A Worn Path In Eudora Welty's short story "A Worn Path" the character Phoenix Jackson is an “elderly woman “who shows great courage to travel through the woods to get medicine for her grandson. Jackson’s grandson unintentionally swallowed lye some years ago which burned his throat, and he needs the medicine to heal him. During her journey, Jackson encounters several obstacles that she face that remind me of my grandmother who would do anything to help us. The character journey shows her strength to overcome many physical obstacle by presents of courage, strength, and love.
so she tried to be territorial around the person she loved, Clayton, which caused her to go to lengths in which she raped Emily. The third-person narrative of Phoenix highlights the extreme actions she takes to gain affection and approval. This helps readers understand the desperate desire of victims of intergenerational trauma to be loved as they were split apart and abandoned by their
She just continues on with her trip so that she can get her grandson’s medicine. Secondly, Phoenix overcomes difficult and harmful circumstances while she is making the adventure to the city. Welty writes, “I in the thorny bush," she said. "Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir”.
In the short story Welty’s want the reader to be comfortable with Phoenix as a character. Welty describes Phoenix wearing a long dress reaching her shoe top and a long apron of bleached sugar sacks. When Phoenix talks aloud to herself the author wants the reader to imagine an old woman with characteristics of a warm, comical, young spirited woman side of her. The short story also uses images which evoke from the biblical imagery. Phoenix’s uses biblical connection to show the reader how important her story and the
She exemplifies Christ along her journey when she stops under a mistletoe tree; the same type of tree in which the cross was made. The thorns she encounters also relate to Christ’s death on the cross, the crown of thorns he wears on his head. The journey she takes to get her grandson’s medicine, is considered to be an example of self-sacrifice. Phoenix gives others the opportunity to help her and accomplish good things. One example is when the hunter helps her out of the ditch.
Yes, the journey is a great risk especially in her condition but Eudora shows how Phoenix’s spirit causes her to persevere in the face of adversity. In the end, Phoenix Jackson reached her destination and received the medicine for her grandchild. What starts out as a long quest filled with dangerous obstacles ends in a meaningful lesson for the readers’. Eudora Welty short story, “A Worn Path,” exemplifies what it means to persevere through any tribulations that stand in the way of your goals.
Given her grandson’s injuries that hope is as fragile as the paper windmill. This reminds us that hope is fragile, and is contingent on historical and civil efforts beyond Phoenix and her grandson. Phoenix Jackson perseveres to achieve a purposeful goal. Phoenix Jackson stayed true to her faith in times of desperation. Against the obstacles, she was willing to reach her destination to provide her grandson with the medicine he is in need of.
In the story “A Worn Path” Phoenix Jackson has many different characteristics. For example, one of her characteristics is that she is delusional and she might have a mental disability(like alzheimer's) because she is old as in the story it says she is “ a hundreds years old”. In the story it proves that she is delusional because she speaks to herself for example, in the story it says “Ghost” she said sharply, “who be you the ghost of”? Which justs means she making up things for cope with the fact that her grandson is dead and she can’t get over that.
The main problem being her old age and her ethnicity, she has to walk all the way to town to get medicine for her grandson. When Phoenix encounters the hunter she tells him that she is going to the city, he responds: “Why, that’s too far! That’s as far as I walk when I come out myself…”(pg 290). Therefore, it is clear that Phoenix’s old age plays a crucial role in her journey. Nevertheless, she is a strong women because of this determination that she has to keep moving forward no matter what circumstances there are.
Phoenix’s endurance on the journey is portrayed by this change, which helps to reveal the
In Greek mythology, phoenixes were birds that died in flames and were born again from the ashes. The constant cycle that phoenixes lived in indicated that the birds were strong and everlasting which highlighted the ideas of rebirth and resilience. Author Eudora Welty employs these common associations that people have with phoenixes in her short story “A Worn Path” to portray the main character. Christened ‘Phoenix’ Jackson, the elderly protagonist makes a routine trip to a doctor’s office to retrieve medicine for her ill grandson and the reader joins her on her ‘worn path’ to see every obstacle that she confronts along the way. Despite the odds, hoary Phoenix Jackson makes it all the way to the clinic; she is hardy and persistent even in her old age.
After crossing the thorny path and over a log on the creek, Phoenix sets down to rest and imagines a boy bringing her a piece of marble cake. She strangely replies “that would be acceptable” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2012, p. 388), which could imply that she would have accepted her death and defeat, but instead she presses forward in her trip. The second event occurs when she encounters the black dog on the path and ends up helpless in a ditch. As if the
Beyond the Walk to Natchez A historical great piece of literary art, “A Worn Path” published in 1941, is a story of an old woman’s journey to town through the forest. The setting is rural Mississippi in the 1940’s, a time when racism was a way of life and a trip to town, especially for an old black woman, was often a long journey and thus a trip not often taken. The old woman’s name is Phoenix Jackson and she has quite an adventurous trip through the forest to town. One is made to believe this is just an average walk down the path for this old woman; however the reader is entertained by Phoenix’s mannerisms and realizes there is deeper meaning of the story.
In the story “A Worn Path” Phoenix Jackson was an old African American women. She takes a small journey that can be an allegory of someone's whole life. The journey had hard and easy parts, beauty, danger, and confusion. But her quest was to get the medicine for her sick grandson who laid at home waiting for her return. Phoenix was a delusional yet heroic, caring grandmother who would stop at nothing to get what she needed.
Jackson is willing to go through these conflicts in order to get to Natchez and achieve her goal. In conclusion, Eudora Welty did a good job showing the sacrificial love of a grandmother in A Worn Path. She gave her protagonist a name that symbolizes death and rebirth, and she also created difficult conflicts that accurately shows the endless parameters of Phoenix Jackson’s sacrificial love. It is our job to show this kind of sacrificial love toward others.
