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
affecting humanity at a more youthful age as the years continued. The number of people suffering from depression today has nearly doubled since the 1970s. However, depression presents just as much of a concern today as it has in the past. In The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty portrays depression through the juxtaposition of characters, her use of symbolism, and verbal irony portrayed throughout the novel. The juxtaposition of characters Laurel, Fay, and Judge McKelva contains the differences of how
The Optimist's Daughter: A Look at Death and Dying "Fay struck out with her hands, hitting at Major Bullock and Mr. Pitts and Sis, fighting with her mother, too, for a moment. She showed her claws at Laurel, and broke from the preachers last-minute arms and threw herself forward across the coffin on to the pillow, driving her lips without aim against the face under hers. She was dragged back into the library, screaming, by Miss Tennyson Bullock, out of sight behind the blanket of greenery. Judge
Though losing a loved one may seem earth shattering, life goes on. When burdened with this overpowering misery, mourners will experience the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In Eudora Welty’s, The Optimist’s Daughter, readers follow Laurel McKelva Hand as she addresses each of these stages after losing the ones closest to her. In mourning, sufferers spend different amounts of time in each stage. Stages do not have to occur in a specific order, it is possible
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty The complex natures of love and family are so intricate that not many authors come close in truly unraveling their mysteries. Eudora Welty, the author of The Optimist’s Daughter, writes about the theme of how family can nurture through love, but they can also cause so much pain through unbeknownst cruelty and betrayal. We can clearly see this theme in Welty’s novel when she writes “Her trouble was that very desperation. And no one had the power to cause that
inescapable process that all humans will face at some time in life, whether it is the death of a friend or family member. After the experience of death comes the process of grievance, which is the coping with the loss of the loved one. “The Optimist’s Daughter”, is a novel written by Eudora Welty and is based on a girl named Laurel McKelva Hand and the struggles with grief. Laurel utilizes memory to overcome the grief she experiences, resulting from the loss of her family. Clinton McKelva is a Judge
Life Goes On The Optimist’s Daughter tells the story of Laurel Mckelva who has previously lost both her husband and mother. She returns to her hometown in Mississippi to be at side of her father as he gets surgery. Complications rise up and end at the death of her father. She stays in her childhood home with her father’s new wife; Fay. When Fay leaves to visit her family in Texas Laurel stays alone at the house and confronts memories of her family who are no longer with her. In this novel the setting
Memory is a common motif for southern literature. Eudora Welty’s novel The Optimist’s Daughter is no exception to this generalization as it strongly entails both aspects of memory – remembrance and forgetfulness. The stark dichotomy of memory can be looked at as both a blessing and a burden. Characters throughout this novel and so many other pieces of southern literature struggle with the past which they wish to keep, but cannot fully, and a past from which they want to escape, but cannot fully
barely even function. Death certainly changes a person's life, mainly for the worse. In Eudora Welty’s The Optimist's Daughter, Judge McKelva’s death had the surprising effect of changing Fay and Laurel for the better; they became more adventurous and open to new experiences, and learned that they could find family in people who were not related to them. Laurel McKelva, Judge McKelva’s daughter, has had a rough life. Experiencing the death of her father, husband, and mother certainly shaped her personality
The Pounder Heart, adapted by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, achieved great success on Broadway. In 1975, her enchanting novel The Robber Bridegroom became a musical. In 1973, Eudora Welty received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter. Three years earlier, she published a collection of photographs that she had taken herself in the years 1930 and 1940, One Time, one Place: Mississippi in the Depression: a work intending to depict the harsh living conditions in Mississippi
grapher. Some of the short story's/ novels are A Curtain of Green, The Robber Bridgegroom, The Wide Net, The Ponder Heart, The Golden Apples, Delta Wedding, The Bride of the Innisfallen, Lossing battles, and The Optimist's daughter. She got a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist's Daughter. She also received the National Medal for Literature. Eudora had a relationship with a man with John Robinson, but he was appearently homosexual. A rumor spread that Eudora was possibly a lesbian.(The Washington
Such as Judge McKale, in The Optimist’s Daughter appears with the sickness and dies from the beginning of the story. Despite the fact that, the name of the character, Judge, is a reflection of high men power, yet his power is dismissed in the very beginning of the story. Similarity, with
fictional southern towns also inspired an improved gratitude of my home town, as unfavorable aspects seemed lesser in comparison. When I ventured into the genre on my own, I came to also appreciate the works of Eudora Welty. Welty’s novel “The Optimist’s Daughter” is one of my favorites, as many of its themes resonate with me on a personal
Eudora Welty was born in 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, grew up in a prosperous home with her two younger brothers. Her parent was an Ohio-born insurance man and a strong-minded West Virginian schoolteacher, who settled in Jackson in 1904 after their marriage. Eudora’s school life began attending a white-only school. As born and brought up under strict supervision and influence, at the age of sixteen she somehow convinced her parents to attend college far enough from home, to Columbus, Mississippi
condition makes her feel sorry for him and she wants to help him in any way possible. However a pessimist would see an ulterior motive to his sisters’ actions. Since the narrator of the story is Gregor the reader is introduced to Grete through the optimist’s point of view. Gregor portrays Grete as a nurturing and caring person whose actions are solely based on what is best for Gregor. However, what if the narrator was not Gregor but a neutral person who had no prior relationship to Grete? Would Grete’s
collection of these photographs was published in 1971 in One Time One Place: Mississippi in the Depression: a Snapshot Album. In the introduction to the 1996 edition William Maxwell when commenting on her work quotes a sentence from her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter: “The mystery of how little we know of people is no greater than the mystery of how much” (5), which captures the lightness of touch she employs to signify the essence of the characters in Ladies in Spring. Welty went on to right a range of
Welty's Characterization in A Curtain of Green Myth, symbol, and allusion are not an uncommon characteristic in Eudora Welty's works. By using characters such as Odysseus and leaving hints of symbolism in works such as The Optimist's Daughter Welty places many questions in the minds of her readers. After a reader has pondered these questions a categorization of the story takes place in the readers mind. Although different readers have different interpretations of literature one collection of