Granny Weatherall

The Story begins with Granny Weatherall already lying on her deathbed. Granny is having mental flashbacks as the end of her life approaches like "a fog [rising] over the valley." Porter uses the foggy weather to show the cloudiness and disillusionment that Granny seems to be receiving as the end of her life becomes more and more apparent. Granny recalls events throughout her life, from being left at the altar on her wedding day, (her first "jilting") to losing a child, to coming to an understanding with her own death as we later see towards the end of the story. Porter also uses another form of symbolism as she states "The blue light from Cornelia's lampshade drew into a tiny point in the center of her brain, it flickered and winked like an eye, and quietly it fluttered and dwindled." The blue light can be a representation of Granny Weatherall's spirit. Just as Granny Weatherall's time is dwindling down, the blue lamp shade is also becoming more and more less apparent. Granny Weatherall's life time is "flickering" away into the abyss just as the blue light is flickering away into the darkness from Cornelia's lamp shade. Porter also uses other references to death as when describing how "her body (Granny Weatherall's) was now only a deeper mass of shadow in an endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and swallow it up." The light is representing the amount of lifespan Granny Weatherall has left. This short amount is all that is left as it is being engulfed into the abyss of the afterlife, just as granny's soul is drifting away