Where is the Voice Coming From? Eudora Welty

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/joyce-carol-oates-reads-eudora-welty

https://www.enotes.com/topics/where-voice-coming-from

http://web.mit.edu/norvin/www/somethingelse/welty.html

Where is the Voice Coming From?

This story has a background in fact. Welty wrote it on the night she learned of the murder of Medgar Evers, a local black civil rights leader much like the fictional Roland Summers, which took place in 1963 in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. Unaware of the killer’s identity, yet familiar with the bitterness of racism and class resentment, she created a poor white narrator who so closely resembled the real murderer that several details of the story had to be altered before its publication in The New Yorker, in order to avoid prejudicing the case. 
A major strength of the story is the speaker’s voice, rich in local dialect, which also reveals him as uneducated and self-righteous. A proud man, he feels himself betrayed by everything in which he has believed. Clearly, he is a man overwhelmed by a growing movement he does not comprehend and cannot prevent. By allowing this narrator to tell his own story, Welty does not treat him as a stereotypical villain but presents him with understanding and even a certain level of compassion. 
The credibility of the story is increased by passing references to historical persons, including Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi; Caroline Kennedy, the young daughter of then-president John F. Kennedy; and James Meredith, the African American student whose enrollment integrated the University of Mississippi. In addition, sensory details are plentiful. When the narrator describes his early morning journey to Summers’s neighborhood, he offers a litany of typical street and business names, locating the familiar railroad tracks and the lighted bank sign that gives the time and temperature. He notes the brutal heat, even at night; the intense emotional pressure that he experiences; and his sudden relief when Roland Summers falls. 
Perhaps the most obvious symbol is the gun. Although the gun bestows temporary power on a powerless man, the narrator tells his wife that he threw his rifle in the weeds because the barrel was scorching hot and because there was really nothing worth holding on to anymore. At the story’s end, he has replaced the gun with his old guitar, an enduring part of his own past, while he plays and sings “a-Down” to comfort himself—a mindless refrain and a foreshadowing, for now he, not Roland Summers, is going down. 

Reading questions:

DISCUSS.  Think, Pair, Share  Post a summary comment for your group
1. The opening two lines of the story accomplish two literary purposes: first, they characterize the narrator, and secondly, they set the tone of the story. Explain how these brief lines achieve both.
2. Why is the narrator nameless? Give him a name and explain your choice with references to the text. What is the significance of Roland Summers’s name?
3. As we discussed before we read, this story contains inflammatory language. How many instances did you underline? Why is this language used in the story?
4. Throughout the story, the criticisms leveled at Roland Summers by the narrator reveal a deeper emotion. Look at passages like:  “And his street’s paved.”  “There on his paved driveway, yes sir.”  “It was mighty green where I skint over the yard getting back. That nigger wife of his, she wanted nice grass! I bet my wife would hate to pay her water bill.” What do all of these statements tell us about what Roland Summers has and the narrator does not? What emotion does this create within the narrator?
5. When you read, you highlighted the story for references to “hot” or “heat.” What effect does Welty’s use of this motif create in the story? What is the literary term for this technique?
6. The story’s narrator mentions a mockingbird. When does he do so? Where is the bird? When does it stop singing? What does the narrator mean by saying, “I was like him. I was on top of the world myself. For once.” How else is the narrator like the mockingbird? How do his references to the mockingbird contribute to the characterization of the narrator?
7. What is the name of this town? What is the historical allusion? What does this suggest about the political and social climate in the town? In the narrator’s mind, how is this name appropriate to his situation? The story also alludes to important events in the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Do Summers’s television appearance and the demonstration the narrator describes downtown refer to actual events? If so, what were they?
8. What is the relationship between the narrator and his wife? How does her criticism add to his characterization?
9. By the end of the story, how does the narrator feel? What is his plan? Why do you think Welty chose this conclusion?
10. What is the significance of the title of the story? Other titles that Welty considered were “It Ain’t Even July Yet”; “Voice from an Unknown Interior”; “From the Unknown” and “A Voice from the Jackson Interior.” Was the one she selected the best choice? Can you answer the question in the title? Where is this “voice” coming from?