Analysis Of A Visit Of Charity

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Most of the time, texts are read and interpreted differently by different readers because every individual is unique and determine their understanding of a text. They have their own perceptions of texts because their cultural backgrounds and experiences may vary. I will be exploring this by showing how two different readers, teenage girls in the modern world from America and Zambia would read, ”A Visit of Charity” which is a story by Eudora Welty dissimilarly. “A Visit of Charity” shows how selfish teenagers can be and the abandonment of the elderly. She uses a young campfire girl by the name of Marian who visits two old women at an Old Ladies’ Home to portray the selfishness amongst teenagers because she only visits them to increase her score. Welty mentioned that she carried a plant with her and forgot to look at it to show that she didn’t want to be there. Marian doesn’t really speak because she is focused on the surroundings and the old women who scare her. She first states that the Home is “on the outskirts of town” and this tells us that it’s far and she uses visual imagery to describe it saying that it has a “prickly dark shrub”, “whitewashed brick” and it “reflected the winter sunlight like a block of ice” which all imply that the Home is old, has no warmth and is isolated. Marian’s sees “loose, bulging linoleum on the floor” on her way to the room and Welty used the simile, “there was a smell in the hall like the interior of a clock” to describe how dirty it was.