Old Mortality

A detailed Summary of Old Mortality

Throughout Katherine Anne Porters Old Mortality, a variety of elements are present. Some of which consist of romance, memories and the illusions instilled upon the legendary status of Amy. All of these elements play a solid role towards the persuasion of Miranda. They persuaded her into acting on certain ideas that she pulled out of the stories about her Aunt Amy. Now even though Aunt Amy was portrayed in a very special light, the elements that surrounded the story did not exactly have a positive effect on Maria and Miranda. What this paper is going to do is explain that all the above mentioned characteristics play a positive and negative role on the lives of the two children, Maria and Miranda.

In the first chapter, Maria and Miranda were told the story about their Aunt Amy and their very romantic Uncle Gabriel. People spoke of Aunt Amy in a very loving way, but they masked the truth. They merely told the story the way that they felt it should have been told. There is no problem with this in the eyes of the brother and grandmother, but they neglect the idea that children at this age are very impressionable. This is definitely a negative aspect towards the exaggeration of how wonderful their Aunt Amy was. It carried the negat

1) Beaty, Jerome. The Short Novel. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1999.

First is that the buildup of Maria and Miranda's Aunt and Uncle were just the first step towards a larger let down in all facets. The first time that Maria and Miranda met Uncle Gabriel at the racetrack, after all of the good words spoken, they had a false idea of what he looked like, talked like, and acted like. They discovered that he wasn't the perfect looking man that he was made out to be, and that he wasn't as elegant as described. He was merely a large, loud spoken, sort of obnoxious gambler. He had a false identity stapled to him and his surroundings. It wasn't just the fact that he did not meet the description given to him, but the idea that things surrounding him were not all that they were made out to be either. This was Miranda's first dose of reality, and not just the stories that were being told to them. It was the first major disappointment that either Miranda or Maria faced and that changed a lot of things from that moment on. Miranda's childhood dream of becoming a horse jockey, due to all the fond memories experienced and told to her, was changed after she realized reality. On top of that, the idea of since their Aunt Amy's better half wasn't all he was made out to be; maybe she wasn't as perfect as everyone claimed her to be either. This is a very negative force in the novel, because it is the first step taken by Miranda to change her life and fall into the same trap as her Aunt Amy did.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1649
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English