This story describes the long, dangerous and difficult journey made by an old negro woman, Phoenix Jackson to … There have been many critical interpretations of the story in the eighty or so years since its publication, and we will consider some of those here. When she reaches the bottom of the hill, she is forced to make her way over a creek by inching across a fallen log. Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor. ... Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. 'Aunt Phoenix, don't you hear me? 'My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,' Phoenix went on. What was a poor, elderly sick woman doing gallivanting in the forest during the dead of winter? On the first point, Phoenix traverses a path that is an interstitial place between nature and civilization. EnglishConflict in Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” In Eudora Welty s “A Worn Path” the conflict was not apparent at the very beginning. 'She doesn't come for herself—she has a little grandson. 'This is what come to me to do,' she said. The worn path described in the story shows the trials and problems that can happen in everyday things. When there is movement in thick vegetation lining the path, she vocally threatens the mysterious animals who may be living there and steadfastly refuses to push back or pull up. A Worn Path. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down. 'Sweet gum makes the water sweet,' she said, and drank more. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different radiation. While it is common to associate women, especially African American women, with nature, ecofeminist theorists caution against this reductiveness. But Phoenix only looked above her head. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. The Question and Answer section for A Worn Path is a great After he tries to get his dog to attack the other dog in a metonymic display of strength, he turns the gun on Phoenix and asks if the gun scares her. Osborne-Bartucca, Kristen. Then the cypress trees went into the road. But something held Old Phoenix very still. She used to live in a village far away from the town. Look! A Worn Path is a tale of undying love and devotion that pushes us toward a certain goal. 'Why, that's too far! Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill. 'That would be acceptable,' she said. Throughout the story, Jackson suffers through many cases, and at times, feels the need to just give up. 'Well, I scared him off that time,' he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix. Her skin is a “golden color” and covered with “numberless branching wrinkles.”. Themes and Colors Key. She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head. Phoenix reaches Natchez, which Claxton informs us is a “symbol of American pioneerism and Manifest Destiny” as well as the “apotheosis of King Cotton” before the Civil War. 'I know you old colored people! While still maintaining the narrative logic of allowing for figurative language beyond Phoenix’s capacity, the reader also sees things through Phoenix’s eyes. He patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. After she got to the top, she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. A Worn Path Essay Example Irony is used to show the intensity of her struggle. Look at that dog!' 'Doesn't the gun scare you?' The story revolves around A short story about an elderly woman, Phoenix Jackson who loves her grandson so much that she endures a painful journey to town on a road in a rural area to acquire medicine for her grandson who suffers from a throat ailment. Her lips moved. She inclined her head in the red rag. "A Worn Path" is a short story by Eudora Welty. Phoenix finally arrives at the city of Natchez, Mississippi. The nurse was trying to hush her now. She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. The phrase "with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock" describes? Deep, deep it went down between the high green-colored banks. When the dog comes at her, she gives it a snap of the cane but falls over in turn. The nurse frowned. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. 'What do you want, Grandma?' 'Old woman,' she said to herself, 'that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you.' She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. It is Welty’s literary intelligence that transforms “A Worn Path” into a powerful lesson in the art of limited omniscience. She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her. 'Do all right for out in the country, but wouldn't look right to go in a big building.' he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other. She holds “utterly still” and says she’s “seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done.” With that, the hunter shoulders his gun but still sees fit to give her his “advice” that she ought to stay home. 'We is the only two left in the world. asked the nurse. So she lay there and presently went to talking. It whispered and shook, and was taller than her head. “A Worn Path” is a metaphor for the life of Phoenix Jackson. Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. 'I thank you for your trouble.' At first she took it for a man. Much of its appeal lies in that it appears to be a simple story—an elderly woman travels through the forest to a city where she can get medicine for her ailing grandson—but that simplicity is belied by deeper themes of race, myth, religion, and life and death. 'I going to the store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net. Literally speaking, the story is the story of the journey of an old woman who walks towards the city on the cold winter day. Race and Class. Welty takes the reader into the mind of her powerfully conceived central figure, Phoenix, in a way that allows the reader to fully inhabit the mind of this person at certain time and place, but what is real and what is only imagined commingle. 'Throat never heals, does it?' "A Worn Path “A Worn Path” Summary and Analysis". by Eudora Welty. The short story “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty is a tale of a Phoenix Jacksons journey through the woods to get into town. Taken from her A Curtain of Green and Other Stories collection the story is narrated in the third person by an unnamed narrator and after reading the story the reader realises that Welty may be using the setting of the story to explore the theme of struggle. It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. 'I bound to go on my way, mister,' said Phoenix. He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. He wear a little patch-quilt and peep out, holding his mouth open like a little bird. 'Anything broken, Granny?' LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Worn Path, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. I think I signal this, because the end of the story has been reached before old Phoenix gets home again: she simply starts back. Armed with a cane in her hand and red rag to keep her head warm, she sways side to side a bit as she walks in the still air. One of the many characterizations in the story starts with Phoenix herself. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush.' 'No sir, I going to town.' It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. The old woman takes it and then removes the nickel she put into her apron after the white hunter dropped it. 'Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?' Welty could simply have had Phoenix tell her story using first-person perspective, of course, but that would present two obstacles. I'll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand.' 'The time come around.' The story is based in the old south several years ago during the cold month of December. She even heard a gunshot. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was. 'What's your name? But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. The main character is a very old, weak, poor, and tired African American woman. 'Yes. Natchez Trace was an overland route from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, a port city on the Mississippi River. Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bothering her. 'You scarecrow,' she said. The story describes a journey by an elderly black woman named Phoenix Jackson, who must walk a long way into Natchez from her home in … So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing-medicine.' When the nurse brings her another bottle of medicine, she hands it over and says “Charity” before checking her accounts book. In particular, Mae Miller-Claxton explains that while Phoenix does indeed have a connection to nature that allows her a wisdom and knowledge other characters do not possess, she is absolutely rooted in her time and place as a black woman in Jim Crow Mississippi. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. 'Are you deaf?' A Worn Path Critical Analysis . 'Sic him, Pete! I could tell him from all the others in creation.' Answer: 1 question In “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty, what has happened that suggests the hunter will not really hurt Phoenix even though he has pointed a gun at her? 'Stand still then, Grandma,' said the lady. 'After you came so far?' But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts. The evaluation of a “Worn Path” has many meanings to it, and can be interpreted in many different ways. The fusing of fantasy and reality is absolutely essential for the story, because Welty wants to endow a quotidian event —a walk by an old woman to see a doctor—with far more mythic properties. As she’s not a slave and he’s not a master, there’s nothing he can do to force her go home, but he’s clearly in a position of power nonetheless. Nature and City. By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. She informs the nurse that her grandson’s throat closes up on occasion and he has trouble swallowing. A nurse appears, who recognizes Phoenix and informs the attendant that she is there to get medicine for her grandson who swallowed lye a few years earlier. he laughed. 'Sun so high!' Other critics look at Phoenix’s connection with nature. With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were in armor. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice. The story is about an elderly African American woman who is in desperate need to obtain medicine for her very sickly grandchild. The verb choice here personifies the bush; more than making it human, it also indicates intent. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. The reason became clear towards the conclusion of … he said, still pointing it. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. In the paved city it was Christmas time. He was very sick so she had to go to the town at regular intervals to bring medicine for her grandson. Subject Matter: This story is about the journey of Phoenix J ackson, who walks many times to a town to bring medicine for her grandson. She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. On a cold December day, an elderly woman named Phoenix Jackson makes her way along a remote path, narrating the journey to herself as she goes. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. Once on the other side, she finally takes a moment to rest. A “A Worn Path “ ENG 125 Introduction to Literature Instructor: Katie Newbanks 4/25/2011 The Worn Path In the short story, “ A Worn Path “ written by Eudora Welty it can be interpreted that Phoenix Jackson is suffering from dementia or some other form of mental illness, and that her grandson that she so lovingly speaks of has been deceased for some time. 'Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. Then she slowly straightened up; she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. In this paper, I But his being dead can’t increase the truth of the story, can’t affect it one way or the other. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. I the oldest people I ever know. Moreover, the diploma symbolizes the hope of education and literacy.” Second, Moberly explains how, yes, Phoenix is heading south, not north, and “to successive stages of bondage,” but at the end she is “imagining herself following the North Star home to her grandson, holding it out in front of her as she effectively retraces and reverses the course of her journey South.”, To conclude, critic Roland Bartel propounds a theory that fascinated many readers and other critics: that the grandson is actually dead. Swallowed lye. There were red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Down in the hollow was the mourning dove—it was not too late for him. Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. 'He ain't scared of nobody. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed. She had no one except a grandson. 'Where do you live, Granny?' Not just any literary point of view, either, but the one that probably is the most difficult for readers to identify. A pleasure I don't see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush caught her dress. It could have been a man dancing in the field. Inspiration Through Storytelling: Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path". At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts. He suffer and it don't seem to put him back at all. To the question ‘Is the grandson really dead?’ I could reply that it doesn’t make any difference. January 21, 2019 by Essay Writer. 'No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,' she said, holding utterly still. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly. 'Five pennies is a nickel,' said Phoenix stiffly. The setting of this story plays a major role of the imagery set by … This the easy going.' That's as far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble.' 'Here I be,' she said. When the nurse inquires if the medicine the doctor gave did anything to improve the condition of her grandson’s throat and Phoenix once again does not reply, the nurse complains that she is wasting their valuable time. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming.' He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. Phoenix enters a building and goes up to a woman seated at a desk, who assumes that Phoenix is another charity case. A white man—a hunter—helps her from the spill she took into the ditch. The attendant hands Phoenix a nickel as a Christmas gift. 'My grandson. The characterization of Phoenix Jackson is described as being a typical colored person living her life. Don't let none of those come running my direction. A Worn Path Lyrics. It is festooned with Christmas decorations and lights. 'Now down through oaks.' GradeSaver, 6 November 2019 Web. 'Speak up, Grandma,' the woman said. Old Phoenix did not speak. She paused quietly on the sidewalk, where people were passing by. Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa Claus!' This made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird. 'Oh, that's just old Aunt Phoenix,' she said. Welty specifically identifies his race and almost immediately, though the young man helps her out of the ditch, there is a palpable sense of tension. Her eyes were blue with age. He not get his breath. Phoenix would certainly not talk using such lofty language and it is equally doubtful she would write that way. Her shoelaces are untied but she does not trip, even as she keeps her eyes in front of her. The “path” is not only worn because of Phoenix’s repeated travels across, it also symbolizes the path of the poor and oppressed. She brought her a bottle of medicine. 'Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles.' The image of the “black men with one arm” is associated with lynching, a common act of racial violence in the South during the Jim Crow era. The story is based on an old southern African American women, Phoenix Jackson, and her journey to town to pick up her grandsons medication. It was my memory fail me. Phoenix spoke unasked now. It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Not affiliated with Harvard College. One interpretation is that Phoenix’s quest is in line with Christianity. But there was no answer, only the ragged dancing in the wind. He smiled, and shouldered the gun. The most conspicuous danger for Phoenix is, of course, the white hunter. 'Through the maze now,' she said, for there was no path. 'I in the thorny bush,' she said. He not able to help himself. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side. asked the nurse. There sat a buzzard. 'Now you go on home, Granny!' Then, with a nod, she leaves. A Worn Path is a controlled story of unconscious heroism written by American novelist and short-story writer Eudora Welty. A WORN PATH Writer: Eudora Welty ‘A Worn Path’ is a story about an old black woman named Phoenix, who is courageous and endangers her life to get the medicine for her grandson, who is suffering from extreme throat pain. I remembers so plain now. Symbolism in “A Worn Path”. 'Ghost,' she said sharply, 'who be you the ghost of? It was published in Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1941. Copyright © 1999 - 2021 GradeSaver LLC. Sic him!' A bird flew by. She bent down. 'Here's a nickel,' said the attendant. She carries a cane and switches it … 'Thank you, missy. . The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. Bells were ringing. he was saying. “A Worn Path” is one of Welty’s most famous short stories. Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her. First, there is the diploma, which instead of being important as an indicator of difference, could symbolize “the physical proof of a slave’s freedom, a certificate of manumission. Dance, old scarecrow,' she said, 'while I dancing with you.' 'No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough,' said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. Perseverance and Power. Therefore, Welty had to find a way both to take the reader inside the mind of a person significantly less educated than herself while not limiting her own ability to write about that person in a way reflective of that intelligence. I doesn't mind asking a nice lady to tie up my shoe, when I gets out on the street.' But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you.' On she went. It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. 'But it's an obstinate case.' A thorny bush catches her dress, but she finds the strength to pull herself free and keep up her momentum. 'I walking in their sleep,' she said, nodding her head vigorously. 'What are you doing there?' Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field. When the dogs scuffle, Phoenix reaches down and lifts up the piece of money “with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen.” She wonders if God is watching and if she “come to stealing,” but it actually seems like a divinely-ordained; if Phoenix is as old as she is and her eyes are “blue with age,” how could she have seen that nickel fall out? Down there, her senses drifted away. A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain. A Worn Path Summary. Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things. 'Charity,' she said, making a check mark in a book. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it,' said the nurse. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. 'I thank you,' she said. The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. A Worn Path. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. Are they static or dynamic? ”. I got a long way.' The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair. 'Up through pines,' she said at length. She laughed as if in admiration. The woman assents. He going to last. She does not evince fear or hostility; when thorns catch her, she simply says, “Thorns, you doing your appointed work. For this reason, more medicine is required. Claxton provides statistics showing that from 1882-1968, 539 black people were lynched, with more deaths probably going unrecorded. 'This the easy place. It is a bright but cold morning in December when an old woman named Phoenix Jackson sets out along a worn path she knows well. Her face lighted. As Elaine Orr writes, “as a charity case, she loses all agency, all fluidity. So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. 'No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. In A Worn Path by Eudora Welty we have the theme of struggle, sacrifice, determination, perseverance, selflessness and love. She manages to take it when he is distracted by his dog, and slips it into her apron pocket. As she perambulates the path, she talks frankly to the animals and plants in her path as if she knows them. 'I'm an old woman without an education. she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. A Worn Path: Eudora Welty. 'Something always take a hold of me on this hill—pleads I should stay.' She walked on. I come to stealing.' ...“A Worn Path” In the short story “A Worn Path”, Eudora Welty tells of Phoenix who is living during a time period of racial discrimination, prejudice, and segregation.Phoenix Jackson is a very frail African American woman whose eyes are blue of age; her skin is stained with patterns of countless wrinkles telling of her hardworking years, her face is worn Next comes a ravine where she stops to take a sip of water from a spring. Just when she gets “in the clearing” and feels “safe,” she sees a buzzard, a reminder of death( as cited in the text)The old Negro women had such a big heart and so much love for her grandson she walked miles to town in the winter to get medicine he needed. Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. 'All right.' It is thus an ancient symbol of rebirth, of perseverance. The simple construction of the information that “a bush caught her dress” immediately situates the reader into scene from Phoenix’s perspective. He starts out nicely by asking her if she all right and then asks where she is going. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. The journey through the worn path is symbolism of the path of life. Welty uses symbolism as a bridge to connect the reader to their own inner battles and give A Worn Path a deeper meaning than that of an old lady walking through the woods. On she marches through some areas that have no path at all . In the furrow she made her way along. She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor's office. There are several things in the story that bear this comparison out. 'I ought to be shut up for good,' she said with laughter. When the path starts to run uphill, Phoenix complains that it feels as chains are around her feet, but still she presses on. The scarecrow looms menacingly in the shadows in real time for both Phoenix and the reader. The cones dropped as light as feathers. She is not part of the consumerism of the town, as signified by the woman in the streets with her presents. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. Amidst all the darkness and prejudice and ambiguity at play in the narrative of old woman’s walk across the worn path is one symbol of pure innocence. She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. The story “A Worn Path” is about an old black woman called Phoenix Jackson. "A Worn Path" follows the journey of Phoenix Jackson walking from Old Natchez Trace to the city of Natchez, Mississippi. - the answers to estudyassistant.com Never want to let folks pass—no, sir. But then the nurse came in. 'Now, how is the boy?' She stood straight and faced him. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen. 'I bound to go to town, mister,' said Phoenix. “A Worn Path” The setting in the Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” plays a very important role in the make-up of this story. 'The time getting all gone here.' Summary of a worn path-she gets caught in a thorn bush - startled by a black dog and falls into a hole-white hunter helped her then points a gun at her - goes to the doctors office to get medicine for her sick grandson. She makes it over a log, through a maze, and through a swamp. James Robert Saunders points out that “once she arrives at the log, a bridge that nature has provided, she can ‘march’ across without even looking until she has reached the other side. 'Well, Granny,' he said, 'you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. Kevin Moberly also looks at “A Worn Path” through the lens of slavery and the slave narrative tradition. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of A Worn Path by Eudora Welty. His last words are warning her to go back home and stay out of harm, but she is determined to fulfill her mission. What seems to be the trouble with you?' First, a story in which a person is relating the strange and unusual encounters such as Phoenix experiences would likely be viewed as less mythic than mentally disturbed. We won't keep you standing after your long trip.' But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air. Setting off once again, Phoenix soon encounters another obstruction: a fence of barbed wire under which she must crawl on her hands and knees. She whispered, 'Sic him!' 'My senses is gone. Have you been here before? . A Worn Path 841 Words | 4 Pages. However, Phoenix does make it through the human world just as she did the nonhuman one. 'How old are you, Granny?' From the text, we can infer that Old Phoenix is losing her sight with age. Christian Overtones. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a setting hen.