The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall And Arabing Essay

It is something everyone does, continuously, in everything we do; a running dialogue of thoughts always occupying our minds, perceptible to only us. In everyday life, this common train of thoughts is never scrutinized or examined, but in literature, it is something referred to as stream of consciousness and it is what will be surveyed in this essay. The two stories being observed are Katherine Porter’s â€Å"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall†, a short story about an 80-year-old woman’s thoughts and memories as she lives out her last day. The second story is James Joyce’s â€Å"Araby†, the fictional story of a young boy in Dublin and his infatuation with a girl in his neighborhood. This essay will examine stream of consciousness vital role in these†¦show more content†¦576). The character of the boy is described as early pubescent which permits the reader to deduce on what he fully knows regarding life, love, and lust. An unreliable narrator, however, is a narrator that we perceive to be misleading, self-deceptive, deluded or deranged. Porter articulately depicts Granny Weatherall to be most of these in â€Å"The Jilting...† particularly when the reader encounters an interaction between Granny, also referred to as Ellen, and her daughter Cornelia, â€Å"tell Hapsy to take off her cap. I can’t see her plain.† The reader is later made aware of the circumstance that Hapsy, one of Ellen’s children, has died. Once more, half-way through the story, Granny displays how truly jumbled by reality she is when she tells Cornelia that she won’t see the doctor again because â€Å"he’s only been gone three minutes† and her daughter informs Granny and the reader, â€Å"That was this morning, Mother. It’s night now.† (p. 80). These exchanges highlight how much Granny Weatherall is as an untrustworthy narrator. Opposed to â€Å"Araby†, which is told in first person fr om the perspective of the young boy, â€Å"The Jilting†¦Ã¢â‚¬  is disconcertingly told in limited third person by which we can see inside the mind of only Granny Weatherall; as such, when Granny is lucid, the story proceeds in sequential order. Consequently, for stream of consciousness to be operative, the working of the character’s mind should