A Visit to Charity by Eudora Welty

Nehemie KabeyaMr. John Prince

Writing About Literature

March 19, 2021

A Visit to Charity by Eudora Welty

This paper aims to analyze how Eudora Welty establishes the mood or atmosphere in her Story, ‘A Visit to Charity.’ The story’s theme is that people’s selfishness might blind them to the needs of other individuals. In the Story, Marian, who was a young girl, decides to go and visit an elderly home. Marian is self-conscious, submissive, and harsh. In the Story, the author uses symbolism and vivid imagery to convey the cynical opinions upon a residential home for the elderly. All over the vivid imagery and diction, together with remarkable details within the passage, Welty provides insights to the reader on how they might feel towards the household of the elderly. The Story follows a campfire girl who becomes accustomed to a dweller of old folk to earn a badge. Upon getting to the room of the actualized women, Marian feels an enormous sense of dampness, which sets the mood for the rest of the Story. The elderly women suffered from persistent infighting, which causes both the main protagonist, Marian reader, and the reader uncomfortable.

The setting of the short also enables Welty to tell this Story in a perfect good. The Story’s action is taking place in a hospital setting, and it is in a hospital setting that Marian finds these ladies. They are in hospital supports their manner of behavior and taking since they may be under medication for some disease or just a condition they have, which makes them behave in such away. Therefore, the playset can be said to be congruent with the message of the Short Story. In Eudora Welty’s writing, several elements emphasize her characteristics of writing. The first thing is that she uses symbolism to bring the reader’s attention to how scared Marian is to be with the Old women. She asserts to one of the numerous aging women as a subject to be used and thrown away when the girl proclaims her visit’s objectives. “I’m a Campfire Girl…I have to pay a visit to several old lady”.

Welty uses a descriptive option that allows an individual who reads her work to be pulled into the Story and get a sense of how the setting can interpret the mood. She uses symbolism throughout this writing to aid the reader recognize how afraid Marian is to be in the nursing home. All over the tale, the author compares the elderly woman to a sheep. As the woman speaks, the author likens her voice to “a sheep bleating,” (Welty 221). She then tells the readers that “sheep’s bleating almost made her turn around and run back,” (222). This instance certainly demonstrates how afraid Marian was to be in the elderly women’s place. An additional instance is represented as a bird. When the woman wants to take Marian’s hat off, the author compares the woman’s hands to a bird’s claw. This comparison illustrates that Marian is not thinking concerning enjoyable things; as an alternative, she is concerned as she “held onto the back of the chair” and has thoughts about matters that intimidate her as the elderly woman does (222). By using descriptive setting, symbolism, and imagery, the reader is permitted into the Story and can comprehend how Marian feels, can feel the mood of the tale which is caused by the environment, and ultimately the reader is enabled to make their images of many different things throughout the Story.

Welty also uses imagery that allows the reader to use their imaginations and create pictures of the scenery and characters. In “A Visit of Charity,” Welty uses imagery and characterization made within the narrative to create a mood that creates a certain picture in an individual. One instance would be the portrayal of the hallway on lines 36-39, “There was loose, bulging linoleum on the floor. Mariam felt as if she was walking on the waves.” The imagery makes a level of decrepitude that disturbs the reader’s capability to empathize with any personality looking at women as nothing more than objects used by Mariam to earn only three points to her score.

Paradox signifies the use of phrases to tell something various from and frequently opposite to their actual meaning. Welty successfully uses this literature method to elucidate the styles of the Story. The title “A Visit sit of Charity” is rather ironic. There is no charity from Marian’s, the nurse’s, the two old girls, and the whole society’s perspective. The title contradicts the story’s denotation, charity signifies kindness towards others, and no one in this Story carries that out. Apart from symbolizing confinement and a compromised existence, the potted flowers add to the Story’s cynical tone because Marian will receive extra points in the Story’s cynical tone if she brought them as a gift. “A Visit to the Charity is typically Welty’s early fiction, both in the use of a tight, metaphor structure and in its focus on the problem and separateness, which Welty, has which Welty has made her most predominant fictional theme.

Works Cited

Welty, Eudora. The collected stories of Eudora Welty. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1982