In many ways, Welty hides from the truth or at least protects herself from it by detaching herself from reality. Through context, clever word choice, and rhetorical devices, Welty compares and contrasts how she confronts pain compared with her parents, revealing a greater truth about humanity’s ability to cope due to upbringing and life experiences. Despite living a sheltered life with relatively low risk, Eudora Welty has experienced great loss and pain in her life. In 1931, leukemia claimed her father’s life. When her father lay there in pain and agony, she stood there watching, helpless to stop the pain.
Welty watched as her mother tried to save her father’s life with a blood transfusion. She witnessed the blood transfusion go horribly wrong, and her father die before her very eyes. She lived through seeing her mother become frail and weak with age, “lying helpless and nearly blind” (52).
In her long life, Welty has witnessed all of these tragic events happen to the people she loved and had to learn to cope. Welty’s methods of coping with the pain reveal fascinating things about her and the effects of her upbringing.
While Welty’s statements and words provide great insight into her thoughts, what she does not write has almost, if not more, value. She never directly describes how the loss of her parents affected her emotionally. After her father’s death, she makes no mention of how the loss impacted her or hurt her. Clearly she respected and loved her father greatly. In fact, she called her father, “Daddy” (82), conveying the level of affection and closeness she felt to Christian Welty. However, rather than portray her emotional turmoil at the sight of her ather dying from leukemia, she details the incident as if she were an impassive observer studying her mother’s reactions. By not focusing too intently on emotions and detaching herself from the event, Welty makes reality less painful. Instead of describing her emotions, she reports the emotional distress of her mother who continues to blame herself after the father’s death (93).
The Essay on Eudora Welty Her Life And Her Works
Eudora Welty: Her Life and Her Works Eudora Welty's writing style and us of theme and setting aided her in becoming one of the greatest writers of all time. Welty credits her family for her success. 'Without the love and belief my family gave me, I could not have become a writer to begin with' (Welty, IX). Eudora Welty's writings are light-hearted and realistic. Her stories explore common everyday ...
Perhaps by conveying her mother’s despair, Welty actually provides the reader with a small glimpse of her true emotions, ones that she has carefully hidden to protect herself from harm.
Furthermore, Welty often deflects painful events with humor and a detached matter-of-factness. Welty describes a “fast-beating heart” ailment that left her bed-ridden for months when she was younger as a seemingly innocuous affair. Stating, “I felt all right- perhaps I felt too good…At any rate, I was allowed to occupy all day my parent’s double bed” (20), Welty nonchalantly dismisses the ailment as nothing major. The word “allowed” makes the disease sound like something beneficial that bestowed her with a privilege while the words “at any rate” consciously deflect the severity of the moment.
She does not focus for long on times of pain and makes sure to divert the reader’s attention with a quick diversion. Throughout her work, Welty does this. After describing her grandfather’s chilling last words to her mother, “If you let them tie me down, I’ll die” (51), Welty immediately follows with an amusing story of her mother’s interaction with the surgeon who incredulously repeats back at her “You don’t know anybody in Baltimore? ” (51).
Welty moves through events at a workman-like pace never allowing the emotional tension to rise too high, not allowing herself to dwell too much.
Since she lived a sheltered life, when confronted with the harsh realities of life, Welty tries to lessen the pain and tension to ease the realization, a characteristic that becomes evident in her writing. On the other hand, Welty’s parents experienced far less sheltered lives. The two were forced to grow up far quicker than Welty. Welty’s father copes in a similar way as Eudora Welty herself. He does not like the past, so he simply avoids it and looks to the future.
The Essay on Is That My Mothers Words Coming Out Of My Mouth
IS THAT MY MOTHERS WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH My favorite phrase during my teenage years was, When I have children I wont treat them like you treat me! Now I am sure every mother on earth has heard their daughters say these words, but at the time I had put all the venom a 13 year old could into those words . I was sure I had deeply wounded my mother and this would send her screaming into the ...
His mother died at a young age, and as Welty states, “He never happened to tell us a single family story” (63), showing his reluctance to focus on his painful past and a willingness to just create a happy future for his family. However, unlike her father, Welty does acknowledge the past and its significance; she just doesn’t dwell on it for too long. In total contrast, Welty’s mother focused exclusively on past experiences and used those to base her future actions. Describing her mother’s mind as a, “mass of associations” (19), Welty creates a brilliant image that signifies that one idea in her head must always be connected to another.
The word “mass” creates the image that these associations are overbearing and thick. Welty’s mother allows guilt to take over her life. Welty’s grandfather’s last words, “If you let them tie me down, I’ll die” (51), has a lasting impact on Welty’s mother because the word “let” implies she had some choice. The word “let” allows her to blame herself for her father’s death. From that point, Welty’s mother took every bitter loss as a sign of her failure. She blamed herself for her little baby’s death. She blamed herself if any harm befell her children.
She blamed herself for her husband’s death. Guilt overwhelmed her. By trying to overprotect Eudora Welty, she spread some of this guilt and fear of loss to her. Although Welty does not have as crippling a fear as her mother, this fear manifests itself in the ways she brushes aside and dismisses pain in order to marginalize it. Everyone deals with loss at some point in his or her life. Due to Welty’s sheltered life, she could shield herself from the truth. However, once she began writing, Welty had to look inward. Her father never liked fiction because it was not factual.
However, Welty used fiction and writing as a device to confront realities about herself and her parents that she had previously ignored. Writing provided her with an outlet and a coping mechanism. Every person deals differently with loss. Welty’s mother allowed her guilt over her perceived failures to eat her up. She kept her loved ones like her daughter very close and overprotected them. Willing to even sacrifice herself for something she loved, she ran into a burning building with crutches to rescue her Dickens books (45).
The Essay on The Use Of The Word Love
Six months after I met a young man, he expressed to me how much he loved me. Being sixteen years old, I thought it to be very flattering but I could not accept him saying this to me. The word, love in the romantic sense, is something that would take so much out of me to say to a person. Love is something that you express to someone that you can not, in any way, see living your life without. The ...
Of course, such overbearing love inevitably leads to some pushing away from loved ones that desire independence. Her coping mechanism was entirely self destructive and unhealthy. Welty’s father coped by mainly avoiding the past and ignoring its existence. Although he kept memorabilia from his mother, he never spoke of it. All three provide interesting case studies in how upbringing and experience can influence methods one uses to cope. Though possibly painful, the truth is never as destructive as an unhealthy method of coping.
