Born in Jackson, Mississippi, she attended the Mississippi
College for Women, graduated from the University of Wisconsin (1929) and
studied advertising at Columbia University for a year. Her first short story
appeared in 1936, and gradually she began to be published in small, then
regional and general circulation magazines. She published collections of her
short stories and began publishing novels, as well.
Soon after her first novel was published, she stopped
writing to care full-time for her family for fifteen years: for two brothers
with severe arthritis and her mother who had had a stroke. After her mother
died in 1966, she returned to writing.
She was a 6-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short
Stories, and her many awards include the National Medal for Literature, the
American Book Award, and, in 1969, a Pulitzer Prize.
She was also an accomplished and published photographer. But
it is for her fiction, usually set in the rural South, that she's known as the
First Lady of Southern Literature.
The Golden Apples (1949) includes seven interlocking stories that trace life in the fictional Morgana, Mississippi, from the turn of the century until the late 1940s. When Welty began writing the stories, however, she had no idea that they would be connected. Midway through the composition process, she finally realized that she was writing about a common cast of characters, that the characters of one story seemed to be younger or older versions of the characters in other stories, and she decided to create a book that was neither novel nor story collection. It is perhaps the greatest triumph of her distinguished career, an unmatched example of the story cycle.
We are going to make a presentation about the story" The Whole World Knows"
The story is told by Randall McLain and through his callings to his father we imagine a suffering ,regretful man.But is he so?
These quatations are from the very end of the story.
''And I showed I had the pistol.I said, 'I want the whole bed' I told her she hadn't needed to be here. I got down in the bed and pointed the pistol at her, without much hope, the way I used to lie cherishing a dream in the morning, and she the way Jinny would come pull me out of it.''
....................
''In a minute she put her hand out again, differently, and laid it cold on my shoulder. And I had her so quick. I could have been asleep then. I was lying there.''
....................
"So i slept"
Can a regretful man sleep easily after raping 18 years old girl?
Elif KALYONCU
Gizem GÜNÇİÇEK
The biographical note is too long and has much irrelevant information, since we are just going to concentrate on the short story cycle. Pay attention to the formal details — typing spaces between words and sentences; titles of different types of texts (novels, short stories, etc.).
ResponderEliminarIt is easier for your colleagues to give you any feedback if you suggest reading topics. Why did you chose to present these specific quotations, for instance?
In “Whole World Knows” Eudora Welty uses the narrative devices very straightforward: 3rd-person omniscient narration focused on Randall McLain. In some moments we are right in his head as he indulges in fantasies of attacking the guy his wife had an affair with, other moments the author has one of the bank customers carry the story forward in monologue, addressed to Randall at the teller window.
ResponderEliminarRandall McLain carries on some sort of relation with a much younger woman. It’s given the idea that she's a teenager, but clearly that is not exactly like it seems. on the way to the end he takes her for a night of drinking in Vicksburg, they drank, then drove in the night to the river's border, then to a little cabin, and is a fact that throughout Eudora Welty's fiction the sex is quick, aggressive, cruel, unsatisfying and in this case the characters play with suicide, homicide. Eudora Welty is great at reaching the consciousness of others and she’s also extremely alert of the details of the life around her. Eudora Welty’s way of seeing love is not encouraging in any sense, but the characters and their great effort are authentic and moving.
I think among all the stories this is one of the fullest examinations of a character in personal, emotional crisis and one of the best portraits of her small city community, named Morgana.
Liliana Pascual nº46664
I believe this was made clear yesterday in the classroom, but I just want to make sure that you understood this story is told through a 1st person narrator, who mingles in his narrative the voices of several other characters, namely, his mother's and the storytellers' of Morgana.
EliminarYes, it is now clear. I was a little confused because there were some moments that seem like Randall was talking about himself in the 3rd person, but actually was a storyteller. Thank you for clearing that up.
EliminarLiliana Pascual
While reading, I had some difficulties understanding who was the narrator of this short story, and therefore understanding the short story itself.
ResponderEliminarI believe the language and the way it was written starts off very clear, but then diverts to something not so perceptible.
As I mentioned before in class, my opinion is that Welty seems to diverge from the core of the story; not as noticeable as in other stories, but still used in this one. The problem I have with understanding her stream of consciousness is that she is not very clear, nor very exact when using it; she seems to flow around her stories.
Personally speaking, I find Welty's style of writing very hard to understand and not suitable for any kind of reader, at all. One might have to read The Golden Apples 10 times until they understand what the stories are about. All of this makes me question my own writing style and until what point can someone tell me how I should write. If i had written my essays in college with Welty's writing style, I STRONGLY believe that they would be marked with a low grade. Are people becoming more and more demanding, regarding the way a writer should write their stories? Or are the writers becoming more and more clear, simple and suitable for anyone to read them?
Beatriz Valle
Beatriz, please, do not confuse the characteristics of different types of texts such as fictional and argumentative. To write an essay is not the same thing as to write a novel, or a short story cycle, in this particular case, so the last part of your comment seems a little bit off the track...
EliminarIn the beginning it was hard for me to read The Golden Apples. Eudora Welty has a very different style of writing. But as the story unfolds, the whole of the story started to make sense. Not only the places and characters started to have a sort of connection with each other, but they also took me to perceive a certain subjectivity that was present on the characters. That subjectivity i'm talking about, i find it also present in this specific short story. The subjectivity of the characters is clear and perceptible, but at the same time very vague and impervious. This is explainable in the way that when i thought i started to understand a certain character, in the moment after i always felt confused. That forced me to interpretate the story as being a simple observer from a reality that seems to be dual, like i was watching a film with several screenshots in my mind and then beholding a certain action from the inside of a certain character.
ResponderEliminarJani Rodrigues - 44014
I agree with my colleagues Beatriz and Jani. Take, for instance, the quotations you chose. It is hard to understand that a rape was the focus of the story if we only read those sentences. The whole book for me seems to lose itself in practically nothing, to be perfectly honest... She goes from one point to the other through a whole bunch of descriptions and off-topic matters that mean absolutely nothing to the main plot.
ResponderEliminarWhat happened to me most of times while reading was that I felt that in 100 words, only 10 mattered. When she started to wonder off, I'd get lost as well. And when I'd finally come back to the story, it wouldn't make any sense at all. It was impossible to separate what mattered from what didn't, and so I'd miss out important subjects in the middle of rambling.
I admit there are some great points in the story, and some parts I truly enjoyed. But for that to happen I had to read and re-read every line at least four times. I would take me twenty minutes or more per page, and I didn't fall for the book hard enough to allow myself to do so in every single page.
I truly have to applaud you though, for analyzing this piece. It's a really complicated bit and I'm sure it cost you a lot of headaches to get it right. Congratulations on a good job and I know you will do great in the presentation. Much better than I ever would if this was my project, of that I am sure.
I do not believe rape to be the focus of this story, Filipa. We may argue that it deals with sexism and misogyny, but most of all it depicts the consciousness of the protagonist in crisis. We all know that when we have problems our reasoning is not straight forward, and the style here exemplifies that.
EliminarI agree with my colleagues. Even after reading the first stories, I had to struggle with the meaning of the short story and also the language, sometimes very entangled.
ResponderEliminarAs I read the story, I got the feeling that the main focus was on the inability of Randall McLain to deal with the failure of his marriage. The rape of Maideen Sumrall it seems to be his mark of superiority over women, mainly over his estranged wife to whom Maideen resembles. When we learn that eventually the girl committed suicide, it was hard to understand what the author was trying to say, because there is no punishment, no visible regret of the main character. Was it about male immaturity, a repetition of his father mistakes, the lack of moral values that a person, growing up with no paternal figure present, can have? It could be all of them or neither. Ultimately it lies with the reader to draw his own conclusions with a hint of help from the author.
Madalena Athayde - 44440
To be honest this was pretty hard to read considering i didn't even know what i was reading at some points in the story. It just seemed like the route and the literary trajectory marked by the conscious of the main character, Randall took turns, passed over every on-ramp in the universe of jumbled, indescernible words, into the jungle of semantic confusion, past the desert of convoluted syntax and finally arriving at the steppe of absolute incoherence where you would feel yourself lacking a means to hydrate your cognitive compass. However i can say that the narrating voice, played by "Ran" emits a sort of a crescent, lengthy curve of self-entitlement. He starts off as already someone who is clearly not devoid of a patriarcal entitlement, but as he travels forward in his conscience he appears to express the idea that he is steadily starting to believe ever so firmly that women are inherently part of something wrong with the world, and they can't be saved or fixed. He has let himself to be convinced that the women around him could pass for little more than objects upon which he can execute his most primal desires and be discarded at a whim. He never shows any regret in my opinion. He just considers it his duty to punish them as they deserve to be punished for their apathy, even though they are not to blame for their own passive condition.
ResponderEliminarAndré Gomes nº45352
After you, it seems to me you got the gist of the story, even though Welty's style is hard. But I invite those of you who complain about the difficulty of getting into this fictional world to read the novels of some other modernist writers, such as Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, or James Joyce... If we give up our preconceptions of how neatly a text should be ordered to make our reading easy, maybe we'll be able to offer ourselves the pleasure of more fully enjoying literature.
Eliminar