Essay Questions

Explicate Laura’s dream, psychoanalytically. - “Flowering Judas”

Regarding the dream, Eugenio states, “Get up, Laura, and follow me: come out of your sleep, out of your bed, out of this strange house. What are you doing in this house? …This is not all, you shall see – Murderer…Then eat these flowers, poor prisoner…Murderer!...This is my body and my blood.”

The worrisome dream unmasks Laura’s unconscious outlook on her culpability over Eugenio’s probable bereavement considering that he has already overdosed himself with the drugs that Laura proffered her. Unconsciously, Laura senses that she will be somewhat answerable for Eugenio’s demise seeing that she did not forewarn the prison physician after detecting Eugenio’s purposeful overdose. Moreover, the Judas tree is a solid religious allusion that bids connotations of Judas’ infidelity that crowned Jesus’ impious murder. Laura’s enthusiasm to ingest the Judas flowers qualifies her a murder who voluntarily assumes the burden of Eugenio’s expiration for her disloyal engagements are corresponding to those of Biblical Judas.

How does the exposition utilize postmodernism. - “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”

Porter integrates substantial postmodernistic dark humor: “She flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor Harry’s pudgy careful fingers and pulled the sheet up to her chin. That brat ought to be in knee breeches. Doctoring around the country with the spectacles on his nose! Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go.” The grandmother’s playful retort the doctor is dark humor that eclipses the precariousness of her indisposition that will cap her outright expiration in the resolution. The playful expressions render her a buoyant being instead of a fading grandmother.