Life Lesson

A detailed Summary of Life Lesson

Eudora Welty's story "The Little Store" illustrates how a single, unexpected event changed what seemed a perfect life in perfect surroundings. Most wish for a peaceful childhood, as Eudora had in Jackson, Mississippi: a little house, a little porch, back and front yards, mother in the kitchen cooking all day, and children on the street ready to play. Such life appears to be heavenly for a few moments, until it is changed with one stroke of awkward reality that delivers a person from the delightfulness of childhood into the harshness of adulthood. The mystery of the event that brought up Eudora into an adult strangely leads the reader away from focusing on the certainty that Eudora sooner or later was going to loose the innocence of a child because "of course those [facts of death and life] are what we were on the track of, anyway."(55)

At the beginning of the story we have an opportunity to gaze at the enchanting picture that Eudora Welty is painting for us: "it was possible to have a little pasture

behind your backyard where you could keep a Jersey caw, which we did" (48). You can see the love that the little girl felt and how everything around her seemed to belong to her. There was also no mystery-every day was like the one before. You can observe the children playing all day long, and every once in a while someone would be sent to "The Little Store" close by. That of course was nothing out of the ordinary either because as Eudora says "I knew even the side walk to it as well as my own skin."(49). Everything was so familiar to Eudora in this little town that it gives us an idea that the time stopped for her.

For Eudora life seemed so harmless that there was no need for her to tell apart between right or wrong, which in turn allowed her to accept the world as it was presented to her. She never had any doubts, nor did she question anything. It was pure innocence that only a child could have. But the innocence of this young life was lost with an incident whose details are never brought to light. Sudden

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 689
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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