Writer's Humble Beginnings By Eudora Calloway: A Literary Analysis

My first impression of Eudora is that she is a well-off person with a good background and a very good education. Through this she has had the abilities to gain good literary knowledge she had attended university but returned

She does not understand why the older and well-known authors are not being read in high school. Prose uses a personal experience from her son’s sophomore English class. He had to read a “weeper and former bestseller by Judith Guest” (424), about a dysfunctional family dealing with a teenage son’s suicide attempt. “No instructor has ever asked my sons to read Alice Munro, who writes so lucidly and beautifully about the hypersensitivity that makes adolescence a hell,”(424). She again mentions books she approves of that should be read in English classes.

Butterworth, Nancy K. "The Critics." Eudora Welty: A Study of the Short Fiction. Ed. Gordon Weaver, et al. New York: Twayne, 1997: 225-234.

Eudora Welty has been careful to show us that the narrator is not the only self-centered, melodramatic member of this family, so is Stella-Rondo. Stella- Rondo has gained everyone?s

Eudora Welty wrote during the modernism period. This literary movement is characterized by being known as a period of international movement during the European, American, and World art, literature, and culture. Some characteristics that are apart of the modernism period are narrations through fragmented, internalized, or multiple perspectives or viewpoints. During modern times classical and mythic reforms were remade. Modernism also increased industrialization and globalization around the world, during this time most modern fiction was cast by first person and the literature usually had a clear beginning, middle and end. Modernist stories were also known to point out Irony’s, satires, and comparisons between things.

Thesis: Eudora Welty paints the picture of a life journey in the short story “A Worn Path” through the use of symbolism, imagery, and tone.

 So much, in fact, was assigned to the woman’s role that today we can well believe that appropriate, wholesome, ‘safe’ reading-matter for the child was a boon to the mother. And into this breach, ready to fill the gap that had earlier existed in the field, when most children’s books were by English writers, came many American writers, largely from New England or the Middle Atlantic states, many of them themselves women and mothers.   The writers for these periodicals were in fact often anonymous, or signed themselves with initials or pseudonyms; Child, for example, usually signed herself ’Aunt Maria’. Editors, to fill

In “One Writer’s Beginnings,” author Eudora Welty conveys intensity and value in her experiences by using hyperbole and phrasing. She conveys intensity using hyperbole by making small details seem “out of this world.” An example of this can be seen in the first 2 lines, “I never knew anyone who’d grew up in Jackson without being afraid of Mrs. Calloway.” Right from the beginning Welty grabs the reader’s attention. Another example of hyperbole happens when Welty describes her regular voice as “commanding.” She even goes on to say, “I saw I had met a witch,” when describing her first time introducing themselves to each other. Another tool used to achieve intensity is phrasing.

The written word has become a domain for people of all ages and eras to learn from. Within the last century or so, there has been a procession of memorable writers with important messages to understand and learn from. It takes diligence when reading to understand what the author is saying within the context of their lives. Sometimes, the context of the reader’s life makes the writer’s story more memorable. In The Best American Essays of the Century, by Joyce Carol Oates, just in the range of 35 years, from 1901 to 1935, readers are told about things experienced, told, or imagined. Each essay tells a story or a lesson in the form of the written world. Although the authors most likely lived very different lives compared to each other, each essay portrays similar ideas or themes that can be interpreted by the readers. Only through writing can ideas, such as these, be preserved and shared with others in completely different situations as the author was. These essays’ themes have made them timeless, being able to apply to the past, the present, and the future. Within the first fifteen essays of this collection, the themes: the present is made from events in the past, strength can be stemmed from bad surroundings, and judgment is inevitable from those around us, are evident and important for readers to discover in order to understand the historic credibility behind them.

In the autobiography "One Writer's Beginnings" by Eudora Welty, Welty reminisces on past experiences and writes vividly about them. The autobiography tells about Welty's life story and expresses how high of a value she places on these experiences. This essay will show how the language used in the autobiography conveys the intensity and value placed on the experiences. Welty's diction in her autobiography is informed and it connects to readers on a common level. In her autobiography she informs readers of her childhood experiences with Mrs. Calloway.

While confronting Calloway, Mrs.Welty gives Eudora the freedom of selecting any adult book except Elsie Dinsmore because Eudora would be “too impressionable.” Mrs.Welty concludes Eudora will be easily influenced and “fall off the piano stool” just like in the book. Mrs. Welty is afraid Eudora would have the traits of Elsie and collapse from pressure. During Eudora’s childhood, Mrs. Welty would read books any time she could. Reading a book while getting Eudora’s “hair [getting] dry enough to unroll” displays Mrs.Welty’s passion for books, having impact on her daughter’s view of passion on books as well.

Eudora Welty's nostalgic tone describes her childhood ambition of reading with her phrases such as "I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them- with the books themselves," and also "... I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them." Furthermore, Welty includes the statements in order to emphasize her "sensory education". When referring to this idea of "sensory education" Welty is explaining that she is able to associate a word with a moment in time. For example Welty expresses a memory she has where the word "moon" comes to her and the meaning of the word changes. No longer is the moon "flat" but now she sees the round "globe" that the moon truly is. Other examples included by Welty are when she describes

Eudora Welty was a Southern fiction author in the 1900s who revealed the dynamics of family, whether they be whole or broken, through her depiction of pure characters in the rural South. Welty grew up in a “close-knit and loving family,” sharing with them bonds of “devotion, camaraderie and humor” (Marrs). Two of her most notable works include Delta Wedding and The Ponder Heart, which both focus around family within the southern United States. Although Welty’s works are written with a light-hearted tone, not all of her works speak of a warm theme; while wholeness and unity of family are portrayed in her books, brokenness and fragility of family are displayed as well. Welty examines the complex dynamics of family relationships as she utilizes

Greater than scene … is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any form. —Eudora Welty, One Writer’s Beginnings I owe a special debt to Jan Nordby Gretlund for his Eudora Welty’s Aesthetics of Place (Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press; Newark: University of Delaware Press, ¡994). Given his extensive and intensive analysis of Welty’s fiction, which he makes in response not only to that fiction but also to the considerable body of historical and critical work that has been done on it, Professor Gretlund establishes both a scholarly and a critical context upon which my speculative concerns depend. It is in the light of his study that I

It is beneficial to study certain subjects because of their relationship with Modernist theories. Young-Adult and Children's literature are transcendent because the narrative is interchangeable among an extended spectrum of readers. Both classes of literature deconstruct into its basic elements and define the essence of youth. I have arrived at such thoughts through the studying of modern short stories, which focus on the literary works that followed the great war. Modernist techniques have become the influence of all literary works that have followed. Studying modern short stories has formed an urge to review literature in the view of