The Language of Eudora Weltys Losing Battles :: Eudora Welty Losing Battles

The Language of Eudora Weltys Losing BattlesIn his essay, The Languages of Losing Battles, Mr. Bass contends that the form of language employ by two major characters in Eudora Weltys Losing Battles, Julia Mortimer and Granny Vaughn, serves as a challenge to the male-authored decrees (Bass) found throughout the book. Julias idioms atomic number 18 teaching, writing, and books, (Bass)while Granny Vaughn, on the other hand, uses oral language to transmit family history. slice Julias province is one of ideas and abstraction in the written word, Granny Vaughns stories are concrete, empirical, and rooted in actual events and real people. How these two methods of questioning male ascendance are used by the two characters is discussed at length by Mr.Bass, and this discussion comprises much of the bulk of this article.The male-authored decrees challenged by the two women throughout the bookare numerous, and Mr. Bass makes use of only a few of these to make his point. Intruth, although h is thesis is strong and well composed, most this article consists of arather swarthy discussion of biblical symbolism, and how its various applications in thenovel relate to Granny Vaughns spoken folk myth. In Losing Battles,Julia has writtenher own apocrypha (Bass) on leaves torn from her bible. This is used by Bass as aprototype of written challenge to male authority. In some way, Bass contends, thewritten word of Julia is a rest to Grannys dominance of the family, althoughJulias words must be taken for what they are, since she is not alive to interpret them.While the written word moves outward toward the abstract or abstract and awayfrom the concrete center, the spoken language of Granny Vaughn and others draws inclose to make the emblematic concrete, familial. (Bass) What exactly this balance does for the furthering of the womens influence in the book is a question that seems to havebeen left for the reader to answer.Included in the piece is an interesting discussion of banne rs and battles, andthe way that these images mark the main conflict of the novel between local andabsolute.Bass uses the emblem of Jacks torn sleeve that flowed free from hisshoulder like some old flag carried home from far-off battle. to represent a convergence of a banner with a battle.Mr. Bass has taken a risk with his attempt to convince his readers that