Assignment task: Welty's short story "Petrified Man" offers a plethora of thematic approaches if one were to offer an analysis of her theme - the story's representations of gender, class, appearance, etc would all be worthy subjects of exploration.
Think about how this text is postmodern, especially when discussing reality versus fiction.
How and why the story presents the dichotomy between appearance versus the ugly truth and what this dichotomy suggests about the "real" world from a postmodern viewpoint.