28 pages • 56 minutes read
William Melvin KelleyA Visit to Grandmother
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Horse
The horse GL brings home symbolizes the pent-up conflict in the Dunford family, which reaches its breaking point during the visit Charles pays to his mother. Like the horse, which at first appears “gentle” and tame, the discomfort among the Dunfords is initially subtle. Similar to how Eva suspects the horse is not naturally as calm as GL promises, Chig notices his father’s behavior and demeanor change.
As time passes, tension builds, and the family’s conversation begins “warming up like a teakettle” (59), much like the horse gradually becomes restless and agitated. Eventually, emotions intensify and the family’s unresolved issues surface, marking the turning point in the story, just as the horse suddenly gallops through the woods. The horse symbolizes the hidden turmoil that has been brewing beneath the surface of the Dunford family for years. Like the horse, the family members have the potential to be gentle and calm, but their unresolved conflicts and grievances are always present, simmering below the surface.
The Family Home
The Dunford family home symbolizes the family’s complex history, representing both comfort and conflict. As the place where Eva raised her children and where they all spent their formative years, the home is strongly connected to the past and familiarity. The house also embodies a sense of stability, as it is where the family still reunites in adulthood, seeking comfort and solace in each other’s presence. Though Charles has left, his siblings live close enough that Eva can call them over at a moment’s notice. Their unity within the family home emphasizes Charles’s estrangement, as he is the only sibling left out.
For Charles, the family home is also a source of pain, a place he left as a young man and only returned to on rare occasions. Nonetheless, he seeks the comfort others receive there, remarking, “I cried when I left here” (62). It represents the root of his emotional turmoil and the unresolved issues that continue to haunt him. To grapple with his feelings of resentment toward his past and his mother, he returns to this familial place and confronts its ambivalent significance.
Youth
The motif of youth emphasizes the passage of time and highlights how the past can linger and impact the present. Upon returning to his childhood home, Charles, now a successful physician and father, finds himself feeling like a child again: “[A]s if by coming back home, he had become a small boy again” (57). The return is hurtful, as he associates this time in his life with the moment his feelings of abandonment began. It becomes increasingly apparent that his unresolved family conflicts significantly influenced how his sense of self as an adult was shaped. This return to youth is emphasized by Charles’s tearful reaction to confronting his mother.
Chig’s positioning as the narrator of his father’s experience and the recurrent imagery surrounding GL are two other examples of the motif. The irony of GL’s innocent “engaging, open, friendly smile” and his continued characterization as a “five-year-old” (63) reinforce the significance of youth to the main themes in the story; while his brother’s estrangement is rooted in childhood, GL’s privileged position as the favored son has let him maintain a joyful, childlike demeanor.
