Funeral: A Rite of Passage and a Symbolic Text

                           ——Semiotic Interpretation of Funerals by the Female Characters in Porter’s Short Stories  
  Abstract: Female initiation is an important theme in the short stories by American woman writer Katherine Anne Porter. The female characters in her short stories tend to have an epiphany after experiencing some incident or event. They would have a new understanding of their own gender, life, death, love and career. The incidents which eventually evolved into rites of passage are essentially unexpected incidents to the female characters. This thesis will survey those funerals in her short stories and analyze the paradigmatic components of every funeral as a unique symbolic text. The emphasis will be put on how the female characters organize the different elements of metalanguage and form a specific collection of metalanguage while interpreting the very symbolic text. The ultimate aim of this thesis is to reveal how the female characters have an epiphany, and achieve selfeducation and growth by interpreting and internalizing the personalized rites of passage.

  Keywords: Funeral; symbol; initiation novel; rite of passage; metalanguage

  Lanjuan Xu: School of foreign studies, Jiangnan University, E-mail: xulanjuan66@hotmail.com