Life Lesson
Eudora Welty's story "The Little Store" illustrates how a single, unexpected event changed what seemed a perfect life in perfect surroundings. Most wish for a peaceful childhood, as Eudora had in Jackson, Mississippi: a little house, a little porch, back and front yards, mother in the kitchen cooking all day, and children on the street ready to play. Such life appears to be heavenly for a few moments, until it is changed with one stroke of awkward reality that delivers a person from the delightfulness of childhood into the harshness of adulthood. The mystery of the event that brought up Eudora into an adult strangely leads the reader away from focusing on the certainty that Eudora sooner or later was going to loose the innocence of a child because "of course those [facts of death and life] are what we were on the track of, anyway."(55)At the beginning of the story we have an opportunity to gaze at the enchanting picture that Eudora Welty is painting for us: "it was possible to have a little pasture
Person that was always somewhere around became a real man, flesh and blood sitting at the entrance of the "store". That of course was nothing out of the ordinary either because as Eudora says "I knew even the side walk to it as well as my own skin. The new vision of the Monkey man, as she addressed him, is the first step in realization of the harsh reality of the outside world. You can observe the children playing all day long, and every once in a while someone would be sent to "The Little Store" close by. Suddenly, a different picture is in the same frame. While the Monkey man is merely sitting in front of the now closed store, Eudora feels that he is taking away everything that she owns. There was also no mystery-every day was like the one before. "The Little Store" simply reminds us that each of us had that one unanticipated moment, whether it be the closing down of the neighborhood store or just a broken doll, that unexpectedly closed a chapter of one simpler life, and opened a chapter of a more sober one. She trembles at the thought of facing the unknown, of not understanding the changes that have exposed her of her childhood idealism, but most importantly there is no one to help her come to terms with the new life chapter she has entered, thus forcing her to do it on her own! The mystery of the story, the untold event that forces Eudora to face the world on different terms, leads a reader away from the essence of what Eudora Welty was trying to tell us: "we weren't sent to the little store for facts of death or life. With this closure she opened a new world of adulthood that a child is never ready to bare on its own, but often is forced to do it regardless, as was the case with Eudora. behind your backyard where you could keep a Jersey caw, which we did" (48).
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Acceptance Essays
