A Visit of Charity - Research Paper Example

In her 92 years, she wrote a couple of short stories, novels, essays, photographs, and one children's article. Welty makes use of her gift in literacy to convey concern to human huddles such as old age, illness, ignorance and poverty (Rags 1). These can be viewed in her short narrative, A Visit of Charity. In the narrative, Welty incites thoughts concerning selfishness, negligence, dehumanization, and callousness with the use of an ironic tone. The name itself is rather an irony (Rags 1). Charity refers to showing humanity, kindness, and social ethics toward individuals in need.

However, neither the central character Marian nor society observes these principles. This article will analyze the short story, A Visit of Charity by Eudora Welty to explain its ironies. A Visit of Charity is an account about a 14 year-old girl, Marian, who goes to visit two elderly women in a nursing residence (Rags 1). The aim of her trip is to gain three points for her marks in Campfire Girl. By taking a potted plant to the nursing residence, she can get an extra one mark, or a double point is added up if she takes a bible and reads it to the elderly women.

Marian takes the bible with her a potted plant (McCartney 1). In the nursing residence, she is surprised by the inferior locality and two complaining old women. Throughout her short stay, she is strange, and her mind cannot work appropriately. She drops the abilities to see, think, hear clearly and speak. She has a strong desire to flee from this bizarre place, and from the strange elderly ladies. At the end, she leaves a weeping elderly lady and a prayerful old lady untouched. She digs up an apple she has buried under a tree and hurries to take the bus to go to her home (WriteWork 1).

The narrative happens on an extremely freezing winter day at a nursing residence (WriteWork 1). The structure is portrayed as beaten block and it revealed the winter sun like a block of ice. It is redecorated by spiky dark hedge plants. These scenarios imply the lack of warmth and affection from a society towards isolated elderly citizens in the nursing residence. Marian is the central character of the story (McCartney 1). She is portrayed as a self-centered individual. She is disturbed about the development of her Campfire Girl points more than everything.

Her stopover is evidently hypocritical when she informs the nurse at the reception desk that she is a Campfire Girl and that she wants to pay a visit to a couple of elderly women. When the nurse poses whether Marian is familiar with any women there, she reply, no, however, she says that most of the women there will recognize her (McCartney 1). The potted plant is more proof that illustrates Marian’s self-interest. Rather than taking fruits or other more sincere and sensible gift, Marian opts to take a potted plant that can get her one extra mark.

Nevertheless, compared to the earlier campfire girl who took a bible in her trip, Marian is thought to have a modest self-awareness. This is because she does not prefer to take a bible that can get more extra marks for her. Welty mockingly proposes that individuals who use bibles as an apparatus for self-gaining are certainly those who are too worried with their own benefits (Welty 4). Their proceedings fly in the face of consecration. Marian, nevertheless, dehumanizes the two elderly ladies automatically.

She relates the voice of an elderly lady to a sheep’