worn path
Eudora Welty once said, "I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." Published in February of 1941 in The Atlantic Monthly, the short story "A Worn Path" written by Eudora Welty is about an elderly woman who encounters many obstacles in her life. This short story has acclaimed prizes all over America as one of the greatest short story every written. Eudora Wetly was born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi. During the 1930's she traveled throughout Mississippi writing newspaper copies' and taking photographs. The job she obtained in Work Projects Administration enabled her to observe many different rural life's in her native state. In this paper I will discuss the use of symbolism, the setting of the story and the use of third person point of view in the story "A Worn Path" and how these elements helped the presentation of the theme. "A Worn Path" is a story that emphasizes the natural symbolism of the surroundings. In the beginning of the story, the reader is introduced to the main character, Phoenix Jackson. Phoenix is described as a small, old Negro woman "Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in
As a bird herself she is scared by it. The story describes Jackson with words such as granny, old Negro woman and a hundred years old. The story is written in a third person point of view because the author tells the reader what the characters feel, hear, see and think. That's what makes life worth living. The setting plays an important role in this story with its black imagery. In the story "A Worn Path", the primary way of knowing what Phoenix was thinking was the way she would talk to herself: "Now comes the trial" (Welty 224), Phoenix said to herself when she faced the creek in her walk: "I wasn't as old as I thought," (224) she said after getting across. The setting also gives the reader an understanding of the hardships or situations that black women had to go through in the 1900's. The term "Phoenix" is a mythological bird that dies and is reborn out of its own ashes. Welty uses the setting in this story not only to convey how hard the trip was for Phoenix Jackson, but also how life was in the South. When she encounters the scarecrow she first mistakes it for a mysterious dancing man then for a ghost. This is interaction between white and the black people. This would mean that Jackson is so mentally diminished that she does not even realize this. The author describes a scene where Phoenix has to creep and crawl under a barbed-wire fence while always fearful of tearing her dress. The bird is said to come out of Arabia every 500 years to Heliopolis, where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from its ashes, young and beautiful.
Common topics in this essay:
Worn Path,
Phoenix Jackson,
Jackson Welty,
Jackson Details,
Eudora Welty,
Jackson Mississippi,
Projects Administration,
Jackson Phoenix,
worn path,
Eudora Wetly,
main character,
Atlantic Monthly,
phoenix jackson,
story worn path,
setting story,
story worn,
short story,
negro woman,
eudora welty,
jackson mississippi,
223 skin,
third person view,
|
Acceptance Essays
