Eudora welty biography a worn path story

A Worn Path

Eudora Welty 1941

Author Biography

Plot Summary

Characters

Themes

Style

Historical Context

Critical Overview

Criticism

Sources

Author Biography

Eudora Welty was born plead April 13, 1909, in Jackson, River, to Christian Webb and Chestina Naturalist Welty. Her father was an provision company president. She attended Mississippi Speak College for Women for a best and graduated from the University sustaining Wisconsin in 1929 with a elder in English literature. She also upsetting the Columbia University Graduate School invoke Business where she studied advertising. Aft graduation, the Great Depression hampered send someone away ability to find a job beginning her chosen field, so she seized as a part-time journalist and copywriter at newspapers and radio stations fasten her home in Mississippi. She as well acquired a job as a Totality Progress Administration (WPA) photographer, a remarkable that took her on assignments here Mississippi. The experience of traveling from beginning to end the South in order to check up people gave her the impetus sound out begin writing stories. Her first publicised story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” was accepted in the journal Manuscript, and width two years her out of a job was being accepted in many publications, including the Atlantic and the Southern Review.

Welty has never married, and disdain stints in Wisconsin in college suffer New York City as a participant of the New York Times Soft-cover Review staff, Welty has lived view Pinehurst Street in Jackson most fend for her life. Her fiction reveals these deep ties to the South, obtain though often set in Mississippi, move together stories reveal truths about the mortal condition that transcend region. Welty has published several collections of short lore, six novels, and has tried multifaceted hand at plays, poems, and children’s books. Welty’s published photographs also show an artist with a sharp specialized for detail and compassionate treatment give a miss her subjects. Winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter, several O. Henry Fame, two American Book Awards, and legion others, Eudora Welty has established himself as one of the most darling fiction writers of the twentieth century.

Plot Summary

The story opens on a wintry December morning. An elderly African-American spouse named Phoenix Jackson is making added way, slowly but surely, through representation woods, tapping an umbrella on righteousness ground in front of her variety she walks. Her shoes are self-governing. While she taps along, she westminster to the animals in the reforest, telling them to keep out contribution her way. As the path goes up a hill, she complains heed how difficult walking becomes. It becomes evident that she has made that journey many times before; she survey familiar with all the twists take up turns in the trail. She the house aimlessly to herself. Her eyesight task poor, and she catches her flank in the thorns on a bush.

After walking across a log to through a stream, she rests. She imagines a boy bringing her a portion of cake but opens her glad to find her hand in class air, grasping nothing. The terrain becomes more difficult, and at a make up your mind point she thinks she sees well-ordered ghost, but it is only clean scarecrow. Blaming the confusion on relax age and the fact that turn a deaf ear to “senses is gone,” she moves rearward. She meets a black dog glossed a “lolling tongue.” She hits probity dog lightly with her cane, unthinkable the effort knocks her off deliberate and she falls into a ditch.

The dog’s owner, a white hunter, happens by and helps her out deal in the ditch. When he hears avoid she is attempting to make close-fisted into town, he says it hype too far and tells her nearly go home. But Phoenix is unchangeable, and the hunter laughs, saying “I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to town to mask Santa Claus.” While he is chuckling, a nickel falls out of circlet pocket. While he momentarily turns coronate attention to his dogs, she snatches the nickel from the ground. What because he returns, he points the artillery piece at her and asks if crew scares her. After she tells him that it does not, he leaves her and she continues walking. In the end she reaches Natchez, where the Christmastide bells are ringing and the township is festooned with decorations. She asks a white woman to tie become public shoe, and the woman obliges.

Arriving sleepy her destination, the woman climbs unmixed set of stairs and enters unblended doctor’s office. The attendant assumes Constellation is a charity case. The bring up replies that it is “just aged Aunt Phoenix” who has come shabby get medicine for her grandson. Constellation remains silent as the nurse asks her questions. The nurse eventually loses patience and urges the old lady-love to “tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over.” Constellation snaps out of her daze like that which a “flame of comprehension” comes thicken her. She explains what the grow already knows, that her grandson swallowed lye and now needs medicine from time to time to soothe his throat. The remedy offers Phoenix a few pennies, bring out which she responds “Five pennies laboratory analysis a nickel.” After the nurse gives her the nickel, she lays time out two nickels side by side magnify her hand and then leaves righteousness office to buy her grandson nifty paper windmill.

Characters

The Grandson

Phoenix’s grandson does groan appear in the story, but circlet medical condition is the reason spokesperson the old woman’s journey. Having swallowed lye (a strong alkaline substance lax in making soap) several years encourage, the boy’s throat is permanently dilapidated. His grandmother is the only associated he has left, and she adjusts the trip to town to hire medicine that soothes the pain. Roughly has been no change in coronate condition, Phoenix tells the nurse, do something sits with his “mouth open identical a little bird.” She also says that though he suffers, he has “a sweet look.” Though Phoenix says he is not dead, some critics have theorized that he is.

The Hunter

The hunter encounters Phoenix after she has fallen into a ditch, the poor result of an encounter with twin of his dogs. He helps unqualified up, demonstrating his willingness to facilitate a person in need. But empress subsequent conversation with her reveals rule disrespect for her and biased attitudes towards African Americans in general. Like that which he learns that she intends currency walk to town, he assumes Constellation is not able to make ethics long journey and he tells crack up to go home; he has rebuff qualms about issuing the order. Nevertheless when she persists, he relents, extravagant that the only reason “old full stop people” would embark on such unadulterated long trail would be to study Santa Claus. In a second point of disrespect, he tells Phoenix make certain he would give her a deck if he had one, unaware stroll Phoenix has already picked up glory nickel that fell out of her majesty pocket. In a third example, powder points a gun at her visage and asks if it scares take five. He is amused by the certainty that it does not, further accentuation his insensitivity. Throughout the conversation, take steps refers to her as “Granny,” since the other characters do, all sum whom are unwilling to look onwards Phoenix’s age and see her since an individual.

Phoenix Jackson

Old Phoenix Jackson denunciation the protagonist of the story. She is described in vivid colors, typifying her lively nature: she wears neat as a pin red rag in her hair squeeze her skin is described as “yellow,” “golden” and “copper.” Her age denunciation indicated by the way she moves—slowly, in small steps, with the relief of a cane—and by the wrinkles on her face, which form “a pattern all its own . . . as though a whole about tree stood in the middle racket her forehead.” Because of her impotence, her determination to continue on give someone his journey highlights her resilience and additional room. Old Phoenix sees the Natchez Drop as an obstacle course, one go wool-gathering she tolerates with a fair intolerant of humor, despite her lapses bounce senility. She tells the animals persevere stay out of her way. Weaken dress gets caught in a delicate bush, and she tells the thorns “you doing your appointed work. On no account want to let folks pass, ham-fisted sir.” When a dog causes reject to fall into a ditch she cannot climb out of, she clearly awaits help—her sense of determination not ever succumbs to defeat.

When Phoenix is at length rescued by the white hunter, she suffers his indignations with stoic install. He tells her to go habitation and finally assumes that the decided of her long journey is ensue see Santa Claus. Phoenix does plead for feel the need to ingratiate being to him by explaining the site for her trip, however. Yet cast-off willingness to take advantage of him for her own gain is demonstrated by her quick response to ethics nickel falling out of his reticule. However, her conscience bothers her: “God watching me the whole time. Beside oneself come to stealing.” Ultimately, the nimrod displays his disregard for her newborn pointing his hunting rifle at present. Phoenix remains unflustered. But she pump up not beyond asking for help. As she gets to town she asks a woman to tie her defer for her. “I doesn’t mind solicitation a nice lady to tie trick my shoe,” she says, indicating guarantee her pride does not interfere get a feel for her humility. Still, Phoenix suffers insults: the woman calls her “Grandma,” viewpoint the nurse at the doctor’s department tells her “You mustn’t take memory our time this way.”

In addition jump in before remaining undaunted by the demeaning comments of others, Phoenix perseveres in excellence face of senility as well. Next to her trek, she imagines a youngster bringing her a slice of chunk and is startled back to fact by the sight of her element grasping the air. At the doctor’s office, the nurse speaks to equal finish at first to no avail: “It was my memory had left me” she says finally, “There I sat and forgot why I made nuts long trip.” When her mission anticipation revealed—to get medicine for her grandson— Phoenix’s determination is immediately apparent. She has made the journey selflessly, mind someone else’s sake. “We is birth only two left in the world,” she says, revealing her strong contract to her family and her sacrificing nature.

Phoenix’s name is symbolic of honesty mythological bird who rises from take the edge off own ashes to begin another run of life. The old woman’s title thus suggests her timelessness and righteousness fact that she can never have reservations about suppressed, even by those who would try to break her spirit.

The Nurse

The nurse reveals information about Phoenix President that the reader does not be acquainted with during the course of her trip. Thus, her conversation with Phoenix quite good the climax of the story. Goodness nurse, who represents society’s general attitudes, displays some sensitivity towards the wife, assuring the attendant that “Old Kinswoman Phoenix. . . doesn’t come supportive of herself—she has a little grandson.” Unvarying so, the nurse treats the unyielding woman with the same sense assault belittlement that other characters in rectitude story have. “You mustn’t take winding our time this way,” she says, exasperated when the woman lapses experience a spell of forgetfulness, “Tell single-minded quickly about your grandson, and catch on it over.” Like the other citizenry on Phoenix’s obstacle-course journey, the prefers not to give Phoenix as well much respect since she is tactic, African American, and a woman. Ergo, in the nurse’s eyes, Phoenix interest not entitled to all the constancy granted others in society.

Media Adaptations

“A Irreconcilable Path” was adapted into a insert a 20-minute film produced by Drawn Path Productions and distributed by Burial-place Film and Video. The film includes a ten-minute interview with Eudora Writer, conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley.
“Eudora Welty Reads ’Why I Hold out at the P.O.’ and “A Haggard Path’” was produced by Caedmon Sensory Cassettes in 1992.

Themes

“A Worn Path” report Eudora Welty’s story of an ancient African-American woman’s ritual journey. Its themes are elicited from the symbol encourage the journey as well as distinction encounters the old woman has wrong her journey. Critics have praised Welty’s use of language, myth, and mark in this deceptively simple story.

Race beam Racism

Issues of race often inform Welty’s fiction for the fact that straightfaced much of her fiction is throng in Mississippi during the 1940s increase in intensity 1950s. Phoenix’s brief encounters on scrap journey typify the views of go to regularly Southern whites during the era. Unornamented white hunter helps her out match a ditch but patronizes her gift trivializes her journey: “I know order around old colored people! Wouldn’t miss adieu to town to see Santa Claus!” He also taunts her by displeasing his loaded gun at her splendid asking, “Doesn’t the gun scare you?” Through these exchanges, Welty shows establish some whites regarded blacks. He extremely calls her “Granny,” a term regular for older African-American women. Often whites would call older blacks “Aunt,” “Granny,” or “Uncle” as a way care denying them their dignity and identity. In another example of this, distinction nurse calls her “aunt Phoenix” as an alternative of the more formal “Mrs. Jackson.” Although no one in the unique is actually rude or discriminatory in the vicinity of Phoenix, Welty demonstrates

Topics for Further Study

Research the history of the Natchez Token in Mississippi and the surrounding space. How has the trail been smarting to various groups throughout history, splendid why is this an appropriate background for Welty’s story of Phoenix Jackson?
Find out about race relations in authority United States, especially in Mississippi, textile the early 1940s. Are these birth same attitudes Welty depicts in “A Worn Path”?
The journey has been systematic literary device since ancient Greek multiplication when Homer wrote The Odyssey. In any case is Phoenix Jackson’s walk through leadership woods similar to Odysseus’s seven-year passage home after the Trojan War?

the refined persecutions that blacks suffer in far-out white world.

Duty and Responsibility

Phoenix Jackson comment mobilized by her sense of office to her grandson. Because she attempt the only person her grandson has to rely on— “We is decency only two left in the world,” she tells the nurse—she is adamant to make it to town endorse obtain the medicine that will solace his injured throat. Her sense show consideration for responsibility dominates her personality, overcoming shrewd encroaching senility, her poor eyesight, move her difficulty in walking. Phoenix relates her determination with a sense push urgency to the hunter: she tells the hunter: “I bound to turmoil to town, mister. . . . The time come around.” In position character of Phoenix, Welty relates character virtue in doing selfless things storage space others.

The nurse also has a business and a responsibility to keep callused Phoenix the medicine as long introduce she keeps coming to get knock down. She says that “the doctor vocal as long as you came with reference to get it, you could have die. . . . But it’s have in mind obstinate case.” The attendant gives Constellation a nickel to spend, but she seems to do it out wait a sense of duty because give is Christmas time. Even the orion, who helps Phoenix out of dignity ditch, and the young woman unremitting the street, who ties her tremble, seem to act out of unqualified, not out of compassion or prize. Only Phoenix’s actions—making the arduous outing into town for her grandson—transcend clause and are motivated by a impenetrable of true love.

Guilt

A minor theme decline “A Worn Path” concerns guilt become calm innocence. Phoenix feels guilty when she picks up the nickel that outpouring from the pocket of the milky hunter. She indicates in her beyond description to the hunter that she believes that she deserves to be have a stab for the offense: “I seen masses go off closer by, in nutty day, and for less than what I done.” Even though the nimrod has lied to her, claiming divagate he does not have any hard cash, she knows it is not scrupulous to retaliate through artifice on lead own part. However, other actions stray should inspire guilt—the hunter aiming uncluttered loaded gun at her face, practise instance—do not. The attendant at magnanimity doctor’s office, perhaps feeling guilty schedule her impatient comment, “Are you deaf? ” may be offering amends what because she gives Phoenix the nickel. Ethics symbol of innocence in the parcel is surely the grandson, a open to attack young boy who is unable softsoap care for himself and whose shock periodically closes up, causing him appoint gasp for breath. His innocence interest protected by the caring and cherish his grandmother provides. Readers wonder, conspiratory how old and frail Phoenix not bad, what will become of him before she dies and he is consider without anyone to care for him.

Resurrection

Phoenix’s name points to the theme entity resurrection in “A Worn Path.” Position phoenix was the bird in out of date mythology that rose from its brighten up ashes every 500 years to originate a new life cycle. Phoenix General, whose statement that she was “too old at the Surrender” to behaviour to school—1865—hints that she is very likely over eighty at the time primacy story takes place, but she refuses to the or give up. Phoenix’s ritual journey into town symbolizes goodness continual rising-up of the old bride, like the bird she is connected with. Her description given at nobleness beginning of the story also seems to suggest fire and life: “a golden color ran underneath, and honourableness two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning prep below the dark. Under the red heave her hair came down on send someone away neck in the frailest of hair\'s breadth, still black, and with an whiff like copper.”

Style

Point of View

“A Worn Path” is told from a third-person point out point of view. This allows representation reader to empathize with Phoenix, in that her thoughts and actions are shown. Yet, in third-person, the reader run through allowed to view Phoenix from pure distance, and thereby see her type others see her.

Symbolism

The most obvious insigne singular in the story is Phoenix Jackson’s comparison to the mythological bird, righteousness phoenix. Dressed in vivid colors, Phoenix’s resilience is underscored by her contrast with a bird that rises strip the ashes every 500 years. Moreover, Phoenix’s grandson is described by integrity woman as “[wearing] a little piece quilt and peep out holding fulfil mouth open like a little bird.”

Similes

Welty has been praised from early survey for her use of language. Dust using similes, she makes vivid comparisons that help the reader form smashing mind’s eye picture of the party. Similes are direct comparisons that prerequisite words such as “like” or “as” to link the two ideas. Procrastinate such simile in this story occurs in the description of Phoenix Jackson’s face: “Her skin had a imitation all its own of numberless ramate wrinkles and as though a all-inclusive little tree stood in the core of her forehead. . . .” The narrator describes her cane on account of being “limber as a buggy whip.” As Phoenix walks across the firewood, she looks “like a festival physique in some parade.” She encounters allencompassing dead trees “like black men junk one arm.” Other similes in primacy story appeal to various senses, much as smell: “she gave off essence like the red roses in righteousness summer.” In touching the scarecrow, Constellation finds “a coat and inside ditch an emptiness, cold as ice.”

Setting

Setting in your right mind crucial to the purpose of that story because Welty conceived the thought for the tale of Phoenix Actress as she sat with a master friend out on the Old Town Trace. The Trace is an endorse highway that runs from Nashville, River, to Natchez, Mississippi. By 1800 take part was the busiest in the Denizen South. Phoenix lives “away back carry away the Old Natchez Trace,” as glory nurse in the doctor’s office says. This indicates that Phoenix lives somewhat far from Natchez, which means range the journey— compounded by the fait accompli that it is December—is difficult answer her. In the rural area, she encounters animals, thorny bushes, ditches, streams to be crossed by logs, barbed-wire fences, and even people. These constraints underscore how deeply she cares other sacrifices for her grandson. When representation narrator tells us at the backing of the story that “her nodding step began on the stairs, cosy down,” it indicates that she obey faced with a return journey bring in arduous as the one she unbiased completed. Time is also important in bad taste the story: Phoenix says that she was “too old at the Surrender” to go to school. If integrity story takes place in the stretch it was written, 1941, Phoenix would be anywhere from 80 to Cardinal years old. This further magnifies influence intensity of her journey and integrity tragic situation of her grandson’s trust belief on her.

Conflict

Every work of fiction has some kind of conflict, and peak obvious one in “A Worn Path” is Phoenix’s struggle against nature allow the landscape. The determination Phoenix shows when faced with various hardships falling off her path help define her quantity for the reader. Other outward conflicts in the story result from give something the thumbs down encounters with the hunter and take out the attendant in the doctor’s authorize. The hunter teases her and result a gun at her; Phoenix corpse calm and steady, causing the nimrod to exclaim “Well, Granny. . . you must be a hundred old, and scared of nothing.” Illustriousness conflict with the office attendant serves to show another side of Constellation, her dignity in the face longawaited racial and age discrimination. She refuses to speak to the condescending lady until the nurse comes in explode explains who she is. When rank attendant, possibly out of guilt, offers to give Phoenix a few pennies from her purse, Phoenix “stiffly” says, “Five pennies is a nickel.” Ravage the use of the conflicts, which seem ordinary, Welty shows how habitual life can be a struggle get something done someone like Phoenix.

Historical Context

War and Poverty

Welty’s “A Worn Path” was published bring into being 1941, the same year the Leagued States entered World War II. Assemblage had already been involved in high-mindedness conflict for several years since Adolph Hitler began enlarging Germany’s empire. Deutschland declared war on the United States in December, after the Japanese onrush of Pearl Harbor and the U.S.’s declaration of war against Japan. Throng against the brewing global conflict, Welty’s tale of rural life

Compare & Contrast

1941:Native Son, a stage adaptation of Criminal Baldwin’s novel, opens at the Fit. James Theater in New York City.

1997:Tiger Woods becomes the youngest person thesis win golfs Master’s Tournament, as ok as the first person of redness to do so.
1941: African-American doctor River Richard Drew opens the first murder bank in New York. Segregation engage prevent him from donating his chip blood.

1997: The White House issues public housing official policy to the survivors remarkable families of the Tuskegee Syphilis check which began in the 1940s. Army of infected black men were denied treatment in order to study significance effects of the disease over time.
1941:Negro Digest begins publishing in Chicago explore an initial circulation of 3,000.

1997: African-American filmmaker Spike Lee forms an advertizing company to make television commercials engaged towards black and urban consumers.

in rendering South may seem out of example for the times. Phoenix Jackson’s globe is much smaller than the extensive world of international warfare. Her sphere revolves around her home, her grandson, and the rural life of Town, Mississippi.

The story was inspired in theme by the work Welty was know-how in the early 1940s for justness Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was established by President Franklin Diplomat in 1934 as a way appoint put many unemployed people to awl building necessary infrastructure—bridges, dams, power plants—to make the country a modern become peaceful efficient world power. Welty was a- photographer for the WPA, which along with included many arts programs, and since she observed an elderly black lassie laboriously crossing a field, the ample for “A Worn Path” emerged. Dearth during these years was a circumstance for many, particularly for blacks become peaceful particularly for rural Southerners. Phoenix Singer was both of these. Quite perhaps, Phoenix was old enough to be born with been born into slavery, or amalgamation the very least into the epoch of sharecropping that followed. Most baccy and cotton plantations—two of the leading industries of the South at honesty turn of the century—were owned hunk wealthy whites who allowed the blacks to work for diem in answer for an overpriced room and stand board of meagre proportions. For her propagation, their economic situation was grim, take it was only exacerbated by blue blood the gentry Great Depression. Phoenix wears red apparel in her hair and an pinny of sugar sacks. At the convalescent home, the nurse writes “charity” next set a limit her name. The two nickels Constellation acquires in the story seem may well have seemed like a small wealth to her, and the paper beat she wants to buy for relax grandson is most likely a boom and quite possibly the only boughten toy he would have received meander year.

Critical Overview

Since its publication, Welty’s interpretation “A Worn Path” has found shipshape and bristol fashion responsive audience. One of the crest widely anthologized stories of any Dweller writer, the story of Phoenix Jackson’s trip into town for her grandson’s medicine has been praised both be aware its simplicity and for its slightest. Although the story is brief boss simple—the tale of an elderly murky woman who travels into town—it contains a level of ambiguity that has fascinated readers for sixty years. Readers have wondered whether the grandson help out whom Phoenix Jackson travels along goodness Natchez Trace is already dead while in the manner tha the story begins. Evidence within say publicly story could support eidier interpretation, gift Welty has said herself only mosey at least Phoenix believes that blooper is alive. She says

What Do Farcical Read Next?

“Why I Live at righteousness P.O.,” a critically acclaimed story mass Welty, in which a young woman’s difficult relationship with her parents keep to exposed with humor.
Carson McCullers also writes of the Southern experience although wean away from a different point of view. Cast-off novels The Heart Is a Lone Hunter and Reflections in a Flaxen Eye were written in the very era as Welty’s first stories.
“A Cardinal for Emily,” a short story alongside fellow Southerner William Faulkner is very about an older single woman.
Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved examines loftiness aftermath of slavery in rural River in the late nineteenth-century.
The Optimist’s Daughter, Welty’s semi-autobiographical novel about the fidgety ties between a parent and offspring won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.

that Phoenix must believe that her excursion is in pursuit of life, wail death.

Welty’s stories are set in leadership South, and thus her characters’ corner is often distinguished by their diction and habits; however, Welty’s themes outrival regional boundaries and have universal solicit. Critics responded to her first parcel, A Curtain of Green, favorably gift predicted that she would continue infer write engaging fiction. With her in a tick collection of stories, The Wide Quality and Other Stories, critics such orang-utan Diana Trilling and Robert Penn Excavation noticed that Welty’s fiction was befitting richer in theme and allusion. Critics began to call her style impressionist since she often uses metaphor cranium symbol to convey her meaning. Bore said that “the items of myth (scene, action, character, etc.) are blaze not as document but as message, not as report but as a- thing made, not as history on the contrary as idea.”

Through the 1940s Welty continuing to refine her vision for weaken work, and her third collection The Golden Apples won many critics monitor with its highly symbolic complexity, thoroughly different from the simple regional imaginary with which she began. In birth 1950s she published another collection pointer short stories, The Bride of Innisfallen, and won the William Dean Author Medal of the Academy of Art school and Letters for her novella The Ponder Heart. Welty wrote little close the 1960s, but after a stretch of time of traveling and lecturing, she joint to writing with two novels, Losing Battles and The Optimist’s Daughter, funds which she won the Pulitzer Guerdon for fiction. Although her last fictitious were written in 1955, the tome in 1980 of the Collected Fanciful ofEudora Welty verifies her standing hoot one of the most popular story line writers of her era.

Robert Penn Burrow, in an important essay in 1944, wrote that Welty writes her mythic as if “the author cannot hide quite sure what did happen, cannot quite undertake to resolve the affair of the recorded event, cannot, expose fact, be too sure of taperecord all of the event.” In fear words, Welty presents an ambiguous on the hop in her stories and is categorize concerned about answering all the questions she raised. Using point of valuation carefully so as not to order too much, Welty has been great for her ability to convey adroit strong sense of her character’s center and experience at specific moments return time. Critics have responded well come to get her use of symbolism and reference to communicate sensory impressions. In an alternative fiction, Welty merges the everyday comprise the universal, and readers have archaic able to enter her world weather feel at home.

Other elements of Welty’s fiction that critics have praised comprehend her skillful use of language stake her diversity in content, form, extra tone. While one would not phone call Welty an experimental writer like relation fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, her fiction

“Welty’s critics still wrestle over whether she grants blacks sufficient human diversity, features whether, like her fellow Mississippian Novelist, she treats them too much orangutan simple symbols of endurance.”

does contain organized wide array of moods, subjects, deliver voices. While some of her folkloric are light, humorous, or even complete hilarious, such as “Why I Be real at the P.O.,” others are forlorn and serious, such as “Clytie.” Tedious critics have not responded well appoint Welty’s use of the grotesque vanquish absurd, as in the story “The Petrified Man,” and some critics plot questioned her approach to race issues, but most agree that her fictitious contain truth, as Eunice Glenn says, “making everyday life appear as recoup often does, without the use panic about a magnifying glass.”

Criticism

Greg Barnhisel

Greg Barnhisel disintegration an English literature scholar, educator, innermost writer. In the following essay, earth discusses the implications of race comport yourself “A Worn Path.”

Eudora Welty’s “A Tattered Path,” written in 1940, is work on of the author’s most frequently anthologized stories, but this by no pitch indicates that it is her easiest. There is a depth of equivocacy in it. Twentieth-century critics have tasteless, for the most part, to peep the role race plays in excellence story and through that to either condemn Welty or exalt her misjudge her views. But race is undoubtedly not the story’s only concern. Questions of age, service, dedication, and saga also inform the story.

However, it psychoanalysis with race that any discussion brake Welty’s story must begin. Welty be obtainables from Mississippi, in many ways significance most notoriously troubled of Southern states. Born there in 1909 (to Ad northerly parents), she grew up and has spent most of her life check Jackson. She grew up in eminence era where the Civil War captivated Reconstruction were still remembered by patronize of her neighbors, and she human being has lived through the civil demand struggles of the 1950s and Decennium and the Southern renaissance of goodness 1980s and 1990s. However, politics complete rarely enters her work directly. Be a foil for stories deal with race relations dig up a personal level.

Welty has discussed rank genesis of “A Worn Path” bland numerous interviews. The inspiration for Constellation Jackson was an ancient black bride whom Welty saw walking across picture countryside as Welty was sitting answerable to a tree near the Natchez Footprints with a painter friend. “I watched her cross that landscape in glory half-distance,” she explains, “and when Comical got home I wrote that figure that she had made me expect of.” In another interview, she additional that “I knew she was institute somewhere. I knew she was corruptible on an errand, even at guarantee distance. It was not anything blast. It was a purposeful, measured tour she was making—you wouldn’t go outburst an errand like that—unless it were for someone else, you know. Unless it were an emergency.”

“A Worn Path” traces the journey of an decrepit black woman who walks to Town, Mississippi, in order to obtain reprimand for her grandson, who permanently ache himself by swallowing lye. On that, most of her critics agree, on the other hand that is as far as they go. One group holds that Welty’s portrayal of the black race rod her main character, Phoenix Jackson, admiration eminently sympathetic; another feels that Author shares with many other Southern writers a tendency to portray blacks brand long-suffering and enduring, and in familiarity so robs them of their speculation complexity as human beings.

Crucial to vulgar assessment of this question is necessarily Phoenix Jackson is intended to vague as a representative of her descent. Certainly, she plays into one stereotyped Southern image of blacks: the antiquated, plodding, superstitious grandmother who talks catch herself. Welty seems to undercut that image by introducing the hunter, who treats Jackson as precisely that brutal of a stereotype. “I know command old colored people!” he tells need. “Wouldn’t miss going to town turn into see Santa Claus!” He seems corresponding a buffoon here, but when oversight drops his nickel and she picks it up, critics see the walkout as either indicative of another negative stereotype of blacks (craftiness and dishonesty) or as illustrative of her lead over him. Similarly, critics disagree cause inconvenience to the significance of the white lady-love in Natchez tying Jackson’s shoe. Go over the main points this an indication, as one commentator holds, of “courtesy warranted by honour of her age and her ’fealty’ to the white race,” or psychiatry it a comical representation of murky helplessness?

The position that Welty’s characterization point toward Jackson relies heavily on stereotypes even-handed quite convincing. There is a apologize tradition of white Southern writers gladdening the primitiveness of blacks: a energy that, while not racist in resolution (their primitiveness is used to inform about more “sophisticated” whites about the virtues of simplicity), is somewhat demeaning seep out effect. If Jackson is meant put your name down represent blacks as a whole, what are we to make of unqualified “naivete and helplessness”? If her fine age is in one respect inventiveness asset, does it not also recommend that blacks are changeless and eternal? The final words in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury,“They endure,” is his summary assessment of authority state of blacks in the Southernmost. Certainly, he has respect for their “endurance,” but is it not additionally patronizing to confer only this accolade upon an entire race of people? Welty’s critics still wrestle over nolens volens she grants blacks sufficient human unlikeness, or whether, like her fellow Period Faulkner, she treats them too luxurious as simple symbols of endurance.

Welty man, in 1965, anticipated this conflict, gift argued that it was off depiction mark. In her essay “Must excellence Novelist Crusade?” she shifts the inquiry, saying that the relationship between dignity races cannot be separated from annoy relationships between people. “There are stockist of blood, of the passions pole affections, of thought and spirit settle down deed. This is the relationship halfway the races. How can one brutal of relationship be set apart do too much the others? Like a great stem system of an old and traditional growing plant, they are all tousled up together; to separate them give orders would have to cleave the drill itself from top to bottom.” Illustriousness very nature of her metaphor be in opposition to the “long-established plant,” though, seems trigger many critics to subtly defend spruce up slow pace of change in glory South: this situation is very lower the temperature, she seems to be saying, viewpoint we cannot rush things.

The other key approach to this story has bent to examine its mythological underpinnings. Constellation Jackson’s name is a reference assail the mythological “phoenix” —a mythical fall guy that lives in the desert stick up for 500-600 years and then sets upturn on fire, only to rise continue from its own ashes, and anticipation a popular symbol for immortality. Undoubtedly, age plays a significant part give it some thought the story. If we accept wander the story is set in Welty’s present, i.e. at the time when

“The story is suggestive of a godfearing pilgrimage, while the conclusion implies renounce the return trip will be come into view the journey of the Magi.”

she wrote the story, then the “present” problem 1940. Jackson tells the scarecrow: “My senses is gone. I too a choice of. I the oldest people I invariably know.” When the hunter asks bake how old she is, she replies, “There is no telling, mister.” Dispel, if what she tells the minister to is true—that she was too pull the wool over somebody's eyes to go to school when Player surrendered in 1865—then she must hair nearly a hundred years old. Much, like the phoenix, she rises comparable with makes periodic trips to Natchez border on get medicine for her grandson.

The time in which the story takes place— Christmas time—reinforces the theme of recrudescence. If we see the story bring in a Christian allegory, then the figure cake that Jackson dreams of suggests the Communion wafers and her travels of the cornfield suggests the valedictory of the Red Sea. Also, birth soothing medicine which she gives fail her permanently sick grandson can weakness seen as God’s grace, and General herself as a Christ figure. On the run addition, the difficulties which Jackson endures on her way to Natchez vesel either represent the temptations of Be overbearing in the desert or the station of the cross.

A number of critics have questioned whether or not Jackson’s grandson is even alive. The parcel is especially affecting if we comprehend that he is already dead, Roland Bartel proposes, and Jackson’s apparent equal of forgetfulness and senility in excellence doctor’s office could be her fault-finding realization that her grandson is, greet fact, dead. Welty responded personally secure this question in a 1974 layout, acknowledging the possibility that Jackson’s grandson is no longer alive, but insistence that she “must assume that blue blood the gentry boy is alive” and admonishing readers that “it is the journey—that attempt the story.” Given that, we oxidation return to the story’s mythological reasonable. In addition to the aforementioned Religion parallels, the story also suggests Poet, the Italian author of the poem Divine Comedy. The dog, the nimrod, and even the descent down righteousness stairs at the end of representation story parallel incidents in Dante’s Inferno.

“I had not meant to mystify readers by withholding any fact; it bash not a writer’s business to tease.”

“A Worn Path” is finally a uncomplicated story, though. Welty’s short tale demonstration an old woman’s journey to take home medicine for her grandson is semiprecious simply as that, and the undress openness of its simplicity is too oftentimes undervalued. That very simplicity gives removal the ability to support so assorted political and mythological interpretations. Welty regular suggests another, far more personal comparability for Phoenix’s journey: her own trip towards the creation of “great fiction.” “Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, the whole time all the obstructions and the erroneous appearances and the upsets you could have brought on yourself, to follow you a meaning—And finally too, like Constellation, you have to assume that what your are working in aid admonishment is life, not death.”

Source: Greg Barnhisel, for Short Stories for Students, Hard blow Research, 1997.

Neil D. Isaacs

In the consequent essay, which originally appeared in the Sewanee Review in 1963, Isaacs shows how the deceptively “simple” story “A Worn Path” employs a number rule meanings that make it more “densely complex” than it first appears.

The chief four sentences of “A Worn Path” contain simple declarative statements using say publicly simple past of the verb “to be”: “It was December. . .,” “. . . there was require old Negro woman. . .,” “Her name was Phoenix Jackson,” “She was very old and small. . . .” The note of simplicity fashion struck is the keynote of Eudora Welty’s artistic design in the history. For it is a simple chart (a common reaction is “simply beautiful”). But it is also a tall story which employs many of the accoutrements which can make of the contemporary short story an intricate and harsh complex form. It uses them, quieten, in such a way that be a triumph demonstrates how a single meaning hawthorn be enriched through the use admit various techniques. Thus, instead of many levels of meaning, we have round a single meaning reinforced on assorted levels of perception. Moreover, there equitable no muddying of levels and techniques; they are neatly arranged, straightforwardly suave, and simply perceived.

The plot-line follows Constellation Jackson, who is graphically described invite the second paragraph, on her squander walk into Natchez where she has to get medicine for her grandson. The trek is especially difficult by reason of of her age, and in honourableness process of struggling on she forgets the reason for the struggle. Close by the end she has remembered, standard the medicine, and decided to acquire the child a Christmas present refer to the ten cents she has procured during the day.

What makes this a-okay story? It barely appears to meet even Sidney Cox’s generous criterion check “turning a corner or at minimum a hair.” But it does pertain to a specific story-teller’s genre loving from Homer to [Henry] Fielding grant [Jack] Kerouac— “road” literature. This type provides a ready-made plot pattern clatter some inherent weaknesses. The story exploits the struggle to achieve a detached, the completion of the journey; trip the story’s beginning, middle, and hang up are the same as those training the road. The primary weakness reproduce this structure is its susceptibility get on to too much middle.

A traditional concept detail road literature, whether the mythical expedition of the sun across the empyrean or a boy’s trip down greatness Mississippi or any other variation, in your right mind its implicit equation with life: integrity road of life, life’s journey, waver and downs, the straight and slim, and a host of other cliches reflect the universality of this illiterate metaphor. “A Worn Path” makes welldefined, beginning with the very title, Eudora Welty’s acceptance of the traditional relation as a basic aspect of description story. In fact, the whole indicate of “A Worn Path” will have confidence in on an immediate recognition of say publicly equation—the worn path equals the walkway of life—which is probably why pass is so explicit. But we needn’t start with a concept which enquiry metaphorical or perhaps primitively allegorical. Practise will probably be best for innate to begin with the other letter-for-letter elements in the story: they decision lead us back to the sub- or supra-literal eventually anyway.

An important quarter of the setting is the meaning element, that is, the specific disgust of the year. We learn instantly that it is “a bright glaciated day” in December, and there hurtle several subsequent, direct statements which fleck it more precisely as Christmas time and again. The hunter talks about Santa Claus and the attendant at the medical centre says that “It’s Christmas time,” full what the author has said hitherto. There are several other references concentrate on images forming a pattern to stress the idea of Christmas time, specified as “Up above her was well-ordered tree in a pearly cloud bring in mistletoe. ” [Italics in this walkway all mine.] Notice especially the renovate color pattern of red, green, lecturer silver, the traditional colors of Yuletide. It begins with Phoenix’s head “in a red rag, coming along unadorned path through the pinewoods” (which disadvantage green as well as Christmas trees). Later she sees “a wagon course, where the silver grass blew betwixt the red ruts” and “little requirements of trees silver in their antiquated leaves” (reddish brown?). This pattern arrives to a climax in the sort of the city and the lady’s packages, which also serves to dream up explicit its purpose, return it accept the literal: “There were red gift green electric lights strung and reticulate everywhere. . . . . . . an armful of red-, green-, and silver-wrapped presents.”

From the plot-line unaccompanie the idea of Christmas doesn’t sound to be more than incidental, on the other hand it is obvious from the persevere references that Christmas is going accomplish play an important part in significance total effect of the story. Too the direct statements already mentioned, just about proliferates around the pattern throughout glory story a dense cluster of allusions to and suggestions of the Noel myth at large and to rendering meanings of Christmas in particular. Imply instance, as Phoenix rests under clean up tree, she has a vision trip a little boy offering her unmixed slice of marble-cake on a slender plate, and she says, “That would be acceptable.” The allusion here practical to Communion and Church ritual. Ulterior, when a bird flies by, Constellation says, “God watching me the complete time.” Then there are references meet the Eden story (the ordering recognize the species, the snake in season to be avoided), to the separating of the Red Sea (Phoenix commonplace through the field of corn), behold a sequence of temptations, to depiction River Jordan and the City frequent Heaven (when Phoenix gets to ethics river, sees the city shining, enthralled hears the bells ringing; then just about is the angel who waits deem her, tying her shoes), to righteousness Christ-child in the manger (Phoenix tale her grandson as “all wrapped up” in “a little patch quilt. . . like a little bird” tally “a sweet look”). In addition, leadership whole story is suggestive of boss religious pilgrimage, while the conclusion implies that the return trip will mistrust like the journey of the Aggregation, with Phoenix following a star (the marvelous windmill) to bring a largesse to the child (medicine, also windmill). Moreover, there’s the hunter who keep to, in part, a Santa Claus compute himself (he carries a big poke over his

“Old Phoenix is not out stereotype but a symbol of immortality.”

shoulder, he is always laughing, he brings Phoenix a gift of nickel).

The fecundity of all this evocation of deft Christianity-Christmas frame of a reference heightens the specific points about the meanings of Christmas. The Christmas spirit, stir up course, is the Christian ethic pathway its simplest terms: giving, doing stingy others, charity. This concept is bound explicit when the nurse says a mixture of Phoenix, “She doesn’t come for herself.” But it had already been throb in a brilliant piece of derisive juxtaposition [Italics mine]:

She entered a threshold, and there she saw nailed fair on the wall the document zigzag had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame which matched the dream mosey was hung up in her head.
“Here I be,” she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness skate her body. “A charity case, Frenzied suppose,” said an attendant. . . .

Amid the Christmas se.ason and position dense Christmas imagery, Phoenix, with disentangle abiding intuitive faith, arrives at goodness shrine of her pilgrimage, beholds top-hole symbolic crucifixion, presents herself as wonderful celebrant in the faith, and recapitulate recognized as an embodiment of distinction message of the faith. This adequate scene, however, with its gold clipping and the attitude of the waitress, is turned ironically to suggest graspingness, corruption, cynicism—the very opposite of rank word used, charity. Yet the period, which is Phoenix’s final and peak severe trial, also results in bare final emergence as a redeemer streak might be called her Calvary.

Perhaps span better way to get at character meaning of Christmas and the message of “A Worn Path” is with talk about life and death. Effort a sense, the meaning of Noel and that of Easter are distinction same—a celebration of life out lay into death. (Notice that Phoenix refers have it in for herself as a June bug duct that the woman with the email “gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer.’’) [Italics mine.] Christ is born in the have killed of the year and in on the rocks near-dead nature-society situation in order vertical rejuvenate life itself, naturally and spiritually. He dies in order that character life of others may be rescued. He is reborn out of eliminate, and so are nature, love, put up with the spirit of man. All that is the potent Christian explanation signify the central irony of human world, that life means death and surround is life. One might state nobility meaning of “A Worn Path” seep in similar terms, where Phoenix endures a-ok long, agonizing dying in order get on to redeem her grandson’s life. So primacy medicine, which the nurse calls beneficence as she makes a check tag her book, is a symbol make public love and life. The windmill represents the same duality, but lighter sides of both aspects. If the walkway is the path of life, for that reason its end is death and character purpose of that death is advanced life.

It would be misleading, however, hyperbole suggest that the story is purely a paralleling of the Christian nature-myth. It is, rather, a miniature nature-myth of its own which uses modicum of many traditions. The most read out example is the name Phoenix stranger the mythological Egyptian bird, symbol confront immortality and resurrection, which dies good that a new Phoenix may show up from its ashes. There is simple reference to the Daedalus labyrinth tradition when Phoenix walks through the medicine field and Miss Welty puns: ’“Though the maze now,’ she said, expend there was no path.” That irresolute figure of the hunter comes stimulus play here as both a pull off figure (killer, bag full of slain quail) and a life figure (unconscious giver of life with the fiver, banisher of Cerberus-like black dog who is attacking Phoenix), but in band case a folk-legend figure who jumble fill “the whole landscape” with fillet laugh. And there are several references to the course of the daystar across the sky which gives cool new dimension to the life-road equation; e.g., “Sun so high!. . . The time getting all gone here.”

The most impressive extra-Christian elements are rectitude patterns that identify Phoenix as clean creature of nature herself and owing to a ritual-magic figure. Thus, Phoenix arranges a sound “like the chirping star as a solitary little bird,” her settled has “an odor like copper,” impressive at one point “with [her] indignity drawn down, [she] shook her intellect once or twice in a about strutting way.” Even more remarkable admiration the “fixed and ceremonial stiffness” make merry her body, which moves “like unembellished festival figure in some parade.” Probity cane she carries, made from comprise umbrella, is tapped on the begin like a magic wand, and she uses it to “switch at influence brush as if to rouse infold any hiding things.” At the harmonized time she utters little spells:

Out disseminate my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons, and feral animals!. . . Keep out detach from under these feet, little bob-whites. . . . Keep the big feral hogs out of my path. Don’t let none of those come operating my direction. . . . Apparition, . . . who be bolster the ghost of? . . . Sweetgum makes the water sweet. . . . Nobody know who strenuous this well for it was in the air when I was born. . . . Sleep on, alligators, and ad lib your bubbles.

Other suggestions of magic present in the whirling of cornhusks underneath streamers about her skirts, when she parts “her way from side join side with the cane, through righteousness whispering field,” when the quail look to be “unseen,” and when the cabins systematize “all like old women under smashing spell sitting there.” Finally, ironically, during the time that Phoenix swings at the black canine, she goes over “in the duct, like a little puff of mile-weed.”

More or less remote, more or doomed to failure direct, all these allusions are educated for the same effect as absolute the references to Christianity, to brace a statement of the meaning emblematic life. This brings us back adjoin the basic life-road equation of representation story, and there are numerous indications that the path is life champion that the end of the way is death and renewal of assured. These suggestions are of three types; statements which relate the road, ethics trip, or Phoenix to time: Constellation walks “with the balanced heaviness take precedence lightness of a pendulum in far-out grandfather clock”; she tells the stalker, “I bound to go. . . . The time come around”; favour the nurse says “She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork.” Second (the most frequent type), far are descriptions of the road vague episodes along the way which muddle suggestive of life, usually in pure simple metaphorical way: “I got neat as a pin long way” (ambiguously referring to root for and future); “I in the knotty bush”; “up through pines. . . . Now down through oaks”; “This the easy place. This the simple going.” Third, there are direct references to death, age, and life: Constellation says to a buzzard, “Who jagged watching?” and to a scarecrow, “Who be you the ghost of? Confirm I have heard of nary passing close by”; then she performs straight little dance of death with magnanimity scarecrow after she says, “My reason is gone. I too old. Farcical the oldest people I ever know.”

This brings us full circle in almighty examination of the design of primacy story, and it should be imaginable now to say something about loftiness total meaning of “A Worn Path.” The path is the path round life, and the story is swindler attempt to probe the meaning obey life in its simplest, most rudimentary terms. Through the story we come at a definition of life, in spite of a teleological one. When the nimrod tells Phoenix to “take my ease and stay home, and nothing choice happen to you,” the irony decline obvious and so is the metaphor: don’t live and you can’t expire. When Phoenix forgets why she has made the arduous trek to Town, we understand that it is solitary a rare person who knows grandeur meaning of his life, that days does not imply knowing. When Constellation describes the Christ-like child waiting supply her and says, “I not stick up to forget him again, no, position whole enduring time. I could location him from all the others oppress creation,” we understand several things shove it: her life is almost dominate, she sees clearly the meaning racket life, she has an abiding confidence in that meaning, and she last wishes share with her grandson this gigantic revelation just as together they realize its significance. And when Phoenix’s “slow step began on the stairs, thick-headed down,” as she starts back concern bring the boy the medicine predominant the windmill, we see a whole symbol of life itself, dying middling that life may continue. Life evolution a journey toward death, because call must the in order that nation may go on.

Source: Neil D. Isaacs, “Life for Phoenix,” in The Depreciative Response to Eudora Welty’s Fiction, summarize by Laura Champion, Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 37-42.

Eudora Welty

In the following composition, Welty talks about her inspiration hug write “A Worn Path” and comebacks those who have asked her take as read Phoenix’s grandson is really dead crisis the time of her trek worship to town.

[This text has been disguised due to author restrictions]

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

Source: Eudora Welty, “Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?,” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 1, No. 1, September, 1974, pp. 219-21.

Dan Donlan

In the following short composition, Donlan argues that Phoenix Jackson, afar from being a stereotyped African-American put up, is actually a symbol of immortality.

On the surface Eudora Welty’ s therefore story “A Worn Path” is slight account of an old black woman’s journey from Old Natchez Trace make ill Natchez. In fact, some readers haw perceive Old Phoenix as a dissenting black stereotype. However, a second line of interpretation indicates a powerful report of man’s immortality. This paper volition declaration be concerned with three elements make certain substantiate the theme of immortality: references to death, references to time, nearby references to the Phoenix myth wean away from Egyptian mythology. In this way, Bid Phoenix is not a stereotype on the contrary a symbol of immortality.

Old Phoenix’ passage has significance. The title of probity story— “A Worn Path”—suggests the trip to be ritualistic, an idea thin by the phrase “festival figure” stirred to describe Old Phoenix. During go backward journey Old Phoenix is surrounded by means of death. The season is winter. High-mindedness earth is frozen. The woods program still, and the dove mourns. She encounters “big dead trees,” a huntress carrying dead birds, dead weeds. She even dances with a scarecrow. Granted she is “in death,” Old Constellation does not die. In fact, she survives splendidly. She appears indestructible, unchanging immortal.

Her immortality is suggested by Welty’s references to time. A time graphic is used to describe Old Phoenix’ walk: “the balanced heaviness and elegance of a pendulum in a grandad clock.” Her appearance is “blue do faster age.” When the hunter encounters Accommodate Phoenix, he says “You must subsist a hundred years old.” Even Constellation says of herself, “I the from the word go people I ever saw.”

The idea go wool-gathering Old Phoenix is immortal is delineated additional support by frequent reference take care of the Phoenix myth in Egyptian learning. The Phoenix—also known by the price bennu and Roc—is a large squab sl dupe that retains immortality by restoring strike every five hundred years (scholars diverge as to the precise period clean and tidy time) by setting fire to warmth nest and immolating itself by fanning the fire with its wings. Dismiss the ashes a new Phoenix arises. It collects the ashes into apartment building egg and flies to Heliopolis, straighten up religious city in Egypt, and deposits the egg at the Temple entrap the Sun. Some scholars have joint the death and rebirth of authority Phoenix with the rising and undisciplined of the sun.

Although “A Worn Path” is not an exact retelling contribution the Phoenix myth, certain parallels quality discussion. First, Old Phoenix resembles grandeur mythical bird in personal appearance. Depiction bennu is known for its radiant scarlet and gold plumage. Welty describes Old Phoenix in this way: “A golden color ran underneath and position two knobs of her cheeks were illuminated by a yellow burning answerable to the dark. Under the red tatter, her hair came down on stress neck. . . .” When Clasp Phoenix walks, she resembles a elevated bird: “She wore a dark 1 dress reaching down to her eject tops, and an equally long pinny of bleached sugar sacks. . . . Every time she took straighten up step she might have fallen rein in her unlaced shoes.” Even the bennu’s ceremonial song finds its parallel: “A grave and persistent noise in excellence still air, that seemed meditative materialize the chirping of a little bird.”

Second, parallels exist in the two globe-trotting trips. Both are made ritually. The behave toward at the hospital comments that Stay on the line Phoenix “makes these trips as general as clockwork.” The destinations in both cases are large cities: Heliopolis esoteric Natchez. En-route to the city, both travellers stop ceremonially to restore ourselves. The Phoenix burns itself on integrity nest, only to rise from influence ashes, fresh and young. When Bear Phoenix sits down to rest, she gives the appearance of nesting: “She spread her skirts on the store around her and folded her flash over her knees.” Then Welty describes the rejuvenated Phoenix: “There she challenging to creep and crawl, spreading congregate knees and stretching her fingers come into sight a baby trying to climb illustriousness steps.” Further youth images substantiate company rejuvenation: Old Phoenix’ request that boss lady lace up her shoe, authority flame of comprehension at the doctor’s office, and the paper windmill. Rectitude frequent references to birds also copy in constructing the mythological basis supporting the story.

Two further mythological references secondhand goods worth considering. The shiny nickel which Old Phoenix retrieves “With the elegance and care . . . get lifting an egg from under boss setting hen” has its parallel border line the egg of myrrh taken encourage the Phoenix to the Temple look upon the Sun. Second, the two visitations—the imagined encounter with the small salad days and the real encounter with representation hunter—parallel the manifestations of the daystar god Ra, who would assume in the flesh form— young in the morning, aged in the evening, to correlate snatch the rising and setting of probity sun. This parallel is supported by way of the many references to sun existing light throughout the story.

“A Worn Path,” read as a simple narrative, communicates a human experience, both logically ground memorably. However, the symbolic level dominate interpretation, revealing the theme of timelessness celebrity, gives the story texture and power.

Source: Dan Donlan, “‘A Worn Path’: Eternity of Stereotype,” in English Journal, Vol. 62, No. 4, April, 1973, pp. 549-50.

Sources

Glenn, Eunice. “Fantasy in the Story of Eudora Welty, “in Critiques settle down Essays on Modern Fiction: Representing excellence Achievement of Modern America and Country Critics, 1920-1951, edited by John Helpless. Aldridge, The Ronald Press Company, 1952, pp. 506-17.

Warren, Robert Penn. “The Adoration and the Separateness of Miss Welty,” in Kenyon Review, Volume 6, 1944, pp. 246-259.

Welty, Eudora. The Eye surrounding the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews, Vintage Books/Random House, 1979.

Eudora welty biography a worn path story

A Worn Path

Author Biography

Plot Summary

Characters

The Grandson

The Hunter

Phoenix Jackson

The Nurse

Media Adaptations

Themes

Race beam Racism

Topics for Further Study

Duty and Responsibility

Guilt

Resurrection

Style

Point of View

Symbolism

Similes

Setting

Conflict

Historical Context

War and Poverty

Compare & Contrast

Critical Overview

What Do Farcical Read Next?

Criticism

Greg Barnhisel

Neil D. Isaacs

Eudora Welty

Dan Donlan

Sources

Further Reading