Written Gifts In the essay “For a Writer-to-be, the Ideal Gift”, Eudora Welty uses a great deal of imagery to help the reader visualize the text. Although Welty’ uses many different literary elements in her essay, imagery seems to have the biggest effect on the essay. The imagery displayed in the essay was able to give me the ability to imagine every detail she explained as if I also took part in her childhood. Welty’ achieves the best awareness of herself by displaying the life changing effect books had on her life. In the beginning of the essay, Welty’ describes starting out her childhood with toys that “represents my father’s fondest beliefs-in progress, in the future.” It starts out with tinker toys and box kites she describes as “smelling …show more content…
Which made me realize that she was not only aware of herself, but she was also aware of her mother, “I wondered if I would go through fire and water for it as my mother had done for Charles Dickens”. Welty’ proves that the awareness she has of herself is pretty great by saying, “I live in gratitude of my parents for initiating me-and as early as I begged for it, without keeping me waiting-into knowledge of the word, into reading and spelling, by way of the alphabet.” She wanted everyone to see how supportive her parents were of reading and purchasing book by using imagery to explain it. The most important literary element that takes place in Welty's’ essay is imagery. Between describing all the times her mother would read to her and imagining her opening all of her gifts from normal childhood toys to books, really makes the reader aware of the development of her life changing force. Her mother and father were very involved in her development and if it was not for them, she would have never began “to read before starting school.” It is Weltys’ imagery that has achieved the best awareness of herself and does the best job of displaying how books greatly impacted and changed her