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”