I would like you to pay particular attention to chapter three, "Finding a Voice," in which Welty speaks often of the notion that memory is the foundation for story-telling and for writing in general. It is the storehouse, so to speak, of images, ideas, emotions, and thoughts that become the basis for the craft of writing.
That said, please construct a five paragraph reflection in which you, using chapter three of One Writer’s Beginnings,
1. Start with a thesis statement that essentially sums up Welty’s overriding theory on memory in your own words. Be sure to mention the author’s name and the title of the work in your introduction. (eg., In Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings...)
2. Find a quote in chapter three that mentions memory, cite it (indicate page number in parenthesis followed by a period), and then write a few sentences in which you interpret the passage.
3. Repeat step #2
4. Repeat step #2
5. Closing statement in which you incorporate your own theory of memory into the essay.
a. Questions to consider:
i. Is memory really an essential
function of
writing? If so, why? What does it do for us as
writers?
ii. Is memory a form of invention?
That is, does it help us to
formulate/invent ideas and opinions on matters of
life? If so, how?
iii. What would life be like without memory?
Would it have the same
meaning? Is memory essential to making life more meaningful? Why or why
not?Due: In class on hard copy by Wednesday, April 8, 2009. I will accept early submissions for those who will not be in attendence on Wednesday.
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.
Copyright 2008 by Robert K. Peach, FSC All rights reserved. No part of the above excerpts may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, elctronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retreival system, without permission in writing from the author.Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the above excerpts should be e-mailed to robertkpeach@gmail.com
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