‘‘Rope’’ by Katherine Anne Porter is a short story which hardly catches critical
attention or the reader’s interest. Yet “Rope” is not less a masterpiece, in a sense. It
is precisely this hypothesis that led us into investigation. Read from the angle of
poetics, the narrative discloses unsuspected richness, both on the grounds of
narratology and semantics. Beyond the apparent simplicity and banality, the narrative
captures its reader and sets him or her on an exciting adventure of discovery of
Porter’s artistry. More explicitly, the work is built on the image of a rope, a thing of
little importance which happened to arouse a big dispute and to reveal a great
meaning potential. So, the image of the rope pervades the whole text, shapes the
story, the narrative, and provides substance for the meaning to infer. In other words,
the rope at issue is artfully endowed with symbolic meaning, in the form of a
metaphor or a metonymy for marriage: an overwhelming reality, which has its good
and bad aspects to offer, and therefore calls for an adequate approach.

Rope, Metaphore, Metonymy, Marriage