Eudora Welty's Synthesis Essay

Author Eudora Welty, in her Autobiography takes readers back in time to explain how she became an earnest reader. Welty’s purpose is to reveal to readers her undying compassion for reading. She gives readers a detailed flash black with her description and rhetorical strategies. She does this by describing different phenomena that occurred and their influence on her. She uses imagery, repetition and shifts in order to paint a vivid picture of those events in her childhood.

Welty begins by describing a scary Liberian, Mrs. Calloway, by using words like “afraid”, “dragon eyes”, and “witch”. Welty starts off in this way to present to us her first impression of this librarian. When people are afraid of things, or when something hinders

someone, they tend to give it a bad connotation. In the movie “How to train a dragon” Vikings first saw the dragons as wild dangerous beast and treats. Vikings did not live in harmony with the dragons, instead they’d kill them whenever they come in contact with them. The Vikings relationship with the dragon in the beginning is similar to the way Welty depicts her relationship with Mrs. Calloway, who she sees a sort of threat or obstacle like the Vikings. Welty uses imagery of the “dragon eyes” to depict her first point that Mrs. Calloway was her first obstacle in her reading journey. However, Welty describes Mrs. Calloway to readers with a freighting connotation in order to show her personal bravery. Although Welty saw Mrs. Calloway as scary because of “her dragon eyes”, “her normally commanding tone”, and “her streaming face”, Welty still “was willing to do anything to read”. Welty is Almost like a puppy who is willing to do anything in order to acquire a treat, because she “could put on another petticoat if [she] wanted a book that badly”. Welty does this in order to show readers that passion can overrule fear or obstacles like Mrs. Calloway. When people come across an obstacle, they have two choices. One is to run away from it and the other is to face it. In Eudora Welty’s Narrative she emphasizes her eagerness for reading and her defiance, “she was willing” to face the “dragon” Mrs. Calloway showing that she truly had the passion and drive for reading at a young age.

Next Welty shifts focus from her impression of Mrs.

Calloway to her mother’s nonchalance, around Mrs. Calloway because Welty’s mother “was not afraid of Mrs. Calloway”. This creates a contrast between Welty and her mother to later help readers understand why wealthy’s mother told her she was “too impressionable”. Welty uses the contrast as a bridge to her acceptance of Mrs. Calloway because Seeing her mother’s nonchalance around Mrs. Calloway influenced or made an “impression” on Welty to see Mrs. Calloway as a protector of the books because Mrs. Calloway’s rules that “you could not take back a book to the library on the same day” and “you could take out two books at a time. This shows that Mrs. Calloway’s job was not to scare people away but instead to protect her books. Similar to the end of the movie “how to train a dragon” when the Hiccup the 15-year-old dragon trainer influences the rest of the Vikings in his village to accept the dragons and at the end the lived in harmony. The Acceptance of Mrs. Calloway shows Welty’s drive to read because “the only fear was that of books coming to an end “and not Mrs. Calloway anymore. The harmony created between Welty and Mrs. Calloway shows Welty’s Passion and drive to read, and encouraged her to take in consideration different perspectives, and understanding different perspectives is a crucial skill on becoming a good

reader/writer.

The author ends the narrative with Acknowledgements like the page at the beginning of a book, where an author mentions people that had an impact on their writing.

Welty Acknowledges her mother, and her impressionability in influencing her has the eager reader, great author and person that she is when writing this book. Welty remembers her mother “picking up The Man in lower ten while [her] hair got dried enough to unroll from a load of kid curlers trying to make [her] look like my idol, Mary Pickford” this suggests that if she copied both Mary Pickford and her mother, her mother was also her idol because her mother “was very sharing of [the] feeling of Insatiability”. This shows that Welty picked up reading from her mother and that’s and Welty’s mother knew her daughter was easily influenced which is why she said Welty was “too impressionable”. This then reveals to readers the root of Welty’s compassion for books as she was growing up. Welty also remembers “a generation later… “her mother “reading the new issue of time magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game ... with the children”. This shows that the passion within Welty’s mother, that influenced Welty as a young child to read, has not burned out. Due to that wetly wants readers to understand that her mother has influenced her whole life and career with her burning passion to read. This tells readers that Eudora Welty’s own passion for reading will never cease to

burn.