Symbolism in "The grave" by Katherine Anne Potter.

Katherine Anne Porter uses many objects to convey meaning of how hidden wisdom can be discovered in “The Grave”. These symbols are the center piece of knowledge without which the story will be vague and tasteless. Katherine uses 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 and 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, running around the woods with her brother Paul, hunting rabbits and doves with their twenty-two Winchester rifle, they came across their grandfather’s grave. Their transition to a more knowledgeable person begins at the very moment they made the bold decision to leap over the fence into the graveyard where the remaining bones of their grandfather were buried after much relocation.
After rummaging through the empty graves, Miranda found a silver dove no larger than a hazel nut and Paul found a thin wide gold ring. The dove exemplifies religious views of the Holy Spirit, peace and the promise that the Holy Spirit will save man’s soul. The gold ring Paul found in one of the graves serves as a representation of Miranda’s femininity, which she is slowly coming to know and understand. This ring is most likely a wedding band, the unbroken circle of which symbolizes a continuous connection. From the instant Miranda first beholds the small ring, she adores its beauty. In Miranda’s eyes the ring denotes extravagance and comfort. It also symbolizes marriage, and a luxurious past. Additionally, the children’s past and their ancestral heritage are also portrayed by the ring.
The intricate designs of flowers and leaves engraved on the ring are symbols of fertility. Miranda’s wearing of the ring on her thumb is symbolic of the fact that she is not mature enough to wear the ring on the appropriate finger. Her fondness of the ring provokes Miranda’s realization of her femininity. She suddenly detests her appearance and longs for effeminate clothes and accessories. With the ring now in her possession, Miranda wants to go back to the farmhouse and dress up. This longing is seen as preparation for her entrance into womanhood. Also Miranda thinks putting on the ring will bind her closer to the grandfather and create the opportunity of finding a good man when she becomes an adult.
Paul on the other hand was so happy and impressed by the dove. The behavior of Paul is simply because for many men, peace is the most wanted treasure in life. It’s rather unfortunate a man hardly do things to have the peace he wants in life. Even when a man finds the peace he longs for in life, he loses it easily for a very stupid reason. Paul discovered the dove can become his comforter or a guiding angel that will prevent him from getting into trouble. He also believes the dove will serve as peace between him and the grandfather.
Miranda now with this new found realization loses all interest in hunting and when her brother shoots a rabbit, she let Paul have it without dispute, and continues walking at her slow pace until she catches up with him. As her brother skins the rabbit, and it is discovered that the animal contained a family of unborn young buried inside its body, this discovery conveyed to Miranda the puzzling and ambiguous nature of death and birth. She desires to see the tiny rabbits lying inside their mother’s body, with blood running over them and having seen them, Miranda gained a perfect knowledge of her adult life as a mother. She has seen a complete surgery on her body in just a short time and seeing those rabbit babies delivered by his brother, she realized the pain and the burden on her as a woman.
Miranda smells death in her bones as a woman who will carry babies in her stomach for months and might die during the course of pregnancy or die on the day of delivery, in which case her stomach have to be opened and the babies carried out, just as the case of the mother rabbit. The experience did not frighten only Miranda but Paul as well; he realized he committed sin by killing baby rabbits that are not given the opportunity to come into our sinful and sweet world, so they can at least enjoy childhood before being hunt down by a hungry carnivore like Paul.
They learned death is not really hard to come by. Their grandfather is dead and the sorrow lived with them all life and the very day they visited his grave, Paul hunts down unborn baby rabbits and perfectly lost the peace he found in the dove, just like any other man will lose his peace in no time, right after finding it.
Laying those baby rabbits wrapped in their mother’s body to rest, Paul realized how his death is not hard to come so he warned the sister not to reveal the crime he committed. He has totally forgotten Miranda don’t have to tell anybody before his troubles begin raining in, because the life in any living thing belongs to the mighty God who has ears and eyes everywhere and every hidden crime is eventually revealed in life or in death. Once again the mysteries of birth and death revolve.
Miranda is just experiencing the first stirrings of her female destiny. She is growing tired of being a tomboy and yearns for the trappings of femininity: pretty clothes, jewelry, and perfumes. The knowledge thrust upon her so crudely and abruptly when her brother lays open the womb of the dead rabbit is a shock. Yet this knowledge of the other, more dangerous, side of female destiny seems something she has really known all along but she has never come tête-à-tête with it, causing a cold sweat to run down her spin which she intentionally ignored for the fear of appearing weak in the front of the brother, who will have no sympathy on her cries at all.
The word “grave” has several meanings in the story. Each of the three classifications holds secrets that must be revealed. The literal grave, the rabbit, and the human mind serve as the three types of graves in the story. The literal grave is what the children are playing in when they find the dove, ring, and rabbit. These empty graves represent maturity, experience, and resurrection. When the children come across a rabbit and Paul shoots it, they discover that the rabbit was about to give birth. The mother rabbit is a symbol of life and of Miranda’s knowledge of life’s events. The rabbit represents generation and death. The rabbit also symbolizes rebirth and fertility. The mother rabbit becomes “a womb that is a grave” for her offspring. The children’s minds are empty graves and are getting filled with knowledge as they experience life in the graves.
The scene horrifies yet excites Miranda, and she refuses to accept the fur from the rabbit for her dolls. The sight of the young rabbits forces Miranda to realize the knowledge of the complexities of life and the birth process. Through the experience of seeing the pregnant rabbit, Miranda comes to understand the difference between herself and her brother.
As Miranda goes along with her normal activities, she encounters an experience that will change her forever almost without realizing it. The experience is recognized in its completeness only when recalled by a similar sensual awareness, nearly twenty years later on a market street in a foreign land where nothing is familiar. Except for the smell in the market, with its piles of raw flesh and wilting flowers, was like the mingled sweetness and corruption’s she had smelled that other day in the empty cemetery at home. Only then did she recall the day in the cemetery and the treasure she and her brother had discovered in the open graves. Miranda learned about birth and her fate as a woman in a place that connects birth with death.
One might say that the story is about the paradoxical nature of truth: truth wears a double face. That view does not strongly support and explain the details of “The Grave”. The main hidden secret wrapped up in this story is how the human being undergoes the learning process in life and this is vividly portrayed by the symbols used by Katherine. “The Grave” is a story of discovering the hidden wisdom pot in a grave, a place where birth and death connects.