The basic theme of the story is suggested by the obvious irony of the title, for Marian’s visit is not one of true charity, but rather a formal, institutionalized gesture. It certainly does not represent the biblical notion of charity in 1 Corinthians, which is interpreted in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible as “love,” or sympathetic identification of one person with another. From the beginning of the story, Marian does not think of the two old women as people like herself. She not only is aware of the strangeness of the old ladies, but she also has become a stranger to herself. Thrown out of her familiar world, where she belongs, she is in a grotesque dreamworld, where she intensely feels her difference from the old ladies and thus her own separation and isolation. This symbolic sense of alienation explains the strange, dreamlike effect of the nursing home on Marian.

If the story were concerned only with Marian’s difficulty in identifying with the old women, it would be easier to dismiss, for one might legitimately ask how it is possible for a girl to feel empathy for these strange and grotesque old women. Thus, to show that the feeling of charity, in the New Testament sense of “love,” is totally lacking in the story, Eudora Welty establishes the relationship between the two old women. Why do they not love each other? It should be easy for them to perceive their common identity and thus maintain a sense of unity instead of one of total separation. However, they do not; they seldom speak except to contradict each other; as old Addie says, they are strangers: “Is it possible that they have actually done a thing like this to anyone—sent them in a stranger to talk, and rock, and tell away her whole long rigamarole?” Addie’s tirade against her roommate becomes the thematic center of the story: In a world without love, all people are strangers, for they cannot break through their own sense of separation to perceive their commonality and thus their oneness with one another. When Addie says that the other old woman is empty, she recognizes that this is so both because she is not loved and because she has no love to give. Without love, she is a stranger, just as without love all human beings are strangers to one another and to themselves.

The crisis for Marian occurs soon after the climactic moment of old Addie’s tirade, for she then asks Addie how old she is and looks at the old woman very closely from all sides “as if in dreams.” As Marian looks at Addie, she “wondered about her for a moment as though there was nothing else in the world to wonder about. It was the first time such a thing had happened to Marian.” However, this opportunity for identifying with the old woman is a fleeting one, for when Addie refuses to tell her age and begins crying, Marian jumps up and escapes.