Porter masterfully uses figurative language to depict the
netherworld between Granny Ellen Weatherall’s consciousness, memories, and the grip of
death. Dr.Harry floats “like a balloon” (paragraph 6) in a room “like a dark curtain
drawn around the bed” (paragraph 8) filed with “streamers of blue-gray light like tissue
paper over her eyes” (paragraph 29). Towards the end, Granny’s daughter’s
voice“staggered and bumped like a cart in a bad road” (paragraph 56) and in her last
moments, Granny enters the figurative world she describes: The line between figurative
and literal becomes blurred. It is Granny's worlds that becomes blurred because she is
near death. Granny climbs into the metaphorical cart which represents her daughter’s
faltering voice, which eventually “made short turns and tilted over and crashed”
(paragraph 58).
As Granny Weatherall reviews her life, it
is in the stream of consciousness style, the haphazardness of her recollection; it is
because her story charts the many transformations she has undergone in her eighty years.
Her life history captures how work changes a woman, how betrayal alters a person’s
heart, how motherhood changes a woman, and ultimately how aging affects her judgment of
her own life.
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