One of the main subjects in the story is the theme of memory. The prologue of "The Grave" tells us of the grandmother who literary carries with her the body of her long-dead husband and at last is literally reunited with him as the result of her constancy and possessiveness. The repeatedly opened grave of the grandmother has its appropriate counterpart in the old woman's constant memory of him. The value of her

The opening paragraph of the story, outlining the history of the family and its cemetery, immediately draws our attention to the continuing cycles of life and death, and to the journeys of mankind both of life and potentially beyond it. The reference to grandparents, establishing the existence of children and grandchildren, evokes the cycle of generations. In close conjunction with this, the removal from place to place of the grandmother, as well as of the "oddments of relations," and the grandmother's repeated transportation of the grandfather's corpse, inevitably suggest the wandering movements of mankind on his larger journey through life toward death. The mention of eternity in the final sentence of the paragraph leaves latent the suggestion of a conclusion to the journey that carries beyond death. The theme of the story is perfectly clear: the confrontation of a child with the mysteries of birth and death.

constancy and possessiveness and the meaning of the reintegration of the severed flesh of husband and wife become clear only at the end of the story when Miranda's adult terror is vanquished by the memory of her childhood treasure and the final Christian image of the dove. The open grave dominates as well the entire childhood episode- including the body of the mother rabbit: "...buried the young rabbits again in their mother's body..." This grave imagery also prepares the way for the opening of the grave in Miranda's mind when the right combination of sight and smell and strangeness in the world touches the secret spring.

The grave is death, the rabb

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