The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty presents Wanda Fay on the surface as selfish, manipulative, insecure, thoughtless, shallow, spoiled, and flighty as well as thoughtlessly and carelessly cruel. On the contrary, it wasn’t difficult for me to see Fay as a victim of her family and her upbringing, the elite class of Mount Salus, and her own personal aspirations. Throughout the novel, even though I despised Fay and her weaknesses I did feel sorry for her. Her apprehension discovering that her family was downstairs when she finally decided to leave the bedroom to see her husband, the Judge’s, body for the last time showed me that she had probably hoped to escape her family by marrying the Judge, only to discover that she was forced to confront them when the Judge passed away and no longer ‘belonged’ to her. The Optimist’s daughter is a deliberate metaphor for society. Eudora Welty was slightly prescient, as she never focuses on political issues, but instead crass materialism/boundless energy vs. civilized values/privilege and class.
Fay is a lively troublemaker, and she is guilty of bringing a lot of the tension to the story. Despite the fact that her family, and her own element stand supporting her with her loss, it is also very clear that they don’t seem to be exceptionally fond of her, nor is she particularly fond of them. After the funeral, Fay plans to go back home to Madrid, Texas and her mother first responds by asking how long she plans to stay and then her sister says, “I haven’t heard your excuse for going yet. You got one?” (97). Taken aback by this comment, Fay complains that they didn’t bring DeWitt with them. He is the only family member who speaks Fay’s language, and despite the fat that his family does not hol...
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... prig.” However the characters differences are sorted in the end and it is brought to conclusion when the narrator writes, “Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams” (179). This is stated at the end of the novel as Laurel rides out of town on her way to the airport making peace with the past, particularly with Fay, as she moves on to a clean future.
Works Cited
Moss, Howard, “Eudora Welty’s New Novel about Death and Class,” in New York Times Book Review, May 21, 1972.
Welty, Eudora. The Optimist's Daughter. New York: Random House, 1972. Print.
ILofHL Pages 56-86 Summary The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is the result of years of research done by Skloot on an African American woman with cervical cancer named Henrietta Lacks. Cells from Lacks’ tumor are taken and experimented on without her knowledge. These cells, known as HeLa cells, are the first immortal human cells ever grown. The topic of HeLa cells is at the center of abundantly controversial debates.
In the short story "A Worn Path," the message that Eudora Welty sends to the readers is one of love, endurance, persistence, and perseverance. Old Phoenix Jackson walks a long way to town, through obstacles of every sort, but no obstacle is bad enough to stop her from her main goal. She may be old and almost blind, but she knows what she has to do and won't give up on it. Her grandson has swallowed lye, and she has a holy duty of making her way to town in order to get medicine for him. The wilderness of the path does not scare her off. She stumbles over and over, but she talks herself through every obstacle. Undoubtedly, the theme of perseverance is what Eudora Welty wants to point out to her readers. Just like the name Phoenix suggests
roles that have been available to her (4). While this seems to be a reasonable
Although this story is told in the third person, the reader’s eyes are strictly controlled by the meddling, ever-involved grandmother. She is never given a name; she is just a generic grandmother; she could belong to anyone. O’Connor portrays her as simply annoying, a thorn in her son’s side. As the little girl June Star rudely puts it, “She has to go everywhere we go. She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (117-118). As June Star demonstrates, the family treats the grandmother with great reproach. Even as she is driving them all crazy with her constant comments and old-fashioned attitude, the reader is made to feel sorry for her. It is this constant stream of confliction that keeps the story boiling, and eventually overflows into the shocking conclusion. Of course the grandmother meant no harm, but who can help but to blame her? O’Connor puts her readers into a fit of rage as “the horrible thought” comes to the grandmother, “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (125).
Eudora Welty's first novel, The Robber Bridegroom, is a combination of fantasy and reality while exploring the duality of human nature, time, and the word man lives in. The union of legend, Mississippi history and Grimms' fairy tales create an adult dream world. Every character in the story has little insight to themselves and how they relate to the world around them. The antics of Mike Fink, the Harps, the bandits, and the Indians closely relate to Mississippi folklore. The blending of actual history and pure fantasy create a much richer form of entertainment. Mike Fink was an American frontiersman who is said to have beaten Davy Crockett in a shooting contest. The Harpe brothers were notorious rustlers and killers in the South. "After being felled by a bullet that paralyzed him, Big Harpe was decapitated; as the decapitation began, Big Harpe is reported to have said, "You're a God Damned rough butcher, but cut on and be damned" (Appel 70). The head was put on a post to warn other outlaws. The duality in man himself is a strong theme in the story. The men who fail to realize that man is a combination of good and evil are unable to succeed in the world around them. The Harps and to a lesser extent Mike Fink follow their most basic instincts to be frontiersmen. They are immersed completely in the lives they led and there is no other way to live. This inability to change is there downfall. The Harps are killed and Mike Fink is relegated to a lowly mail rider. This symbolizes the end of the lawless frontier. Unlike the Harps and Mike Fink, Jamie Lockhart, Clemet and Rosamond Musgrove are torn between two different personas in themselves. Jamie must separate the bandit in hims...
After her diagnosis of chronic kidney failure in 2004, psychiatrist Sally Satel lingered in the uncertainty of transplant lists for an entire year, until she finally fell into luck, and received her long-awaited kidney. “Death’s Waiting List”, published on the 5th of May 2006, was the aftermath of Satel’s dreadful experience. The article presents a crucial argument against the current transplant list systems and offers alternative solutions that may or may not be of practicality and reason. Satel’s text handles such a topic at a time where organ availability has never been more demanded, due to the continuous deterioration of the public health. With novel epidemics surfacing everyday, endless carcinogens closing in on our everyday lives, leaving no organ uninflected, and to that, many are suffering, and many more are in desperate request for a new organ, for a renewed chance. Overall, “Death’s Waiting List” follows a slightly bias line of reasoning, with several underlying presumptions that are not necessarily well substantiated.
The childhood of Frances Piper consists of inadequate love, loss of innocence and lack of concern, ultimately leading to her disastrous life. As a six year old child, she encounters several traumatic events, explicitly the death of her loved ones and the loss of her innocence. Over the course of one week, there have been three deaths, two funerals and two burials in the Piper family. “Frances was crying so hard now that Mercedes got worried. ‘I want my Mumma to come ba-a-a-a-ack.’”( McDonald 174). As a young child, there is nothing more upsetting than losing a mother. A family is meant to comfort each other to fulfill the loss of a loved one; however, this is not the case in the Piper family. Mercedes, only a year older than Frances, tries to console her even though she herself is worried. The loss of motherly love and affection has a tremendous impact on her future since now her sole guardian, James, expresses no responsibility towards her. Instead, he molests Frances on the night of Kathleen’s funeral to lessen the grief of his lost daughter. As a result “These disturbing experiences plague Frances with overwhelming feelings of low self worth and guilt that haunt h...
Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path' is a story that emphasizes the natural symbolism of the surroundings. As the story begins, we are introduced to our main character, Phoenix Jackson; she is described as a small, old Negro woman. I believe that the name Eudora Welty gives our main character is very symbolic. The legend of the Phoenix is about a fabled sacred bird of ancient Egyptians. The bird is said to come out of Arabia every 500 years to Heliopolis, where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from its ashes, young and beautiful. Phoenix, the women in the story, represents the myth of the bird because she is described as being elderly and near the end of her life. Phoenix can hardly walk and uses a cane made of an old umbrella to aid her. Her skin is described as old and wrinkly, but yet with a golden color running beneath it 'Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath?(55). Her skin tone represents the golden feathers of the Phoenix and her grandson represents the next Phoenix that will be given life when she dies. The trip to the city to get the medicine represents the mythological trip that the Phoenix takes to the sun to die. Most likely this journey along a worn path through the woods, will be one of her last.
Through attention to detail, repeated comparison, shifting tone, and dialogue that gives the characters an opportunity to voice their feelings, Elizabeth Gaskell creates a divide between the poor working class and the rich higher class in Mary Barton. Gaskell places emphasis on the differences that separate both classes by describing the lavish, comfortable, and extravagant life that the wealthy enjoy and compares it to the impoverished and miserable life that the poor have to survive through. Though Gaskell displays the inequality that is present between both social classes, she also shows that there are similarities between them. The tone and diction change halfway through the novel to highlight the factors that unify the poor and rich. In the beginning of the story John Barton exclaims that, “The rich know nothing of the trials of the poor…” (11), showing that besides the amount of material possessions that one owns, what divides the two social classes is ability to feel and experience hardship. John Barton views those of the upper class as cold individuals incapable of experiencing pain and sorrow. Gaskell, however proves Barton wrong and demonstrates that though there are various differences that divide the two social classes, they are unified through their ability to feel emotions and to go through times of hardship. Gaskell’s novel reveals the problematic tension between the two social classes, but also offers a solution to this problem in the form of communication, which would allow both sides to speak of their concerns and worries as well as eliminate misunderstandings.
In the novel, My Antonia, by Willa Cather, society seems to govern the lives of many people. But for the others, who see past society's stereotypical values, had enough strength to overcome this and allowed them to achieve their dreams. Throughout the book, everyone seems to be trying to pursue the American Dream. While they all have different ideas of just exactly what the American Dream is, they all know precisely what they want. For some, the American Dream sounds so enticing that they have traveled across the world to achieve their goal.
Frances Piper’s change in nature can be seen the day of Materia’s, her mother, funeral. She cannot control the laughter that escapes her while the funeral proceeding is happening. However she is amazed when James and Mercedes, her sister, think that she is crying. In that moment of her life, Frances learns something “. . . that will allow her to survive and function for the rest of her life. She finds out that one thing can look like another . . . Some would simply say Frances learned how to lie” (142)...
Memories are a stockpile of good and bad experiences that are retained of a people, places. How do you remember your childhood memories? Do certain people, places or things trigger these memories to the past? Does the knowledge of these experience still affect your life today? Throughout the novel My Antonia, Jim's nostalgia for the past is represented by nature, symbolic elements, and above all Antonia.
Her family life is depicted with contradictions of order and chaos, love and animosity, conventionality and avant-garde. Although the underlying story of her father’s dark secret was troubling, it lends itself to a better understanding of the family dynamics and what was normal for her family. The author doesn’t seem to suggest that her father’s behavior was acceptable or even tolerable. However, the ending of this excerpt leaves the reader with an undeniable sense that the author felt a connection to her father even if it wasn’t one that was desirable. This is best understood with her reaction to his suicide when she states, “But his absence resonated retroactively, echoing back through all the time I knew him. Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb.” (pg. 399)
Mrs. Marian Forrester strikes readers as an appealing character with the way she shifts as a person from the start of the novel, A Lost Lady, to the end of it. She signifies just more than a women that is married to an old man who has worked in the train business. She innovated a new type of women that has transitioned from the old world to new world. She is sought out to be a caring, vibrant, graceful, and kind young lady but then shifts into a gold-digging, adulterous, deceitful lady from the way she is interpreted throughout the book through the eyes of Niel Herbert. The way that the reader is able to construe the Willa Cather on how Mr. and Mrs. Forrester fell in love is a concept that leads the reader to believe that it is merely psychological based. As Mrs. Forrester goes through her experiences such as the death of her husband, the affairs that she took part in with Frank Ellinger, and so on, the reader witnesses a shift in her mentally and internally. Mrs. Forrester becomes a much more complicated women to the extent in which she struggles to find who really is and that is a women that wants to find love and be fructuous in wealth. A women of a multitude of blemishes, as a leading character it can be argued that Mrs. Forrester signifies a lady that is ultimately lost in her path of personal transitioning. She becomes lost because she cannot withstand herself unless she is treated well by a wealthy male in which causes her to act unalike the person she truly is.
With every passing minute there are teenagers growing into adults who think they might want to get married someday. In a matter of time, some of these couples will then want to start a family of their own. These children will become their responsibility and there will be no way of knowing if they will accomplish their life dreams or if they will have to fight to keep their family together. In the novel, The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck tells a story of a farmer that fights to make a financially stable life for his family. In China, there are limited portions of land to be cultivated therefore, each farmer must be unconditionally devoted to his land if he wants to prosper. In retrospect, it is difficult for those that have been accustomed to the American domesticated society to relate to a culture that depends solely on self-produced resources. The resources a farmer grows on his private acre of land must be used not only to raise his family, but also to develop a promising future for the generations to come. Throughout all of the hard work and dedication that is put into the land, one must not waste the wealth on meaningless personal gain that could possibly demolish future goals. As demonstrated in the novel, a young farmer in late 1920’s rural China desires to surpass his poverty-stricken life for the benefit of his family until he realizes the true power of his wealth. As a result, the protagonist of The Good Earth reveres the acquisition of money until it proves to be destructive.