The Little Store

Today I read “The Little Store” by Eudora Welty and was at first pleasantly surprised by the intricate and detailed recount of the small convenience store that played such a major role in her youth. She is enamored not only by the store itself but everyone and everything associated with it and the journey from home to it. The text reads, “I knew even the sidewalk to it as well as I knew my own skin,” (S+W 3 155) clearly indicating that she was very familiar with the short trek to the store. By presenting her feelings towards the store she sets a tone of nostalgic happiness for the reader as we gain some insight into her childhood.

The structure of her writing also plays an important role in her story and the effect she wants it to have on the reader. She first describes the journey to the store like, “…a tune would float toward me from the house where there lived three sisters,” and “A little further on… was the house where the principal of our grade school lived…”(S+W 3 156) and so on, to allow the reader background into how the place she grew up in was as much about the scenery as it was the people who lived there. This adds depth to the story for the reader and also set up the reader for the ending of the story.

Another great aspect of this story is the appeal to all of the senses. Specifically, I enjoyed her description of the smells of the store as you enter. “There were almost tangible smells – licorice recently sucked in a child’s cheek, dill-pickle brine that had leaked through a paper sack in a fresh trail across the wooden floor…”(S+W 3 156) are just a few examples of how exquisite Welty’s ability to describe and assumedly recollect the events that took place. By doing this and describing the smells that would entice a child, she reinforces that the story is from a child’s perspective and at the same time gives the reader a vivid mental idea of what the store was like. An additional example of this use of sensory appeal is found in the quote, “Its confusion may have been in the eye of its beholder. Enchantment is cast upon you by all those things you weren’t supposed to have need for… boy’s marbles and agates… small rubber balls that wouldn’t bounce straight…”(S+W 3 157).

However good this story, the ending did not sit well with me. The story ends with her explaining that “tragedy struck their family,” (S+W 3 159) in reference to the Sessions (the family of the convenience store) and her also explaining that her parents held back what the tragedy was from her because she was a child, and then ending without ever explaining to the reader what that tragedy was. Although effective in allowing the reader to have the same feeling she experienced as a child, I disliked this ending, no matter how appropriate.

All Quotes taken from Eudora Welty’s “The Little Store”

The South

My place of birth is Indianapolis, but I have lived in Alpharetta all of my life. Being from the south I'm sure that most people would think i have a southern draw, however it is in fact the opposite. My hatred for the accent extends into all aspects of my life. I will never date or even consider dating a woman with a southern accent, I cannot stand country music, and I sometimes even get annoyed by my family members who have the accent. However, I do not hate where I am from. I love this part of the country despite its freezing winters and blisteringly hot summers because it is part of who I am. For example I love sweet tea and fried chicken. I think calling soda pop just sounds silly. I love the fall when all the trees that stand over us turn to beautiful autumn colors. This is the place I have lived in all my life and I could not even begin to think that it has not left an indelible mark on who I am. I can’t even fathom what it would be like to live in another part of the country. If I were to be moved I would feel totally lost. I could never picture myself as a Northerner, or a Californian. If instead of growing up in Georgia I had grown up in Indiana, I am absolutely certain that I would be a totally different person. I would probably think all people from the south were redneck and carried shotguns in their pick-up trucks. I would probably think that southerners find it acceptable to marry second cousins (although that’s not true). I would have all the common misconceptions that most anyone from another part of the country would have of the south.

Lakeside

Usually when I visit my neighborhood’s lake the water is full of vibrant life and movement, but today it is the opposite. A thick, opaque sheet of ice covers almost the whole of it and the movements I am so used to have ceased. The water that remains at the surface almost grasping for sunlight is motionless and resembles the frosty glass all around it. I see no fish stirring, hear no sound of insects buzzing, but I do feel the icy wind blowing steadily across the lake surface. However, I have just arrived and have yet to realize that “It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open.” In my mind I know that the fish have not left the lake and that the water is still in motion just as it has always been yet because of the thick sheet of ice I have been blinded. “If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open” because I don’t know what clues to look for in this weather to spot the evidence that life remains. I often think that just like this sheet of ice over water that blocks us from seeing in “We miss a great deal because we perceive only things on our own scale.” For example, what do the fish in the water think? On their scale the ice blocks sunlight, their source of warmth, and is most likely vexing, yet to us the ice is fun and beautiful allowing us to forget how treacherous it can be if we were to fall in and join our fishy friends. “Still, a great deal of light falls on everything” and I would have to guess that they find ways to keep warm under the ice since entire fish populations don’t just die out during winter. I actually venture onto the ice, near the shore of course, to see how thick it is and astoundingly, especially for Georgia, the ice is over two inches thick over open water and is frozen to the bottom near the edges. It is astounding to think that water has so many forms. “I reel in confusion; I don’t understand what I see.” How does moving water freeze? When I recall past years I have seen frozen waterfalls but I never understood how water plummeting through the air could freeze in place. It must freeze gradually. With some parts freezing before others and blocking the moving water ever so steadily until at last every droplet of water on the surface freezes. “I had been a bell my whole life and, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck.” Realizations are strange things. How can they exist? For a person to realize something the sums of the whole must have always been there, and therefore, that person actually learned nothing and yet feels as if a great hidden truth has been revealed. “…sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: ‘This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.’” Annie Dillard, I could not agree more that a way to remove these filters must be discovered. As a realist this is one ultimate goal I always keep in mind, see the world as it truly is, not as you want it to be.

Quotes from: Dillard, Annie. "Seeing." Seeing and Writing. Eds. Donald and Christina McQuade. Bedford, 2007. Print 108-117.