SOURCE: “Systems and Patterns,” in Truth and Vision in Katherine Anne Porter's Fiction, The University of Georgia Press, 1985, pp. 60–105.

In the following essay, Unrue explores Porter's attitude toward art, religion, politics, and philosophy as evinced in her short fiction.

Katherine Anne Porter portrays persons who never look within and confront dark truths but look instead to external forms for affirmation of life's meaning. External forms, however, are made up of attractive deceptions, among which are codified aesthetic theories, philosophical and religious structures, political and revolutionary doctrines, social codes, and visible patterns. In pure form, art, religion, political and revolutionary ideas, and some philosophical tenets can point the way to truth by offering a sense of order that is a walkway to understanding. The problem lies in the systematizing of such sets of ideas, in their becoming ends unto themselves.

Porter believed that art and religion often were misused...