One Writer's Beginnings By Eudora Welty Analysis

An experience one has during their childhood often shapes their personality and characteristics in the future. In her autobiographical passage One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty writes about her reading experience as a child, and how these experiences had an impact on her later career as an author. Welty makes clear her insatiable attitude towards reading through the strict rules of her local librarian, Mrs. Calloway, the influence of her mother, as well as her own thoughts and feelings. Welty reveals her strong desire to read by describing how she overcomes the obstacles Mrs. Calloway sets up. The librarian keeps “her dragon eye on the front door,” where she watches for anyone coming inside of the library “from the bright outside.” Describing the library as darker than the outside creates the image …show more content…
At the library, everyone is only allowed to check out two books at a time, so “two by two, [Welty] read[s] library books as fast as [she] could go.” Welty finishes books as fast as she is physically able to demonstrate it is a necessity for her to read. She also describes her need as a “devouring wish to read.” Welty uses the word “devouring” which has the connotation that of an addiction, inferring that Welty is indeed addicted to reading. To Welty, “[t]aste isn’t nearly as important” to her as she reads book after book. Welty does not care about the genre, author, plot, or appeal of the book, the only thing she craves intensely is to read words on paper. Her only fear was “that of books coming to an end,” or not having a book to read at all. Young girls usually have other fears like the dark, or heights, but Welty has such a dependence on books that the only thing she dreads is finishing a book and not having another to start immediately. Welty’s descriptions of her own thoughts and feelings clearly show her unappeasable attitude towards