"A Storyteller from the Bayou: Introspection and Self-Redemption in Gautreaux's 'Welding with Children'"
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Ibáñez Ibáñez, José RamónDate
2012Abstract
Tim Gautreaux (Morgan City, 1947) is the author of two collections of short stories, "Same Place, Same Things" (1996) and "Welding with Children" (1999), in which he depicts the land, customs, traditions and deep-rooted religious background of his native Louisiana. His fiction follows in the footsteps of such Southern Catholic writers as Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. This paper focuses on the homonymous story that opens his second volume and offers a reading which explores the second chance patterns displayed by the fiction of this author. In this analysis, the initial role of Bruton, father, grandfather and the moral buttress of his family, is questioned by Mr. Fordlyson, one of his neighbors, whose stinging remarks stir his conscience, forcing him to reconsider whether his grandchildren’s misbehaviour and disobedience is primarily a response to his unwed daughters’ moral laxness, or there is someone else to be blamed.
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Southern Literature
American Short fiction
Catholicism
Flannery O'Connor