Below is my own essay in response to the assignment, though I bend the rules a bit. Instead of focusing on chapter three alone, I focus on the entire book. As you will see, I do not keep to such a strict format as I suggest for each of your body paragraphs. Regardless, I hope this is a helpful model for you:
+++
- Opening paragraph with some summary and thesis statement in bold/italics:
In Welty’s autobiography, One Writer's Beginnings, we learn of a woman whose passion to write was inspired by a love for family, for home (Jackson, Mississippi) and the various intricacies of life itself. From the age of two, Welty writes, she learned that “any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to” (5). By the time she was five or six, she recalls securing that sense of “hidden observer” (20) diligently monitoring and recording various subtleties of those people and things that surrounded her. She writes, “A conscious act grew out of this by the time I began to write stories: getting my distance, a prerequisite of my understanding human events, is the way I begin work” (21). Welty’s respect for the “holiness of life” (33)—in all of its ironies, juxtapositions, comedies, and tragedies—stemmed from her acute observations of the human experience through the function of memory. The insights of daily life could be best understood through memory and best described for her in words.
- First developing paragraph involving a significant memory of Welty's childhood with a key quote:
Welty's appreciation for memory as a function of writing stems from her mutual appreciation for the events of her childhood. Furthermore, Welty’s sense of freedom as a writer set to see the world and frame it through memory really seems to have developed on those long road trips (later train rides) her family took to see the father’s side of the clan in the rolling farmland of Southern Ohio and the mother’s side in the mountainous terrain of West Virginia: "It took the mountain top, it seems to me now, to give me the sensation of independence. It was as if I’d discovered something I’d never tasted before in my short life. Or rediscovered it—for I associated it with the taste of the water that came out of the well … The coldness, the far, unseen, unheard springs of what was in my mouth now, the iron strength of its flavor that drew my cheeks in, its fern-laced smell, all said mountain mountain mountain as I swallowed. Every swallow was making me a part of being here, sealing me in place, with my bare feet planted on the mountain and sprinkled with my rapturous spills. What I felt I’d come here to do was something on my own" (57).
- Second developing paragraph in which I interpret the above quote from page 57 and discuss the nature of time according to Welty:
In this way, Welty speaks of the sense of time and place that suffuses (or fills) her work and transports the reader to her vanished past. This sense of independence would stay with Welty. It was as a central piece of her history and the foundation of her identity as a woman longing to capture the world that passed by quickly from the window of a car or train. When she did begin to write in her twenties, the stories took shape from revelations she had while traveling in those summers of her youth. These revelations came through memory. Welty believed that time took on a chronology all its own in fiction; an ineffable chronology following along the “continuous thread of revelation” (69). Welty kept life from running away as she says, and learned that every “feeling waits upon its gesture” (85) particularly in regards to writing and memory, which both encapsulate transient life and hold it in one place.
- Third developing paragraph in which I continue on the theme of writing as a way to exercise memory/observation and capture life's moments in time and place:
Although Welty never physically separated herself from her region for any great period of time—she graduated from University of Wisconsin and went to graduate school at Columbia in New York City—she too wished to remain invisible: “My temperament and my instinct had told me alike that the author, who writes at his own emergency, remains and needs to remain at this private remove” (Welty 87). In other words, Welty claims that to gain a wide frame of vision and a greater perspective on the whole of things in their parts. One must be able to set them at a distance. This is especially true, according to Welty, when observing humans. Welty writes that humans change with time as a result of the inward journey where “each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others” (102). Humans therefore remain vibrant through human memory where they are kept alive and thriving.
- Fifth pargraph in all / Closing statements in which I make my conclusions about memory with Welty's help to back me up:
For Welty as for any writer, words help to hold transient life in place. Like Welty says of photography, I would propose that writing captures the transience of time by portraying those single moments when history unfolds before us in the events of everyday life. As Welty states in the final page of her memoir, "The memory is a living thing--it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives--the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead" (104). Indeed, memory is a way to resurrect that which we thought was dead and nothing could make that which seems impermanent more permanent than writing. Indeed, "Each of us is moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we do this when our separate journeys converge" (102). In other words, it is our inward journey that leads us through time and, when joined with the journey of someone else, it becomes the charged dramatic field of writing (Welty 102)--the ultimate exercise of memory.
12 comments:
Chris Ranallo
Bro. Robert Peach FSC
Eng 165 / Writing the essay
October 18 2008
Memory: the Key to Writing
In Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, we read about a women’s personal memories and how she has used those memories to become a great author. Starting when Eudora was just the age of two a love of literature was installed in her, “I learned from the age of two that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or to be read to” (5). Being read to at an early age allowed Eudora to use her love of books and her own memories to become a distinguished novelist and storyteller.
Memory is a key to becoming a great writer. Every written work has some memory of the author in it, no matter how insignificant it may have been it has influenced the written work. “The memory is a living thing - it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives - the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead” (104). Eudora says that memory is transit because it travels with us through time. Once we have turned our memories into a written work it is there forever, long after we are gone our memories will live on.
Memory can also affect how we perceive things over time. “But it was not until I began to seriously write that I found the world out there revealing, because memory had become attached to seeing” (76). Eudora is saying that sometimes our memory tells us how certain things should look, or act like. When we are children a pile of pillows may be an impenetrable fortress, but as we get older it maybe just be a pile of pillows. But our memory of an impenetrable fortress is going to affect our writing, because its what we would most likely write about. Its much more exciting than a pile of pillows, its exciting because it tells the reader what a pile of pillows can become with the right vision.
Imagination is also a form of memory. We always seem to be able to remember back to out most vivid imaginative characters or fantasies. Such as a lone cowboy fighting off a horde of Indians, or maybe a secret agent infiltrating a terrorist’s hideaway. “Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing, once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake” (87). Daydreaming is using your imagination to the fullest, and much of our imagination is poured into our writing. Characters or scenarios we made up when we were younger become inspiration for us when we grow up. Its just bits and fragments when we daydream it, but when we put pen to paper it becomes something more, not necessarily real, but more substantial and personal.
Memory is key to writing because without it how could life possibly have the same meaning? How would someone be able to write about feeling and emotions they‘ve experienced if they can‘t remember them?, and not just in literature is memory so important but in every aspect of our lives. Whether we’re gathered with family or friends talking about our favorite memories, or we’re in an educational environment. How are we to expand our knowledge without memory? Eudora Welty stresses the importance of memory all throughout her book, and also how her own memories allowed her to become the profound author that we know her as today.
Mike Mayfield
Bro. Robert Peach, FSC
Eng 165/Writing the Essay
October 20, 2008
Eudora Welty and Memory
In Eudora Welty’s autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty infers that memory is like a never-ending book; it tells stories of good and bad times and is continuously being written. Welty expresses her love for her memory. If it were not for her memory, she would not have been able to develop the dynamic characters or elaborate stories such as, Death of a Traveling Salesman and The Ponder Heart.
In chapter 3, “Finding a Voice”, Welty writes, “My imagination takes its strength and guides its direction from what I see and hear and learn and feel and remember of my loving world”(76). In this passage, Welty is expressing how her memory absorbs everything that she learns, sees, feels, and remembers from the surrounding world. She is showing the reader that her books come from every day events that she experienced throughout her life. Also, the passage conveys how Welty’s imagination feeds upon her everyday experiences. Welty grasps upon the details within her vast vault of memories that interest or perplex her most of all. After she grasps upon one or more memories, she expands upon them to create her characters and stories.
Welty goes on to say, “The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time”(90). This statement shows how Welty grew and matured over her years. She is expressing how her past memories and thought processes were altered from her younger days to her adult stage. She began to view the world in a more contemporary fashion compared to her fun loving childhood. Welty’s college education at the University of Wisconsin, her first job as a photographer, and her many publications that were written led her into becoming an adult and viewing her beloved world from a different manner.
Welty’s stand out quote pertaining to memory can be found on the last page of One Writer’s Beginnings, “Of course the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memory; the individual human memory. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer”(104). Welty is telling the reader that without her memory and imagination, she would not be the writer she is today. She is expressing that she cherishes her memory above everything else. She is not interested in material possessions; Welty is interested in knowledge and the happenings that take place in her surroundings. Welty uses her memory as a tool to create stories, characters, and events. However, when she is not creating a new piece of literature, Welty uses her memory as an entertainment device, she ponders on past, present, and even future events.
Eudora Welty uses her memory as a tool for writing as well as a tool for knowledge and entertainment. Welty views her memory as a book, she draws from its pages and continues to write chapter after chapter. Memory is an essential function of writing. It allows writers to recall past experiences and incorporate them into their writing. Also, memory allows writers to store all of their information that they may want to use in their writing down the road. Memory is definitely a form of invention. It allows us to formulate and invent ideas and opinions on matters of life. Memory lets us draw from past and current experiences and intertwine them to create an opinion on a specific event or topic. Also, memory allows us to create our own scenarios, possibly with the help of a past event or happening. In addition, memory is essential to making life more meaningful. Memory allows us to store as well as share information that we have obtained in our everyday lives. Without memory, life would have no meaning; people would live their day-to-day lives without a purpose or a goal to work towards. Memory is the basis of emotion, without memory, people would have nothing to love, hate, or cherish.
Garrett Lynn
Bro. Rob Peach
Eng. 165 Writing the Essay
October/ 20/ 2008
Memory and It’s Relationship To Telling Eudora Welty’s Story
In Eudora Welty’s ONE WRITER’S BEGINNINGS, Welty tells the story of her life from early childhood to her adult years. She manages to express her story through a series of memories, telling of people, places and things that were key to her upbringing. She tells of her mother singing and reading to her profusely which ultimately helped to develop her love of reading. Additionally, she wrote about the two polar opposite personalities of her parents. Fortunately for Eudora , she developed a solid personality of her own. In a sense, memories serve as a way to relive your past, and that is what Eudora does in her autobiography. She takes her experiences and puts them in word form to best portray her life. Her autobiography would not have been as effective without her memories to tell her life’s story.
Eudora tells of how she grew up and was molded by her experiences and surroundings and how they changed her into the person she became. “The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time. Greater than scene, I came to see, was situation” (90). Here, Welty shares her perspective on life, which she now sees had been altered through time. As Eudora grew and matured, she came to see the greater picture of things. In other words, a realization occurred. At this point in the story, she had a revelation that the real world is much different than the world that is viewed when one is a child. She now understood more than she did in her earlier years, that she could view the world much differently and more accurately as she continued to grow and mature.
Eudora tells about how her father used to know where every town and landmark was, and how long it would take to get to each venue just by where they were when they were on the long car and train rides. She goes on to say that, “on the train I saw that world passing my window. It was when I came to see that it was I who was passing that my self-centered childhood was over. But it was not until I began to write, as seriously as I did only when I reached my twenties, that I found the world out there was revealing, because memory had become attached to seeing, and love had added itself to discovery…(76). In other words, she realized that her life was part of something bigger (the outside world). She now could see that the world, with or without her, would still go on. Once she came to that realization, she knew that it was time to become a woman rather than to remain a young girl. She then goes on to talk about how memory can reveal cryptic messages in life by connecting past references to scenarios in the present. She uses this ability in her writing to bring out messages that she wants to portray to the reader.
Eudora Welty knows that her success as a writer can be partially credited to her use of memory in her works. “ My own (memory) is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer” (104). Essentially she is saying that without memory, her writing would not be as entertaining, not because her experiences were, but because she utilized her recollections to relate to real life and make her points clearer. She says that “memory is a living thing-it too is in transit. But during it’s moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives-the old and the young, that past and present, the living and the dead” (104). In other words, everything can be tied together through memory, because it is always adding events and happenings to itself to be used later if and when necessary. She believes that memory can be used for writing or just to make more sense of things in one’s life.
Memory is an ever expanding vault that retains past information that can be used to solve problems, tell stories, or trigger emotions. Memory is a key factor in the fabric of one’s life. It is directly related to feelings of emotion, particularly joy and sadness. Life would not be the same without memory because it would be lacking a catalyst for emotion, and our emotions are what drive us to make the decisions we do every day. Lastly, in order for us to make sense of our lives, we must examine our past to make sense of our present, and plan for what our future’s may hold. Eudora’s Welty’s book is evidence that our memories are powerful movies that make us who we are.
Peter Sismour
Brother Rob Peach, FSC
English 165/ Writing the Essay
October 20. 2008
Memory’s Importance in Writing
In Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty presents her outlook of the importance of memory and its connection in writing. Welty tells us of the abundant connections between memory and writing. She shows how though some things may be “transient” with our memory we can create lasting images and experiences through writing. Welty shows us that through writing we can make the “transient”…permanent.
In her memoir, Welty writes, “I learned in the doing how ready I had to be. Life doesn’t hold still. A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away” (84). Welty had used photography as well as writing to capture that which can escape us. In this passage I believe she is stating a common opinion that though life will never slow down for us, with the proper preparation we can capture those moments we hold dear and still hold a part of them forever. She saw photography and writing as very similar approaches to confine that which is only momentary. Through writing, we can recreate times that have passed us.
Welty goes on to say, “…I felt the need to hold the transient life in words-- there is so much more of life that only words can convey…” (85). Welty recognizes and illustrates to us, that though photography and writing may both capture the moments we long for, that writing has “one up” on photography. While a picture is “worth a thousand words”, words themselves are limitless. There is no boundary to writing and it is certainly in mine, and Eudora Welty’s opinion, the most prolific way of capturing the instants that pass too quickly.
Lastly, Welty speaks of the “…most wonderful interior vision which is memory…” (89). Welty shows here of her belief in the necessity of memory. Her memory was the impetus in all of her writing. She was only able to form and project her stories through the creativity and uniqueness of her recollections. Without the stability of her memory she never could have created the writings that she has. Welty was a “writer who came of a sheltered life” (104). But she never let this hinder her; she believed that all her opportunities came from her self-daring. Welty projects that the memory is one of our strongest and most vital abilities. It gives us the capability to eliminate that which is transient and to generate permanence. It is our memory that lets us hold on to that which is taken away by time.
Eudora Welty had her very own theory of memory, just as I have mine. I believe that memory is a crucial utility of writing because it helps us to hold on to things that time takes away from us. It gives us the ability to look back when we cannot “go back”. As writers, it creates for us the opportunity to use our own experiences along with others’ to document what is now gone. It is nearly impossible to imagine life without memory. Without memory, there is nothing to look back upon, no recollections of our successes or defeats, our pleasures or our griefs. Without memory, life loses meaning; lacking “it” we could never grow from the past. This is what makes memory essential in terms of giving life true meaning.
Dan Shea
Bro. Robert Peach FSC
Eng 165 / Writing the Essay
October 20, 2008
Memory and Its Importance to Eudora Welty
In chapter three, “Finding a Voice”, of Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty stresses to us the magnitude and significance of the human memory in the development of her writing. Throughout this chapter and in other parts of the book, Eudora suggests some of her reasons for her passion for writing. In much of this section, these reasons seem come from her inspiration from her mother and father as well as her interest in fiction and other forms of creative writing. in spite of this she concludes that the human memory that is foundation for her storytelling as well as writing as a whole.
One of the many instances where Eudora is expressing this thought of hers comes when she says, “But it was not until I began to write, as I seriously did only when I reached my twenties, that I found the world out there revealing, because memory had become attached to seeing..” (pg 76). Eudora as a child knew that she wanted to be a writer, but through what she says she tells us that she didn’t learn what was happening in her writing until she began to write while in her twenties; almost as if she was learning as she was writing. When she tells us that memory had become attached to seeing, she is informing us of the connection of herself through her writing in relation to her experiences. What she saw she treasured and kept within her memory.
At the very end of the story, Eudora tells us, “Of course the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memory-the individual human memory.” (pg 104) The word confluence means flowing or running together. The individual human memory is just that; many different things stream together in memory to create deeper meaning. It is for this reason that Eudora calls this idea the greatest confluence ever. The human mind is one of the principal fixations on earth because of its eternal complexity. Eudora also realizes this when she emphasizes the concept of the individuality of the human memory. She went on to call her memory a treasure dearly regarded to her in the course of her life and writing. What she experienced in her youth and older days have come back to her as one meaning
The most intriguing quote having to do with the perception of human memory in this section of the story was “As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover, and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge” (pg 102) Concerning this quote, Eudora’s basic idea appears to be that life manages to take a full circle and causes us to discover things about ourselves through what we have experienced and have remembered. On the flip side, when we discover new things, our experiences help us to understand what we are and who we are. This quote seems to be the most direct of any of the other things she mentions in her story regarding the importance of memory.
And so it is memory that seems to have affected this writer in such a way that she believed it was the foundation for her work. Whether modern day writers and storytellers would agree to Welty’s philosophy remains to be distinguished, but memory is definitely something that is essential for all writers to produce their work because it is through it that ideas for stories are made. Eudora Welty is just one writer that expressed the importance of memory. However, there are undoubtedly many other writers who know of this same significance to their work and to life itself.
Jim Limegrover
Bro. Rob Peach
Eng 165/Writing the Essay
October 20th, 2008
Memory Not Forgotten in Writing
In Eudora Welty’s “One Writers Beginnings”, she tells the story on how her younger years influenced her writing. She recounts her influences through memory and experiences, while stressing the importance it has on the process of writing. To use memories or personal experience in writing strays away from prosaic writing. Memory is a combination of mental pictures, interior vision and whole experiences. These concepts are what give writing a sense of originally and uniqueness.
Most of our memories can be put into a picture or series of pictures. It prevents an image from being forgotten or, as Eudora Welty says, “A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away” (84). Her interpretation is one that a snapshot prevents an evanescent memory from becoming nothing. She goes on to tell how the WPA allowed her to explore all of Mississippi and, with photographs, she was able to “capture transience” (84). I think the underlying message she tries to give is, while having a substantive photograph, that the experience and memory of exploring her home state is more real than a photograph because it lives in her memory.
While having the physical image in your memory influences writing; there is also how you interpret the image and how it goes with you throughout your life. Eudora Welty describes it as “…that most wonderful interior vision which is memory” (89). She goes on to say it is “to form and to project” and “impel” her stories (89). A memory requires personal thoughts and opinions. Personal opinion is needed to express oneself, in Mrs. Welty’s case, its writing. Interior vision is essential to memory in the process of writing because it gives personality to the story. She tells us about how her characters are, “…borrowed, perhaps unconsciously” (99). In each of Eudora Welty’s stories, she puts her own interior vision into each of them, (maybe unconsciously) from memories she experienced in her life.
Necessary to any memory is the experience itself and what emotions influenced it. This is explained by Mrs. Welty when she talks about the soldier who exited a train while it was stopped. The soldier never returned to the train but decided to walk off, purposely missing the train. She describes the experience of watching the train start to leave while the soldier walks in to the green valley, “I felt us going out of sight for him, diminishing and soon to be forgotten” (96). Differing from the interior vision is how an experience is first viewed, without time for supervenient thought. An initial reaction always influences how you interpret something later.
There are various functions of writing, some are essential some are not. But memory is an essential function of writing because of the personal feeling put into it. A story can be boring and torpid because of the lack of personal memories and experiences. To most writers it is a base in which all their stories are formulated. Memories are also formulated in to the ideas and opinions used in life. Good and bad memories shape our personality because of the influence they have on us. But regardless of good or bad we cannot live without them. We would make the same mistakes, not have a personality and be unproductive. Christopher Nolan wrote how if we lost our memories all we would have is “Facts, not memories” to live our lives. In conclusion, memory is important to the process of writing because we are writing from the heart and not from facts. We hold memory dear to us in writing because “to memory nothing is ever really lost.”(90).
Chris Galiardi
Bro. Robert Peach FSC
Eng165/ Writing the essay
October 20 2008
Memory: Writings Essential
The stress of memory in Eudora Welty’s “One Writers Beginning” conveys the notion that memory is the foundation for story-telling and for writing in general. All writers, whether they write short stories, memoirs, or novels use past experiences. It is one of their tools to making their writing stick out. Without it writers would have a harder time connecting with the reader. Therefore Welty is trying to tell us that not only is memory the basis for writing, but also is essential to good writing.
In the beginning of the book Eudora tells us the life “stamps us with its moments” (9). This is where she first talks about memory. Later on in the book she reiterates this message by saying “Travel itself is a part of some longer continuity” (97). Through this passage she goes deeper into what she said in the beginning about life’s stamps. She is telling us that throughout our life we travel. Traveling is part of our “journey” through life. We aren’t stagnant in our life we grow up, we mature, and sometimes even move and by traveling we learn about ourselves through our mistakes and achievements, like James Baldwin said in ‘Sonny’s Blues’, “For while the tale of how we suffer is never new, it always must be heard”.
Another point Eudora makes about memory is the ability it has to help us understand experiences that happened in our life. She best says this by writing, “Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life” (90). By saying this she tells us that writing may help others through their problems that are similar to yours. Writing about experiences in your life is a good way to connect to the readers because you’re not the only one with the problem, and by the reader seeing that another person is dealing with the same problem they can get through it easier. And not only will the reader get help but also the writer. By writing about an experience you can pick up insight that you never realized and can use it to learn from that mistake.
The final point about memory she has is that she never wrote a book without it. After writing “A Still Moment” she has this to say about her stories, “I never wrote another story such as that, but other sorts of vision, dream, illusion, hallucination, obsession, and that most wonderful interior vision which is memory, have all gone to make up my stories, to form and to project them, to impel them” (89). Here she tells us that she used her memory in every story she wrote. By using memory it enhanced her stories. Memory is the catalysts to a good story and without it your writing will be bland.
When reading stories I have found that without connecting to them they become boring to me. I really connect to stories that have a character I relate to. One of my favorite books is “The Outsiders” by S. E. Hinton. In the book I really relate to Ponyboy the narrator of the book. He is a kid that often wonders about life and is the only one that sees things from all perspectives. A lot of times in life I think the same way. S. E. Hinton the author of the story has said that she wrote this story about the two clicks in her school. She used her memories of high school to write this story and because of it was able to write one of the most popular books in America. I have also found that writing about memories in my life really helps my writing and takes it to another level. Most of the papers I write in school involve happenings in my life. Hopefully reading this book can help me to use memory in everything I write because without it my papers will just be another paper in the stack.
Eddie Kelly
Bro. Rob Peach, Fsc.
Eng. 165/ Writing the Essay
October 19, 2008
Memory: The Greatest Treasure
In Eudora Welty’s autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, we are given a first hand view into the life of this talented author. Eudora paints us a stunning picture of her childhood and early life, full of family, love, and observance. Eudora tells us that she was a very observant child, as seen in this quote, “Through travel, I first became aware of the outside world” (76). This childhood gift would become a very useful tool in Eudora’s later years as a writer. There is one thing that is arguably more important than her observance, though, and that is her memory. Memory can work in two ways, subconsciously and consciously. Eudora realizes that her memory has subconsciously helped her as a writer, and she is aware of the vital role it played throughout her career.
A very interesting aspect of Eudora’s life is the idea of subconscious memory. “Yet, it seems to me now, years after I wrote The Golden Apples, that I did bring forth a character with whom I feel oddly in touch” (100). Eudora is referring to the character of Ms. Eckhart, a piano teacher in The Golden Apples, and how her memory created this character from the basis of her own childhood piano teacher. In this quote, Eudora is acknowledging the fact that our memory can kick in when we least expect it. Also, this subconscious memory shows that all writings contain pieces of the author’s life, even when not intended. This adds to the personality of the writing and the relationship between the author and their art work.
We learn throughout the book that Eudora learned her most valuable lessons as a child. In Eudora’s house, there were multiple clocks, and she says this had a profound effect on her life. She says, in reference to the clocks, “This was good…for a future writer, being able to learn so penetratingly, and almost firs of all, about chronology” (1). This memory of time from her childhood no doubt helped her sculpt her stories more accurately within time and was an important lesson learned. Eudora then goes on to say, “It was one of a many good things I learned almost without knowing it.” (1). By saying this, she is again acknowledging that her mind subconsciously picked up this, again reinforcing the importance of subconscious memory in her career.
Throughout Welty’s autobiography, she retells stories that show her memory working subconsciously in her career. Through her stories we learn that memory is an important entity to her. In the quote, “My own [memory] is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer” (104), we learn just how important her memory is. It is very compelling that Welty chose her memory as her most prized possession, not her gift of observance or her love for books, but her memory. This quote leads you to believe that without memory, Eudora Welty may not have been such a great writer as she was.
The subconscious mind of Eudora Welty has benefited her greatly throughout her life in her writing. Whether she intended to or not, her memory brought forth past experiences into her writing, making her work more personal. Out of everything she learned and experienced, Eudora names her memory her most prized treasure. I believe what we can learn from Welty is to not take anything in our life for granted, because we never know what our memory will bring back from our past to help us in the future.
Liam Halferty
Brother Rob Peach, FSC
Eng 165/Writing The Essay
October 20, 2008
The Importance of Memory in Writing
In her memoir One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty stresses the importance of memory and experience in the process of writing. Welty speaks of how her memories of past experience seem to always spark her mind when story-telling and when writing in general. She says that certain “stamps” in her mind stand out to her when writing, which are seen as the images that relate to the most important instances that have occurred throughout her life. Welty delves into this theory of writing most deeply in chapter three of her memoir.
One of the most important tools used in story-telling is the imagination. Welty tells of the influence of her imagination on her writing, stating, “My imagination takes its strengths and guides its direction from what I see and hear and learn and feel and remember of my living world” (76). Welty views her imagination as the different directions in which her mind takes her throughout her life in writing. It is the way our mind perceives the different things that can happen at any given moment. The imagination in many ways is the basis of all story-telling.
In this quote, Welty also talks about how the senses are used in the writing process. She used what her senses told her to store the information in her memory. These memories stamped her mind and then were retrieved later in her career when writing. The senses are what trigger our mind to think, which is related to the “stamps” Welty refers to early in the story.
Also in chapter three, Welty speaks of the way in which she inadvertently uses many of the same type of characters in many of her stories. She writes, “I had been writing a number of stories, more or less one after the other, before it belatedly dawned on me that some of the characters in one story, were, and had been all the time, the same characters who had appeared already in another story” (98). She is pointing out that without realizing it at first, the characters she uses in stories repeat themselves, probably because they are the type of people that influence her life so heavily. These characters are the type of people that she attempted to reflect in her daily life as well, probably the most prominent being her mother. This again goes back to the “stamps” that so heavily influenced her. The characteristics of these people, including her mother, that had a large impact on her life, create the prototypes of characters that continued to appear in her mind when writing multiple stories.
Welty also explains in chapter three how traveling to various places has been an important experience in her life. She states, “Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it” (76). Eudora has traveled to many places in her life, including to her father’s home in Ohio, her mother’s home in West Virginia, and to Wisconsin where she went to college. Her experiences in these trips are how Eudora became aware of the world going on around her, rather than just in her own town. She became more educated about other places and more aware of many other issues involving the outside world. The instances that occurred and the images remembered during these trips created a plethora of material for writing later in her life.
Another thing that Welty does in chapter three is relate travel to her entire lifespan. She adds, “Travel itself is part of some longer continuity” (97). Welty is stating that travel itself is simply transient, passing from one place to another. The process of making the transient permanent is writing. Writing down the memories that pass through our mind is the way in which we remember all of the things that occur in our life. Without writing we have no evidence of past experience.
In my own experience, I believe that memory is an essential function of writing. If a writer had no past experience, there would really be no material for them to write about. For writers, reflecting on their own memory is a form of brainstorming and can be the basis for every piece of writing that author constructs. Much like Welty does, the characters in which I write are based upon the people that I admire, or the people that stand out to me as well. The things that influence our writing most, whether it be images, events, people, or places, are the “stamps” that appear in our mind the most frequently, and are the solid foundation of our writing.
Matt Donahue
Brother Robert Peach FSC
English 165/ Writing the Essay
October 19, 2008
Memory through Eudora's Eyes
In Eudora Welty's One Writers Beginnings, Eudora's theory of memories become the most vibrant attribute to her entire life story because memories are what ultimately give people the vast understanding of their own lives. Memory is what feeds Eudora Welty's stories through the novel and essentially her memories, such as images, ideas, emotions and thoughts are the inspiration which she uses to write. In this story Eudora's keen sense of memory is the abstract structure for her story writing. One Writer's Beginnings is based off of Eudora's memory and her overriding knowledge of the past. This first person point of view provides an outlook this is strict to just one opinion. Because of this we see that Eudora is biased towards her family and often speaks of them relating to her childhood, such as traveling to Ohio and West Virginia. As formerly stated, memory is what writes the story, One Writer's Beginnings.
In chapter three Eudora writes, "Attached to them (characters) are what I've borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, bit by bit, of persons I have seen or noticed or remembered in the flesh-a cast of countenance here, a manner of walking there, that jump to the visualizing mind when a story is underway" (99). This quotes explains how she envisions all of her memories into writing her stories, which illustrates with all of her observations, exposures, and experiences such as the Roman Catholic Church that she, "could see from across the street" (86). Through all of this Eudora tries to prove that memory really is an essential function for writing and helps writers by acting as a guideline. These guidelines contribute and administer the complete writing process.
Welty later goes on to say, "I was always my own teacher" (85). In this quote Welty points out the importance of independence needed in all writers. While being independent, Eudora can make out her own thoughts without being persuaded to think differently by others in her life. By "being her own teacher" she experiences everything "hands on" and therefore has her own viewpoint on what is happening in her life. Also by being her own teacher, Eudora learns dearly form her mistakes. She had once thought that her earliest story was "sophisticated" because of the inspiration she had when writing. She later says how she, "finds it hard to save herself from starting stories to show off what she could write" (86). By this she reveals that once she initially begins to write, she cannot seem to stop.
Lastly, Welty adds, "Her (mothers) strongest habit of thought was association" (92). This quote suggests that Eudora's mother was always thinking of the connection with her family. This memory shows the affiliation and bond between Eudora's family and her mother. Memory encourages Eudora's story and through this quote displays that her mother also uses this theory in her everyday life. As readers we read mostly about the Welty family and the strict, upmost respect that they share to each other. This quote also shows how the Welty family really ties together and through that bonding comes the love between the family.
Memory is an essential function of writing. Memory in every sense helps us write, from writing about what you experience first hand, to something that you have once heard about. Memory helps us write also by exaggeration and imagination through personal experiences. Memory is a key asset to have, and in order to have a future, you must have a past, a life, a memory.
Tyler McDaniel
Bro. Robert Peach FSC
Eng 165 / Writing the essay
October 20 2008
In Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, Welty writes about how her childhood memories helped her development into the writer she is today. As the book progresses you can see how memory helped the development of her writing style. She talks about the key moments of her childhood, which had left an impression on her live and her stories. Welty believes that memory is one of the best resources in writing.
In chapter three of One Writer’s Beginnings Welty says “My own (memory) is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer,” (pg 104). Welty is saying that her memories have been a major part of her writings and her life. She loves her memories dearly. They give her a good feel for who she is and how she got to where she is at today. She was able to turn her fond memories into great stories. She had a good childhood and is happy to be able to look back on it and create stories about so that it becomes more permanent.
Also Welty says “As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover, and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge” (pg 102). She is saying as we learn new things we remember. When remember something we forgot about we discover, it is like the memory in a way is creating a new memory. This process occurs the most when we meet and discuss memories with someone else. People can jog each others memories by just talking about past events. This happens a lot we you see someone for the first time in awhile people like to talk about thing they did in the past and they remember the memory if they had forgotten it.
Lastly Welty says “A good snapshot stopped a moment from running away” (84).She is talking about how she used photography as a way to remember. If you take a good photo when you look at it your memory is jogged and the memory is more vivid. The photo helps you from losing a memory. She shows how photography can be a great way to remember. She used photography along with writing to make memories more concrete.
Memory is an essential part of life. As we look back at our memories we get a good sense of where we come from. Through memory we are able to learn from our past mistakes and better ourselves. Our childhood is a key part of our life we learn many key values that help develop us into the people we are today. Without memory life would not we be able to build off our past events and move forward. We make the same mistakes and not are able to better our life. Without our memories we look back fondly at our childhood and see how we became who we are today.
Toby Coleman
Bro. Robert Peach
Eng. 165/ Writing the Essay
October 20, 2008
Memory: The importance to Eudora Welty
In Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, she stresses the importance of memory while writing novels and stories. Memory, to her, plays a major part in “One Writer’s Beginnings.” She uses her recollections from the past to write her stories. Her stories were inspired by her parents and used her personal memories to bring her writing to life. Another component to her love of writing is because of her parents reading to her in her youth. She remembered this and started loving to write at an early age. For Eudora, memory is a huge asset that has helped her write for throughout her life.
In chapter three, Eudora writes, “My imagination takes its strengths and guides its direction from what I see and hear and learn and feel and remember of my living world” (76). In other words, Eudora is trying to say that it is her memory from experiences that form her imagination. If it wasn’t for her remembrance of her past experiences then her vivid imagination would not be what it is now. For example, she remembered her train rides with her father by all of the sights and in particular the sound of the tracks as she laid with her head on a pillow. She described the rhythm of the rails as a beating heart. Her remembrance of the outside world was essential to her dramatic imagination.
Welty goes on to say, “I wished to be, not effaced, but invisible-actually a powerful position” (87). In other words she means that she still wished to be herself, but invisible, to gain a better perspective on things. She wished to be invisible to take in her surroundings and have a better view on things. She believed that being invisible would give her a better line of vision and allow her to examine moments how they truly are.
Lastly, Welty adds, “It seems to me, writing of my parents now in my seventies, that I see continuities in their lives that weren’t visible to me when they were living” (90). In other words, she is saying that now she is a writer she remembers many more things about her parents than before she was a writer. For example she says that even at times that have left her the most vivid memories of her parents there were things that escaped her. It wasn’t until she started writing that she brought all of the connections and memories together and fully understand them.
In the third chapter, “Finding a Voice,” Welty speaks often that memory is the foundation for story-telling and for writing in general. In do believe that memory is an essential function of writing because it allows the writer to use experiences of their past to bring out their real message. When writers use experiences from their memory it gives the reader a look at who the author truly is. Memory is also a form of invention, meaning that it helps us formulate/invent ideas and opinions on matters of life. When you remember things it could drastically effect opinions on life by the way something has affected you in the past. In conclusion life would not be the same without memory. Memory is very essential to making life more meaningful. Memory helps you recollect on past experiences. Without memory you won’t be able to remember things that can help you go on through life. Life would not be the same without memory.
Post a Comment