Katherin Anne Porter's "The Future is Now" analysis

Katherine Anne Porter, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, wrote The Future is Now in the midst of a worldwide fear of death by bombs. Porter was no exception to this fear in the beginning of the essay, though she slowly reached the realization that death is inevitable and our fear of it only distracts from life. Thoughts and messages about the possibility of a bomb dropping and eradicating human existence ran feverishly through the veins and the interworking’s of American society. People like Katherine Anne Porter were vulnerable to such overwhelming fears which sadly led them to cower instead of rightfully living their lives to the fullest. Porter discovered this flaw and wrote The Future is Now to explain the shortsighted nature of humans fearing death instead of living life. Her purpose was to show people that they should not always be afraid and they should not let fear stop them from doing the things that they love. Porter wrote this for anyone who allows fear to hold them back from life. One strategy she used to support her point was parallelism. On the second page of her essay, Porter wrote, “all that effort and energy so irreproachably employed were not going to be wasted on a table that was to be merely used for crawling under”. She then stated on the next page that, “he was not preparing a possible shelter […] he was restoring a beautiful surface”. She successfully uses these two statements to show how life can be so much more enjoyable without the constant irrelevant fear which innerlaced society at that time. At first, she described the man’s task as almost futile in that he would be using the table for nothing more than shelter, but later she eliminated the sense of fear and he was thus enjoying himself while crafting a beautiful piece of furniture. This parallel greatly helps support her purpose in writing this story and allows the reader to see the great impact her suggestions may have on their lives.

(image from flickriver.com)

This image depicts someone cowaring under a table as Porter expected the man across the street to be doing woth his table.