“A Visit of Charity”
Montse read the story once, and then wrote her response, tracking her experience. If you have not read this story, do not read the below. This is only for current or former Welty students.
Now, we first have to deal with the illustration. While it does capture Marian’s flight, the hat is all wrong. So here are some options:
So we went hunting and Montse selected these two:
I wonder what the “pointed white cap” looks like, I’m imagining a white witch hat, but I’m sure that’s not what Welty had in mind. I can’t tell if the setting is supposed to be cozy or cold, because the Home looks “like a block of ice” but the girl’s red coat and mittens makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I can picture her warm breaths being visible in the cold air as she walks up to an igloo-like building.
Within the retirement home, the receptionist “looked as if she were cold”. Her white uniform might have something to do with that, but could it be a reflection of her attitude too? Think about it, working with old folks who forget everything could be boring and annoying at times, so I’m not surprised if that’s the case. Welty includes a detail about the girl, who is a Campfire Girl, tucking her hair behind her ear, which I think is really cute and adds a dimension of reality to the scenario. A typical young girl, trying to do volunteer work, nothing out of the ordinary… yet.
Then we hear “an old lady of some kind [clear] her throat like a sheep belting”. I guess old people do make some very weird noises at times, but where it gets interesting is that behind that door with the sheep-lady, was an “old woman… with that terrible, square smile… on her bony face”. CREEPY! I thought old ladies were supposed to be round and cheerful and full of purse candy, not terrible.
The story suddenly takes a turn when Marian is dragged into the room and “the next moment the door closed behind her”. Their room is humid, mucky, and overall unpleasant, “like being caught in a robbers’ cave, just before one was murdered”. After this, Marian’s lens changes, because as the women speak she says they scream and refer to them as robbers. The bedridden woman in the room is the sheep and even her talking sounds like belting. During all this, Marian seems to be hallucinating because she starts to get confused about the littlest things, like the type of plant she brought or what she did in school because she could not remember.
After listening to the ladies bicker, the second finally pulls her attention back to Marian. “Marian was trembling, and her heart nearly stopped beating all together for a moment.”
I have to point out that Welty compares the old women to youthful beings, like when the first one was “rocking so high that her black comfort shoes lifted off the floor like a little child” or when the second one was whimpering and sounded like a little lamb instead of a sheep. Is this what they’re truly like, but Marian’s fear makes her portray them scarier than they actually are?
Finally, some sense gets knocked into Marian and she decides to just head for the door and leave, about time! She goes running, finally free of the elderly, of the Home, and runs for the bus, eager to not be left behind for another second.