Carson Mccullers The Member Of The Wedding: Summary :: essays research papers

Carson McCullers The Member of the man and wife Summary     The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers is the story of anadolescent girl who triumphs over loneliness and gains matureness through and through anidentity that she creates for herself in her mind. It is with this guise thattwelve year anile Frankie Addams begins to feel confident about herself and life.The author seems to indicate that one discount feel good about oneself throughpositive thinking no matter of reality. The novel teaches that ones destinyis a self-fulfilled prophecy, seeing ones self in a certain light oftentimescreates an environment where one might catch that which one would like to be.     The world begins to look new and beautiful to Frankie when her former(a)brother Jarvis returns from Alaska with his bride-to-be, Janice. The onceclumsy Frankie, forlorn and lonely, feeling that she "was a share of nothingin the world" now decides that she isgo ing to be "the penis of the man and wife." Frankie truly believes that she isgoing to be an integral part of her brothers new family and becomes absurdwith the idea that she will leave Georgia and live with Jarvis and Janice in overwinter Hill. In her scheme to be part of this new unit, she dubs herself F.Jasmine so that she and the wedding couple will all have names beginning withthe letter J and a. Her positive thinking induces a euphoria whichcontributes to a rejection of the nonagenarian feeling that "the old Frankie had no weto claim.... Now all this was suddenly over with and changed. There was herbrother and the bride, and it was as though when first she saw them somethingshe had know inside of her They are the we of me." Being a member of thewedding will, she feels, link up her irrevocably to her brother and his wife.Typical of many striplingagers, she felt that in orderliness to be someone she has to be apart of an intact, existing group, that is, Jarv is and Janice. The teen yearsare known as a time of soul-searching for a new and grown up identity. In aneffort to control this identity teens seek to join a group. Frankie, too, isdeperate for Jarvis and Janices adult acceptance.     Frankie is forced to give the summer with John Henry, her six year oldcousin, and Berenice Brown, her black cook. It is through her interactionswith these two characters that the reader perceives Frankies ascent fromchildhood. Before Jarvis and Janice arrive, Frankie is content to play with