Easter (Moon Lake)
Enigmatic young blonde girl Easter is one of Welty’s many—many—characters endowed with metaphorical names. She is described as someone so self-contained that she answers to no one and her name (chosen by herself) resonates with the mystical symbolism of resurrection when she is saved from drowning in a key event of the story.
Tom Harris (The Hitch-Hikers)
Traveling salesman who picks up the titular wanderers of the road. His transitory relationship with hitchhikers who pass in and out of his life without an imprint of one upon the other is emblematic of his entire life in which relationship with friends and lovers are as equally devoid of meaning.
Phoenix Jackson (A Worn Path)
The old woman who makes her way across the symbol-laden landscape of “A Worn Path” is one of Welty’s most famous character. Her mythic first name puts her in the company of Easter and the other characters with metaphorical names, but unlike Easter, the story of Phoenix rising is almost a one-woman show.
Sister (Why I Live at the P.O.)
The intensely self-involved and utterly unreliable narrator who is known only by her relationship to a sibling she constantly complains receives better treatment is one Welty’s most fascinating figures. Worthy of the many entire essays and scholarly papers devoted to analyzing her complex psychology, the great irony of her tale is that while she voices an assertive opinion about many things, she never does actually come right out and say what exactly drove her to live at the post office.
Marian (A Visit of Charity)
Marian is a teenager in the 1930’s looking to earn Campfire Girl points for acts of charity by visiting old women in a nursing home. Profoundly metaphorical even by Welty’s high standards, the visit becomes something of a psychological nightmare in which the very concept of what charity means is probed and provoked within an essentially plotless narrative.
