The Grave: Redemption and Coming of Age

The austere redemption and Coming of age Everyone has that one somebody that they look up to as a child. In the in brief fable The Grave, a young fille named Miranda grew up without a mother and is considered to be a tomboy. Her elder brother, Paul, is that person she looks up to. She has a sort of epiphany after playing and digging through and through dirt in her grandfathers old grave with her brother and finding a gold telephone which gears her into discovering her femininity.The author, Katherine Anne gatekeeper uses symbolism to a great consequence to illustrate the themes of redemption and Mirandas epiphany of deciding to accept and embrace her existence as a woman. The main form of symbolism that porter uses in the story is Christian Symbolism. Prior to when Miranda and Paul explore the grave, Porter describes the cemetery by stating The cemetery had been a pleasant, small, neglected garden of tangled rose bushes and molest cedar trees and cypress. . . (362). The description of the grave refers to the Garden of Eden which is a Christian Biblical setting.Grubbs acknowledges that . . . Something that Miranda says about a snake conjoining their exploration of the sculpt makes the Biblical connection almost obvious. We the indorser guess that there will be a fall however, when Miranda asks if she can have the first snake in their hunt, suggesting the snake that led Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge (Smith, Ed 3). This supports the theme of redemption to this Biblical reference. Miranda and Paul feel much analogous how Adam and Eve felt in The Fall of Eden the reader can make this comparison by this quote in the wretched story saying . . The cemetery was no longer theirs, and they felt resembling trespassers (Porter 363). When Adam and Eve begin to feel as if they have through with(p) a forbidden act, they start to have negative feelings such as shame and the fear of being discovered, just like Miranda and Paul, and how they do not want anyone to know that they have been playing in their grandfathers grave. Grubbs points out the content of the graves being, . . . symbols of experience . . . and one of the storys many links to the fall (2).In the graves Miranda found a silver plunge and Paul found a gold ring, which they soon traded their findings. Considering the dove as well, Grubbs notes that The doves emergence from the grave suggests sinlessness born from experience . . . he reports as well that Graves and treasures dissemble loss and recovery together they suggest continuity (2). The symbolic meanings of the dove and the gold ring have a large impact on the story. The gold ring though has an even more of an impact on Miranda than it does on Paul.Following trading the ring with Paul, Miranda has an epiphany regarding her feelings about her existence as a woman and moving away from being a tomboy and bear on toward embracing her femininity. Once Miranda saw the ring she loved it, in the short story it sta tes Miranda was smitten at sight of the ring and wished to have it (Porter 363). The ring becomes to have a stronger effect on her when she begins to resent her boyish clothes. immediately the ring, shining with serene purity of fine gold on her kinda grubby thumb, turned her feelings against her overalls and sockless feet . . . (Porter 365). She then wanted to go home and wanted to . . . dust herself with plenty of Marias her older infant violet talcum powder and . . . put up on the thinnest, most becoming dress she owned, with a big sash, and bait in a wicker chair under the trees . . . (Porter 365). With this being stated the reader can observe how Miranda is realizing the reality of the straightforward differences between her and her brother. Cromie and Karr solid ground that This fantasy obviously works to prepare us for Mirandas acceptance of her part as a woman, but it is also reminiscent of the Fall (4).This is true because Miranda accepting herself as being a wom an reflects her loss of ingenuousness in relation to the story line in the Fall of Eden. Porter uses many different examples of symbolism throughout the story to connect the thought of death and rebirth redemption and Mirandas maturing into a young woman. Grubbs comments that The narrator draws us into The Grave through several layers of time and seemingly disjointed events, each layer telling more than the one before (2).Throughout the story the reader can follow Mirandas thoughts and behaviors to conclude her significant changes from a young girl who looked up to her older brother as a role model to designating her older sister as her role model, not to mention Mirandas discovery of continuity. Work Cited Porter, Katherine Anne. The Grave The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. Orlando Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. 362-68. Print. Rooke Constance and Bruce Wallis. Myth and Epiphany in Porters The Grave,. Studies in short fiction 25. 3 (Summer 1978) 269-275. Rpt. In Sho rt Story Criticism. Ed. jenny Cromie and Justin Karr. Vol. 43. Detroit Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Oct. 2012. Grubbs, M. A. The Grave. Masterplots II Short Story Series, revise Edition (2004) 1-2. Literary adduce Center. Web. 26 Oct. 2012. The Grave. Short Stories for Student. Ed. Jennifer Smith. Vol. 11. Detroit Gale Group, 2001. 78-93. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Oct. 2012.