SOURCE: "Katherine Anne Porter: Psychology as Art," in Southwest Review, Vol. XLI, No. 3, Summer, 1956, pp. 223-30.

In the following essay, Allen examines psychological devices and symbolism employed by Porter to illustrate hostility and frustration.

Katherine Anne Porter has published, as her admirers announce apologetically, three slim volumes of stories and novellas. A half-dozen of her stories equal the best written by any twentieth-century American. Usually her theme is the betrayal of life through the hostility that develops if physical and social needs are repeatedly and consistently frustrated.

"The Downward Path to Wisdom," included in The Leaning Tower (1944), is one of her best stories. And it is her most elaborate study of hostility, largely because the origin of the hostility is explored in detail. Whereas most of her work begins with the fact of adult hostility, "The Downward Path" indicates how the adult has been molded to an aggressive...