The process of maturing and gaining knowledge is a long one. Each person reaches a time in their life when they have reached adulthood, maturity, and the knowledge that comes with it, but the journey requires “going through a kind of initiation into the mysteries of adult life.”(Brooks 3136) Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Grave,” uses the symbols the dove, the ring, the rabbit, and the grave to express the main character’s journey from innocence to knowledge. From the innocence of the dove, the luxury of the golden ring, to the mystery of birth and death through the many “graves,” Miranda loses her innocence and becomes a knowledgeable young woman.

Miranda at the young age of nine is as innocent as can be. She has no realization for the criticisms upon her family for the way she has been raised, wearing her “summer roughing outfit: dark blue overalls, a light blue shirt, a hired-man’s straw hat, and thick brown sandals”, (Porter 364) running around the woods hunting rabbits and doves with her twenty-two Winchester rifle. On one excurs

“In the awareness of the decay and death comes the important knowledge of the mature self, felt but not understood...”(West 445-46) In all actuality there are three symbolic graves in this story. The first, is the actual grave in which the dove of innocence and the ring of femininity were discovered. Then there is the grave of the dead mother rabbit’s body, called a grave because the baby rabbits were buried in it. “Finally, there is the grave of the mind, the repository of knowledge and memory, heaped over by accumulated thousands of impressions, until the moment when without warning, plain and clear in its true colors, leaped from its burial place in the knowing mind of the mature Miranda.”(445) Miranda’s mind is the final resting place of all that she has learned from life changing experiences that would make her the mature young woman she would become. The graves, “lying open and empty one burning day”(Porter 362), symbolize all of these experiences and the effect that they have on Miranda as a young girl maturing into a young woman.

ion through the woods, she and her brother stumble upon the old family cemetery and decide to explore. After rummaging through the empty graves, “she saw a silver dove no larger than a hazel nut with spread wings and a neat fan-shaped tail.”(Brooks 3135), “Miranda’s brother recognizes what the curious little ornament is--the screw head for a coffin.”(3135) This small silver dove was, in a sense, Miranda’s soon to be shed innocence.

Paul also made a d

Some topics in this essay:
Anne Porter’s, Miranda”445 Miranda’s, Innocence Knowledge, “the grave”, express main character’s, ring rabbit grave, rabbit grave express, Katherine Anne, journey innocence knowledge, grave express main, character’s journey, gold ring, birth death, main character’s, journey innocence, little girl’s, roughing outfit, woman miranda, silver dove,