Katherine Anne Porter's short story

Katherine Anne Porter's short story The Downward Path to Wisdom,2 from which excerpts follow, is a fine example of the way family traditions of hatred are stored and transferred and how hatred is passed on as "concern" or even "love." The Downward Path to Wisdom is the story of a child learning to survive and protect himself for the rest of his life. It depicts how the little sea of cultural suggestions in the teensy head of a little oppressed being gets made into a life-long personality.
In the story, four-year-old Stephen went to stay with his Grandma after having been abruptly taken from his parents during an argument involving him. He was rushed from the scene of conflict by Marjory, his parents' maid, and deposited at Grandma's. A few days later, he started school. He met little Frances at school and won her friendship by providing her with balloons that he had innocently filched from his Uncle David. In this scene, Frances and Stephen play one Saturday morning while her nurse visits with Stephen's care- taker, Old Janet.
The nurse and Old Janet sat in Old Janet's room drink- ing coffee and gossiping, and the children sat on the side porch blowing balloons. Stephen chose an apple- colored one and Frances a pale green one. Between them on the bench lay a tumbled heap of delights still to come. "I once had a silver balloon," said Frances, "a
beyootiful silver one, not round like these; it was a long one. But these are even nicer, I think," she added quickly, for she did want to be polite.
"When you get through with that one," said Ste-
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