Analysis Of One Writer's Beginnings By Eudora Welty

In a passage from Eudora Welty’s autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, she recalls the story of her childhood reading habits that had a later impact on her becoming a writer. She uses auditory and visual imagery, Irony a list and diction to convey her story. The author wrote this autobiography to let people know why she became a writer. She speaks in a nostalgic tone, speaking to a general audience. Welty details her past in order to convey the intensity and value of her experiences.

In the first paragraph of welty’s autobiography she discussed her librarian Mrs. Calloway and the obstacles she had to go through to get into books. She used auditory and visual imagery some of the words she used were things like “her dragon eye”, “her streaming face” and “the seething sound” these were referring to the librarian. The imagery is used to make you able to imagine the surroundings and give you a clearer picture. The imagery sets the tone for the rest of the passage by showing that Mrs. Calloway appear to be this deadly dragon guarding the books making it apparent what she had to go through to get to the books she loved.

In the third paragraph Welty describes how her mother deals with Mrs.

Calloway while telling welty she can read almost anything. Welty includes Irony when she says that she cannot read the Elsie Dinsmore books because she was to impressionable when in fact she had already been impressed upon by her mother. Irony is used to emphasize or make you think twice about a point the author is making. The fact that her mother is the person that she got her reading habits from makes it more impactful that her mother is the one who stands up to Mrs.

Calloway

Near the end of the passage Welty started to describe what books she would read and how many of these books there were. She listed all of the books she would read “Bunny Brown and His sister…”. The list was used to punctuate how often she read and how much she loved books. The fact that Welty loved to read so much made all of the other events in this story much more significant and intense once she got to the books she would read them then read another until she could not anymore.

In the second to last paragraph Welty described how she would read each of the books after she got them home. She included diction things like “Devouring” and ”seized on” she was talking about how she read the books it made her seem like a monster with a neverending thirst for reading. This use of diction sets the tone of a rampaging monster tearing into books as quickly as she could get a hold of them. This may be the most intense and vivid part of the passage because she remembers it so well and the way she conveys it makes her seem ravenous and everwanting for books.