What You See Is Not What You Get

A detailed Summary of What You See Is Not What You Get

Upon reading Welty's stories you realize they are not what they appear, but are merely allusions used to portray a deeper meaning. There are many factors that can be contributed to the effective portraying of Welty's allusions. A good example would be how her characters become almost life like, real, through her use of characterization. Also Welty's creative usage of imagery and symbols. Even her diction and choice of easygoing writing style adds to her allusions.

In order for Welty's allusions to be effective she has to draw the reader into the character. The reader needs to feel and understand where the character is coming from. The character has to seem life like. In order to give a character life you must fully understand their mind set. Noted by Robert Drake, Welty states: "What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself" (293). This helps her to create a character that has real emotions, needs, wants, and desires.

Welty's use of this method combined with characterization, in "A Worn Path", create Phoenix. Phoenix is a character which people can connect to someone. "...Negro women with her head tied in a red rag...She was very old and s

Welty's reader, however, often is asked to do more, to work with the associations produced by several allusions, no just one. When readers confront an allusion, they face something like a puzzle to be solved...When her allusions arouse expectations from which her tales diverge, meaning is located in the tension between the reader's literary memory and Welty's new text... allusion emphasizes difference as well as similarity (313-314).

Welty's simple writing style makes her stories easy reading. So in order to fully understand and grasps Welty's meanings, the reader needs to look deeper then the surface of her writings. Through my research I have found this statement to be true. All of the critics speak of Welty's true meanings, the meaning that lay covered under the surface of her stories. "Examination of these stories not only will permit closer study of Welty's continued assimilation, selection, and transformation of historical matter in to satisfying aesthetic design but also will reveal the presence of a dynamic, reflective quality..." (Devlin 45). Once the reader knows the character, where they are in time and circumstance, then and only then can the reader fathom the true meaning of Welty's stories.

New York: The Whitston Publishing Company,1992.

Welty's style is very unique. "...her method in terms of "lyric poetry," allowing her stories to organize themselves in a lyric, rather than narrative, sequence." (Johnston XVI). It allows the reader to get something new out of her stories each time that they read them. "Fay had never dreamed that in that s

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Approximate Word count = 1064
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous