Worn Path Essay, Research Paper

WORN PATH

Eudora Welty brings the narrative, A Worn Path, to life through the usage of the character Phoenix Jackson and symbols. This narrative item s an aged Negro adult female s journey to town, on a mission of love. Phoenix Jackson, an aged Negro adult females is frail, old, and had many disabilities, she lived during seeking times, because of her race, and faced many challenges while turning up.

The narrative is based on an aged Negro adult females s journey into town to acquire medical specialty for her ill grandson. Along the manner she encounters physical challenges, obstructions and brushs danger. She climbed hills, crossed watercourses, crawled under barbed-wire fencings, she faced dangers while out in the wilderness and a huntsman who threatens her life with a gun. Phoenix s ability to do the journey and get the better of these challenges shows the dedication, devotedness and the will power to digest adversity to complete her undertaking. She made this journey weekly about like a ritual. Miss Eudora Welty frequently takes ritual action really seriously-especially the most simple and crude rites of place, or private one that comes from repeated public presentation of an action of love, ( Old Phoenix s down the worn Path ) . ( Vande Kieft 70 )

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I believe the struggles were put in the narrative to demo us the interior feeling of Phoenix. She was able to digest adversities and remain focused on the undertaking at manus. This tells us while she was turning up she over came many obstructions. Normally Welty reserved for her black characters the maps of this critical, certain and faithful, ways of life of which modern adult male has either lost or denied. Phoenix Jackson represents the status of the human race before debilitating beds of civilisation anesthetized it. Although crude, Phoenix is centered in and directed toward the value of life, the way worn by wont of hope. She possesses that verve without which, Krutch says, Faith would non be possible. ( Turner, Harding 24 ) Using nil more than inside informations of an old Negro adult female s journey to metropolis to acquire medical specialty for her grandson, but gives us a sense of human fortitude that is about intolerable in its sad strength. ( Turner, Harding 262 ) The usage of symbols brought colour, comprehensiveness to the character in the narrative. It helps put the clip, topographic point and demo adversities that developed her character. Mrs. Phoenix Jackson s name represented A fabulous bird that dies fire and is reborn from the ashes every five hundred old ages. I believe this is used to depict her life. Her household saw Phoenix as a symbol of hope, born into to slavery and a slave for 18 old ages or more. After the war bondage

was abolished. We can presume her household was killed during the war, or she merely couldn t turn up them. Phoenix Jackson went on to hold kids.

This is apparent because of her grandson. Probably her household went north to a better topographic point to get down a new life, with out the memories of the difficult times.

Phoenix Jackson was set in her ways and alteration was hard for her. In the narrative, along the way, she sees old boarded up edifices, barbed & # 8211 ; wire fencings, and the worn way. Nancy K. Butterworth Phoenix s individualism, though, non prevent another, coincident, positions of her symbolic representative position of her race. ( Johnson 228 ) Wetly fiction occurs when Phoenix walks past cabin, Ag with conditions, with doors and Windowss boarded shut, all like old under a enchantment sitting at that place, and she says, I walking in their slumber, Noding her caput smartly her strong designation with these adult females ( the white adult females in town who ties her places is termed a lady suggest that they are the materfamilias of her ain race whose dreams she views herself as proudly transporting on.

Harmonizing to Butterworth sing Phoenix as an emblem of her people helps explicate the symbols. The reverberations of slave times can be heard in her chant as she heads up the hill, seems like there is ironss about my pess, clip I get this far, ( CS, 141 ) every bit good as images of parturiency and persecution, such as the barbed-wire fencing, one-armed black work forces and the baleful black Canis familiaris. These symbolic mentions could mention specifically to the troubles encountered by the enslaved black people. ( Butterworth 229 )

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The effort to develop the character ( Phoenix Jackson ) was really successful. With the usage of struggles we understood and felt closer to the character. It showed us she was a really determined adult female that was devoted to household, religious and had hope for the hereafter. Phoenix overcame all the obstructions despite her age and physical province. The struggles and the symbols allowed the reader to place with the clip period and all the atrociousnesss that occurred against black people. The narrative brought us to a clip and topographic point in the South, that people would wish to bury but we are reminded with the aid of authors such as Miss.Eudora Welty. Bad events need to be remembered so they ne’er happen once more.

Plants Cited

Ruth M. Vande Kieft Eudora Welty

Queens College ( 1962 )

W.Craig Turner, Lee Emling Harding

Critical Essays Eudora Welty ( 1989 )

Carol Ann Johnson Eudora Welty A Study of Short Fiction ( 1997 )

The Critics Nancy K. Butterworth 225-234