A Memory

by

Eudora Welty

The Narrator Character Analysis

The narrator is a girl who is most likely in her early teens. A contemplative, observant person, she has been taking painting lessons and is in the habit of creating a rectangular frame with her hands and using this frame to study the world around her. At this point in her life, she is experiencing love for the first time. While lying on the beach, the narrator simultaneously remembers the time she “accidentally” brushed the wrist of the boy she loves in the stairwell at school. She is lost in the sweetness of this memory when a family of bathers makes their way onto the beach. There is a man, an older woman, a younger woman, and two young boys. The narrator is generally repulsed by them. She describes them as ugly and feels contempt for their presence. She notices that the man has begun piling sand on the legs of one of the women. At the same time, she watches the two young boys chase each other while the younger woman angrily looks on. She then sees the man put a handful wet sand into the bathing suit top of the older woman. The narrator is horrified by this, and her memory becomes her refuge from the messiness and chaos ensuing on the beach. While coming in and out of her memory, she opens her eyes and sees the woman pour the sand out of her top. For a split second, she believes the woman’s breasts have turned to sand. When she awakens fully, the beach is empty, and only the messy imprints of the family’s antics remain in the sand. Feeling awful about this change in the landscape, the narrator turns away and glimpses a white pavilion, which fills her with pity and causes her to burst into tears. She continues to lie there and thinks about the upcoming school year. She envisions a potential encounter with the boy she loves, and she realizes that her future interactions with him will inevitably be colored by her memory of this day spent on the beach. Overall, her time on the beach profoundly impacts the way she thinks about her own lived experience and the way she moves through the world.

The Narrator Quotes in A Memory

The A Memory quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Memory and Meaning Theme Icon
).
A Memory Quotes

From my position, I was looking at a rectangle brightly lit, actually glaring at me, with sun, sand, water, a little pavilion, a few solitary people in fixed attitudes, and around it all a border of dark rounded oak trees, like the engraved thunderclouds surrounding illustrations in the Bible. Ever since I had begun taking painting lessons, I had made small frames with my fingers, to look out at everything.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: Frames, The White Pavilion
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

When a person, or a happening, seemed to me not in keeping with my opinion, or even my hope or expectation, I was terrified by a vision of abandonment and wildness which tore my heart with a kind of sorrow. My father and mother, who believed that I saw nothing in the world which was not strictly coaxed into place like a vine on our garden trellis to be presented to my eyes, would have been badly concerned if they had guessed how frequently the weak and inferior and strangely turned examples of what was to come had showed themselves to me.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

My love had somehow made me doubly austere in my observations of what went on about me. Through some intensity I had come almost into a dual life, as observer and dreamer. I felt a necessity for absolute conformity to my ideas in any happening I witnessed.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Boy
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:

But this small happening which had closed in upon my friend was a tremendous shock to me; it was unforeseen, but at the same time dreaded; I recognized it, and suddenly I leaned heavily on my arm and fainted.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Boy
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:

But like a needle going in and out among my thoughts were the children running on the sand, the upthrust oak trees growing over the clean pointed roof of the white pavilion, and the slowly changing attitudes of the grown-up people who had avoided the city and were lying prone and laughing on the water’s edge.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The White Pavilion
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:

The man smiled, the way panting dogs seem to be smiling, and gazed about carelessly at them all and out over the water. He even looked at me, and included me. Looking back, stunned, I wished that they all were dead.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Man, The Older Woman
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:

[…] I sank into familiarity; but the story of my love, the long narrative of the incident on the stairs, had vanished. I did not know, any longer, the meaning of my happiness; it held me unexplained.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

I felt a peak of horror, as though her breasts themselves had turned to sand, as though they were of no importance at all and she did not care.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Man, The Older Woman
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

Still I lay there, feeling victimized by the sight of the unfinished bullwark where they had piled and shaped the wet sand around their bodies, which changed the appearance of the beach like the ravages of a storm. I looked away, and for the object which met my eye, the small worn white pavilion, I felt pity suddenly overtake me, and I burst into tears.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The White Pavilion
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

I remember continuing to lie there, squaring my vision with my hands, trying to think ahead to the time of my return to school in winter. I could imagine the boy I loved walking into a classroom, where I would watch him with this hour on the beach accompanying my recovered dream and added to my love. I could even foresee the way he would stare back, speechless and innocent, a medium-sized boy with blond hair and unconscious eyes looking beyond me and out the window, solitary and unprotected.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Boy
Related Symbols: Frames
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
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A Memory PDF

The Narrator Quotes in A Memory

The A Memory quotes below are all either spoken by The Narrator or refer to The Narrator. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Memory and Meaning Theme Icon
).
A Memory Quotes

From my position, I was looking at a rectangle brightly lit, actually glaring at me, with sun, sand, water, a little pavilion, a few solitary people in fixed attitudes, and around it all a border of dark rounded oak trees, like the engraved thunderclouds surrounding illustrations in the Bible. Ever since I had begun taking painting lessons, I had made small frames with my fingers, to look out at everything.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: Frames, The White Pavilion
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

When a person, or a happening, seemed to me not in keeping with my opinion, or even my hope or expectation, I was terrified by a vision of abandonment and wildness which tore my heart with a kind of sorrow. My father and mother, who believed that I saw nothing in the world which was not strictly coaxed into place like a vine on our garden trellis to be presented to my eyes, would have been badly concerned if they had guessed how frequently the weak and inferior and strangely turned examples of what was to come had showed themselves to me.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

My love had somehow made me doubly austere in my observations of what went on about me. Through some intensity I had come almost into a dual life, as observer and dreamer. I felt a necessity for absolute conformity to my ideas in any happening I witnessed.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Boy
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:

But this small happening which had closed in upon my friend was a tremendous shock to me; it was unforeseen, but at the same time dreaded; I recognized it, and suddenly I leaned heavily on my arm and fainted.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Boy
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:

But like a needle going in and out among my thoughts were the children running on the sand, the upthrust oak trees growing over the clean pointed roof of the white pavilion, and the slowly changing attitudes of the grown-up people who had avoided the city and were lying prone and laughing on the water’s edge.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The White Pavilion
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:

The man smiled, the way panting dogs seem to be smiling, and gazed about carelessly at them all and out over the water. He even looked at me, and included me. Looking back, stunned, I wished that they all were dead.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Man, The Older Woman
Page Number: 73
Explanation and Analysis:

[…] I sank into familiarity; but the story of my love, the long narrative of the incident on the stairs, had vanished. I did not know, any longer, the meaning of my happiness; it held me unexplained.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

I felt a peak of horror, as though her breasts themselves had turned to sand, as though they were of no importance at all and she did not care.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Man, The Older Woman
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

Still I lay there, feeling victimized by the sight of the unfinished bullwark where they had piled and shaped the wet sand around their bodies, which changed the appearance of the beach like the ravages of a storm. I looked away, and for the object which met my eye, the small worn white pavilion, I felt pity suddenly overtake me, and I burst into tears.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker)
Related Symbols: The White Pavilion
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:

I remember continuing to lie there, squaring my vision with my hands, trying to think ahead to the time of my return to school in winter. I could imagine the boy I loved walking into a classroom, where I would watch him with this hour on the beach accompanying my recovered dream and added to my love. I could even foresee the way he would stare back, speechless and innocent, a medium-sized boy with blond hair and unconscious eyes looking beyond me and out the window, solitary and unprotected.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Boy
Related Symbols: Frames
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis: