"A Visit of Charity" Eudora Welty
Welty's story "A Visit of Charity," deals with a young
girl named Marian who is trying to gain her merit for visiting the elderly in
the nursing homes. Marian is a closed off young girl as you can tell in the
beginning of the story from the line where she introduced herself as a
"Campfire Girl" who was just there "to pay a visit to some old
lady." She ended up leaving with hopefully a new perspective of others.
1. We should all behave more
charitably toward one another.
2. We can tell how
charitable we are by the way we treat people we find strange or irritable.
3. Although we are tempted
to repress our awareness of mortality, we should maintain that awareness.
4. Whenever we become
strongly aware of mortality, we tend to repress that awareness, thus robbing
ourselves of any benefit we may gain from it.
5. Young people are capable
of showing interest in others, if only for a moment, but better or worse they’re
basically self-centered.
6. Everyone has to give up
dreams of innocence and paradise, just as Adam and Eve did.
7. None of us can escape the
passage of time.
8. Be nice to old people,
for many of them have it tough.
9. Searching for merit
points is incompatible with a true spirit of charity.
10. Old-age homes need to be
made more pleasant, both for the residents and for their visitors.
I believe
that the theme of this short story was that "We should all behave more
charitably toward one another. I think that this statement in particular seems
to fit the theme accurately, because as a reader it is easy to see how one of
the elderly women Marian visited appreciated having someone new in her
presence. We should all definitely be more charitable towards others because it
leaves you with a sense of pride that you were able to help someone else
without really trying. With being charitable, Marian learned that not everyone
has it easy, even if it looks like that from an outsider’s point of view. You
get more an insight as to how others think and feel about certain things.
My second place statement that I found to be
accurate was “We can tell how charitable we are by the way we treat people we
find strange or irritable.” I found this to the second most important statement
because it ways it is true. We never really get to know those that we think to
be “weird” or to be “irritable,” instead we just ignore them. If we actually took
the time to be charitable to them and give them a chance we can see that they
are actually nice people looking for a chance. Those people we consider to be
weird or irritable just want someone to listen & talk to them and when we
actually take the chance to do just that we see the change in their eyes. By
being charitable to this types of people that managed to make it to stereotypes
we see that it pays off.
My third place
statement I found to be accurate was “Although we are tempted to repress our
awareness of mortality, we should maintain that awareness.” I think this helped
with the theme because the young girl didn’t seem to that they weren’t just “some
old ladies.” At first Marian wanted to get the visit over with to get her merit
but she actually got to see a different side to the two women. After spending
time and being aware of mortality she saw they have stories to tell just by the
way they talked.
“Whenever we
become strongly aware of mortality, we tend to repress that awareness, thus
robbing ourselves of any benefit we may gain from it.” This statement pertains
to the theme because the second elderly women that Marian saw on her visit came
off as a cold individual. I think that she had such a strong awareness of her
mortality and saw that the little girl just wanted to be of assistance. The
woman came off as someone who was “robbing themselves” from the simple enjoy of
having someone that you don’t see every day come and spend time with you. She
even complained about having to see the same roommate every day, hearing the
same voices.
“Young people are
capable of showing interest in others, if only for a moment, but better or
worse they’re basically self-centered.” This is accurate to the theme because
at first the little girl as young as she was seemed to show some interest in
the elder women but not as much as someone older than her. Marian wasn’t too
worried about going into deep, life changing conversations with them. It seems
like whatever basic conversation she could get was fine with her but anything
that required a well-defined answer she wasn’t interested in.
“Everyone has to
give up dreams of innocence and paradise, just as Adam and Eve did.” A
statement that goes with the theme because I feel that the first older lady was
trying to keep her days of innocence while in talks with the younger girl. At one
point she began to talk of her days as a little girl and going to school before
her roommate cut her off with her negativity. I feel as though the first women
was going back to those younger years where she felt were her safe and innocent
zones.
“None of us can escape the passage of time.” This seems fitting to the
theme because from the whole story you can see that the little girl is just
beginning her life, the first elderly women is wanting to relive those days and
the second woman has just begun to give up and not care anymore. You can see that time goes on whether we want
it to or not, it’s unchangeable. We gain insight as to how time from the beginning
and in the end can change people and as much as we would like to skip ahead into
time or regress to the past we just can’t accomplish that goal.
“Be nice to old people, for many of
them have it tough.” This statement doesn’t really fit as a good theme to me
because you should be nice to everyone in general because there is no definite
way of knowing their life stories. Old people are not the only who have
struggles in their lives; there are in fact children and adults who “have it
tough.” This didn’t seem fitting at all because of the mere fact that in my
opinion it’s kind of bias.
“Searching for merit points is
incompatible with a true spirit of charity.” This statement has some importance
to it but I font believe it was accurate with the main theme in question. Yes,
I agree that just going to achieve something for the sake of ownership is
nothing compared to truly volunteering and giving to charity. A title of merit
at the end of the day may not be there for you because it gets easy to misplace
things but with charity you always have somewhere to turn for help.
“Old-age homes need to be made more
pleasant, both for the residents and for their visitors.” This statement is not
the anything I consider to be important enough to make an impact on the theme.
This just merely states an opinion that someone has for “old-age homes.” The opinion given doesn’t give any information
that I feel can lead a reader to establish a theme based on it. For that reason
I made it the very that statement in regards to accurate themes.
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