Analysis of Eudora Welty's Short Story - Essay Example

– I’m sorry, I accidentally uploaded from the wrong place when I was leaving earlier. Here is the complete document. If this hasn’t upset your schedule too much, I’d appreciate if you could extend the original deadline so that I’m not penalized. Student name Instructor name Course name Date Livvie by Eudora Welty Literature has a way of teaching us about life in other places and times so that we may get a better idea of how they think and thus open our minds to greater possibilities. This is particularly true of literature written by minority people during times when minorities were largely ignored or silenced. This is the case with the work of Eudora Welty, who wrote during the trying times of the 1960s, when black people were free but still largely subject to the unfair practices of the Jim Crow laws in the South and the country was beginning to seethe with black anger as these oppressed people sought a way of attaining the kind of equality promised for all people by the Constitution. While some white people continued to claim that black people were somehow not fully human and therefore not fully eligible for the same kind of treatment promised in the country’s greatest document, Welty’s stories helped to illustrate that all people are the same. Black people had the same kinds of feelings, desires, hopes and dreams that white people had, but were often held down by exterior forces that prevented them from attaining their highest potential. She did this by telling stories that were based on individuals, often as they acted alone or in limited company. In “Livvie,” Welty illustrates how the young black woman was suppressed within her own community as the black man attempted to attain a sense of white freedom and independence. This short story is a relatively slow-moving story that tells about the final days of a black man named Solomon and his young wife Livvie. Told in third person with a strong slant given to presenting Livvie’s point of view, the story starts when Solomon marries Livvie and “carried Livvie twenty-one miles away from her home” (228). In this opening sentence, there is no indication that Livvie had any say in the matter, any indication of how she felt about the situation or any sense that she was doing anything other than obeying her elders. The relationship is described as a spring-winter relationship in that Livvie was only 16 while Solomon was already being thought of as an old man. A picture of him on the wall when he was young is no longer recognizable to Livvie as having once been her husband, “nailed to the wall over the bed – only she would forget who it was – there was a picture of him when he was young” (231). This part of the story illustrates how the young wife was one of the last elements that the black man needed to complete his ideal ‘white man’s’ lifestyle, having been preparing for her for perhaps even longer than she’d been alive. This impression is given as the next part of the story focuses on just what steps Solomon had taken to ensure he acquired the American Dream. After introducing the characters, a large part of the story is dedicated to describing the property to which Solomon brought his wife, taking great care to make sure she has everything any woman might wish to have. There is a three room house, plenty of nice furnishings, art on the walls and fields that are cared for by a group of field hands who sing and shout to one another as they carry on the work of the day. Solomon has the name of a king and owns his own property, illustrating his accomplishments and wealth. His ability to hire others to work the fields establishes him as an equal to the white former slave-owners while his dominance over his young wife enables him to adopt the persona of the wealthy gentleman. “If there had been anybody, Solomon would not have let Livvie look at them, just as he would not let her look at a field hand, or a field hand look at her” (230). Livvie is not permitted to mix with the field hands in the same way that the white women of the plantations were not generally permitted to mix with the slaves. Nine years are apparently passed as if they were a single day, each passing like the one before with Livvie a virtual captive in her home and Solomon carefully nurturing his property, working at the rate of one tree per year, to create a safe home for his wife. In this, Welty manages to provide a sympathetic view of Solomon as he attempts to discover a sense of self-worth and value based on white men’s standards. At the same time that he is seen to truly value his wife, he mistakenly secures her within a golden cage and cooling the life in her. The only real change that seems to happen in this lonely lifestyle is that Solomon gets older. Eventually, he takes to his bed and refuses to eat for several days, during which Livvie is seen to simply float through the house like a ghost, doing her best to make no noise that might disturb her sleeping husband. “She could clean up the house and never drop a thing, and wash the dishes without a sound, and she would step outside to churn, for churning sounded too sad to her, like sobbing” (230). Her time is only interrupted once by the arrival of a cosmetics sales lady. Miss Baby Marie brings the outside world into Livvie’s isolation and re-introduces her to the elements of life. “In her hand was unclenched a golden lipstick which popped open like magic. A fragrance came out of it like incense, and Livvie cried out suddenly, ‘Chinaberry flowers!’” (234). The purple coloring of the lipstick as she applies it to her lips reminds her of her childhood home while it also forces her to actually look at herself in the mirror. “In the watery surface her face danced before her like a flame” (234). Not only her very lively personality, but the colorful jars and bottles she brings out of Baby Marie’s case and the automobile that sits outside even without benefit of a road shock Livvie back into the concept of living. Seeing her ‘flame’-like face in the ‘watery’ surface of the mirror may have been the spark that made her begin to think of her place in the house. As she walked back to see her sleeping husband after Baby Marie left, she is feeling her heart beat and notices that her husband, although he looks at her, does not see the change. “’He’s fixin’ to die,’ she said inside. That was the secret. That was when she went out of the house for a little breath of air” (235). At this point in the story, it seems clear that Livvie has come alive again to live a more social life on the outside. This idea is reinforced as she meets up with Cash McCord on the Natchez Trail. Cash’s outfit is described in intimate detail, revealing it to be relatively garish and lively. He’s wearing bright socks, a wide, leaf-green coat with a guinea pig in the pocket, tawny pants, a baby-pink satin shirt and a plum-colored hat with an emerald green feather in the brim. He explains his costume by pointing out how he is ready for Easter, again bringing forward the idea of life after death such as what Livvie is experiencing. “She stared on and on at him, as if he were doing some daring spectacular thing, instead of just walking beside her” (236). For Livvie, who has spent so much of the past nine years in shuffling isolation, rarely being able to go beyond the chicken coop, the obvious life force discovered in Cash is dazzling against the faint stirrings of life she’s begun to feel within herself. When they return to Solomon’s house, she realizes the dream of life is over for her. “Livvie stopped and hung her head” (236) realizing she is still the wife of a dying man and must sacrifice that spark of life she’d been experiencing. In response to this action, Cash begins to whistle and Livvie starts to realize this is someone who has been watching her for a long time and waiting for the day he would be able to claim her for himself. In the sudden passionate kiss that they share, she is both exhilarated and terrified as she discovers the pulses of life in her, the imminent death of her husband and the impending claim of Cash. “She cried out, and uttering little cries turned and ran for the house” (237). She runs into the house (behind Cash who has already beaten her inside) calling for her husband to claim her as he has always done, but Solomon remains hidden beneath the bedclothes, deep in his final moments. As she watches him sleep, she begins to understand the way he has loved her, building his life scrap by scrap only to leave it all to his young wife and the one who would come to claim her. “When Livvie married, her husband were already somebody. He had paid a great cost for his land. He spread sycamore leaves over the ground from wagon to door, day he brought her home, so her foot would not have to touch ground” (239) he tells them when he wakes up. Although Solomon realizes he has done wrong by keeping his young wife isolated as a means of protecting what he loved, the fact remains that he did this because he actually did love her and Livvie cannot do anything but weep in response to this acknowledgement. Passing along his last prized possession to her, the silver watch that has measured his life for so long, Solomon dies by giving Livvie her freedom. However, no sooner is she able to grasp freedom than it is snatched away again as Cash moves in to claim his prize. “As they reached the front room, he seized her deftly as a long black cat and dragged her hanging by the waist round and rouch him, while he turned in a circle, his face bent down to hers” (239). For a moment, she retained her grasp on her own wealth, the silver watch that had recently belonged to her husband, but this is quickly lost as it slips from her fingers and “fell somewhere on the floor” (239). There have been several hints that perhaps Cash is not all that he claims as Livvie herself has seen danger in him. Hints that he may be the devil incarnate are also suggested as he purposely breaks some of the glass bottles in the trees Solomon has worked so hard to develop to keep any evil spirits from being able to attack his wife and Solomon himself describes him as entering wearing rags and barefoot to claim Livvie as prize. His step on the ground is described once as sounding like a hoof as the devil is said to have while other moments he moves silently, as if he were not touching the ground at all. As they stand in the doorway of the house, perhaps about to leave it for the last time, Cash gives her a shake as if to give her a last moment to wake up, but “she rested in silence in his trembling arms, unprotesting as a bird on a nest” (239). Despite all Livvie’s realizations regarding her life and her freedom, she is immediately enthralled to a man again within moments of her husband’s death. Through this story, Welty is able to convey the image of a young black woman who has had little options in life but to follow where others wish her to go. Livvie’s participation in her marriage is called into question from the opening line while her life with her husband is seen to be a glorified prison cell. The household has evidence of wealth, an idea reinforced by Baby Maria’s eager attempt to sell Livvie some cosmetics, but Livvie herself feels she has nothing. This is proved wrong as Solomon shares his last few moments with her, but has not been realized up to this point. Although she has discovered life and has recently achieved freedom and wealth of her own, she remains trapped within the grasp of another black man who has been waiting for just this opportunity. Works Cited Welty, Eudora. “Livvie.” The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1982: 228-239. Read More