The following excerpt is from Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “The Fig Tree,” published in 1960. In this passage, Miranda, a young child, observes an interaction between her grandmother and great-aunt.
Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Porter uses literary elements and
techniques to convey Miranda’s complex reaction as she observes the two older women.

“’The Fig Tree’ is similar to ‘The Grave’ in its emphasis on Miranda’s initiation into life, but it differs from that sketch in several ways. It is longer and more complex in plot, though even in ‘The Fig Tree’ the narrated action is relatively simple. Miranda and her grandmother and father, with the servants, leave their house for the farm, to spend the remainder of the summer there. Just before their departure Miranda buries a dead chick near a fig tree and then thinks she hears it crying ‘Weep, weep’ from the grave. Forced to leave immediately, she cried during the trip and asks fruitlessly to be taken back.

They reach the farm and an unspecified length of time passes. Just before they return, Aunt Eliza, who has been the main attraction to Miranda, lets her look through her telescope at the moon and tells her that the sky contains ‘a million other worlds.’ The same evening, Miranda hears the cry of ‘Weep, weep’ near another fig tree and is filled with joy when Aunt Eliza tells her the sound is made by tree frogs There is considerable power in this symbolism, as also in that which is embodied in Great-Aunt Eliza. This monumental woman is for Miranda a sort of nature- or earth-goddess instructing her in the knowledge, but especially the mystery, of the universe. Miranda first sees her in an elevated position, halfway up a stepladder, giving directions about the telescope with which she would view the heavens. Even in this act Great-Aunt Eliza is violating the strict code of decorum represented by the Grandmother, and she continues to violate it at every turn. Miranda is at first disturbed by this revelation of a new set of values and by her discovery that someone can argue on equal terms and even find fault with the Grandmother, who has always been for her the absolute authority and the fixed center of life. But the knowledge which is at first disturbing proves in the end to be liberating.

Explanation:

not concrete, existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence