide Net Episode aired Feb 2, 1987 55 m IMDb RATING 8.6 /10 14 YOUR RATING Rate Comedy Drama Romance Add a plot in your language Director Anthony Herrera Writers Anthony Herrera Eudora Welty (story) Stars Elnora Chapman Boyce Holleman Tim Ransom See production, box office & company info Add to Watchlist 3 User reviews Photos Add photo Top cast Sunlight was scarce and each turn of the river took one deeper into a ripe darkness smelling of frog spawn and wild magnolia. Learn about student-produced podcasts by reading and discussing the article "Students and Teachers, From K to 12, Hit the Podcasts.". Press in the Library of Southern Civilization series. An Edna Earle is the narrator of Weltys novella The Ponder Heart. Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. In keeping with the Scottish link, it might be reversed to be read the son of James. I was not surprised he had been a good friend of Hurston, but I never found any reference to him in the standard biographies. William Wallace takes the lead back to Dover, and back to Hazel who has never left their house. I had suspected something like this as a boy, but now it was confirmed. Lush, precise, and unpredictable in every line, The Wide Net is one of the greatest odes to the natural world ever written. 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. He towered over the others, who were all big and tough. 1 Mar. I do not want to leave the impression that my grandfather was in any sense a rebel or an outsider. 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. As I have already mentioned, my grandfather lies at the heart of these memories. The one I want to tell about my grandfather concerns another man involved in the Zora Neale Hurston saga. Old Doc lives on a hill and can usually be found in his rocking chair. ISBN: 978-1-88301155-0 976 pages. 183). Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Voir la notice dans le catalogue OpenEdition, Plan du site Crdits Flux de syndication, Politique de confidentialit Gestion des cookies, Nous adhrons OpenEdition Journals dit avec Lodel Accs rserv, Vous allez tre redirig vers OpenEdition Search, Special Issue: Representation and Rewriting of Myths in Southern Short Fiction, Converging Toward the Human: Myth and Theory in "The Wide Net" (and me), It might seem odd to find me turning to Eudora Weltys story The Wide Net the day I learned I had been invited to respond to the theme of Southern myth (the all-purpose, made-to-order, sempiternel Southern myth). I do not mean to suggest that I find anything of myself in William Wallace, nor in his search for Hazel. No police, no first responders, no telephones, no helicopters just the local men and boys with an old fish net. When later on I read Faulkners praise of natural courtesy I thought of Foots at once. 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. I saw it 26 years ago and I wish it was on tonight. Salesforce has a wide range of tools that can be integrated with it to boost productivity. It runs in our family, Robbie says (Welty, Collected Stories 183).1 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. Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the C got through the L in a Coca-Cola sign (Welty. 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. Still, if I should apologize, I do. The roses needed a lot of water. To me, there is more irony than history in the name William Wallace. There I was shocked to learn I may have been born into a myth, despite myself. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Plot Summary submission guide. Hickory tree there will be yellow. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty was published in 1980. The roses needed a lot of water. 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). 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. At least the small boys have names that set them apart. Get this from a library! This was not because it was dangerous, or unseemly; it was simply against the code. Trans. 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. 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. Dives into the Wide Net but leaving the story still uncomplicated by history,. More irony than history in the name William Wallace, nor in his rocking chair Research ). 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