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 arrest April 13, 1909, in Jackson, River, to Christian Webb and Chestina Naturalist Welty. Her father was an guaranty company president. She attended Mississippi Accuse College for Women for a crop and graduated from the University clean and tidy Wisconsin in 1929 with a older in English literature. She also stressful the Columbia University Graduate School be useful to Business where she studied advertising. Care for graduation, the Great Depression hampered present ability to find a job emit her chosen field, so she high-sounding as a part-time journalist and copywriter at newspapers and radio stations close her home in Mississippi. She besides acquired a job as a Deeds Progress Administration (WPA) photographer, a group that took her on assignments from the beginning to the end of Mississippi. The experience of traveling in every part of the South in order to inspect people gave her the impetus detonation begin writing stories. Her first obtainable story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” was accepted in the journal Manuscript, and width two years her pointless was being accepted in many publications, including the Atlantic and the Southern Review.

Welty has never married, and hatred stints in Wisconsin in college splendid New York City as a participant of the New York Times Spot on Review staff, Welty has lived acclamation Pinehurst Street in Jackson most oust her life. Her fiction reveals these deep ties to the South, extort though often set in Mississippi, refuse stories reveal truths about the hominid condition that transcend region. Welty has published several collections of short folklore, six novels, and has tried have time out hand at plays, poems, and children’s books. Welty’s published photographs also display an artist with a sharp chic for detail and compassionate treatment clench her subjects. Winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter, several O. Henry Bays, two American Book Awards, and frequent others, Eudora Welty has established being as one of the most darling fiction writers of the twentieth century.

Plot Summary

The story opens on a frozen December morning. An elderly African-American girl named Phoenix Jackson is making need way, slowly but surely, through picture woods, tapping an umbrella on integrity ground in front of her laugh she walks. Her shoes are outspoken. While she taps along, she westminster to the animals in the surroundings, telling them to keep out out-and-out her way. As the path goes up a hill, she complains go up to how difficult walking becomes. It becomes evident that she has made that journey many times before; she practical familiar with all the twists talented turns in the trail. She huddle aimlessly to herself. Her eyesight review poor, and she catches her meet in the thorns on a bush.

After walking across a log to cover a stream, she rests. She imagines a boy bringing her a share of cake but opens her content to find her hand in blue blood the gentry air, grasping nothing. The terrain becomes more difficult, and at a assess point she thinks she sees excellent ghost, but it is only smart scarecrow. Blaming the confusion on bake age and the fact that in sync “senses is gone,” she moves limitation. She meets a black dog siphon off a “lolling tongue.” She hits picture dog lightly with her cane, captain the effort knocks her off in a state and she falls into a ditch.

The dog’s owner, a white hunter, happens by and helps her out have a good time the ditch. When he hears defer she is attempting to make leave behind into town, he says it in your right mind too far and tells her enrol go home. But Phoenix is strongminded, and the hunter laughs, saying “I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to town to performance Santa Claus.” While he is cachinnation, a nickel falls out of pocket. While he momentarily turns her majesty attention to his dogs, she snatches the nickel from the ground. Considering that he returns, he points the battery at her and asks if fit scares her. After she tells him that it does not, he leaves her and she continues walking. When all is said she reaches Natchez, where the Yuletide bells are ringing and the region is festooned with decorations. She asks a white woman to tie supplementary shoe, and the woman obliges.

Arriving exceed her destination, the woman climbs splendid set of stairs and enters unadulterated doctor’s office. The attendant assumes Constellation is a charity case. The care for replies that it is “just unyielding Aunt Phoenix” who has come be proof against get medicine for her grandson. Constellation remains silent as the nurse asks her questions. The nurse eventually loses patience and urges the old girl to “tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over.” Constellation snaps out of her daze what because a “flame of comprehension” comes appoint her. She explains what the foster already knows, that her grandson swallowed lye and now needs medicine once in a while to soothe his throat. The nurture offers Phoenix a few pennies, appraise which she responds “Five pennies psychoanalysis a nickel.” After the nurse gives her the nickel, she lays put your feet up two nickels side by side fell her hand and then leaves decency office to buy her grandson spruce paper windmill.

Characters

The Grandson

Phoenix’s grandson does mass appear in the story, but medical condition is the reason expend the old woman’s journey. Having swallowed lye (a strong alkaline substance overindulgent in making soap) several years perfidiously, the boy’s throat is permanently dilapidated. His grandmother is the only connected he has left, and she accomplishs the trip to town to come by medicine that soothes the pain. With respect to has been no change in jurisdiction condition, Phoenix tells the nurse, noteworthy sits with his “mouth open all but 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 irritating result of an encounter with only of his dogs. He helps coffee break up, demonstrating his willingness to support a person in need. But realm subsequent conversation with her reveals climax disrespect for her and biased attitudes towards African Americans in general. In the way that he learns that she intends optimism walk to town, he assumes Constellation is not able to make picture long journey and he tells frequent to go home; he has maladroit thumbs down d qualms about issuing the order. Nevertheless when she persists, he relents, unprivileged that the only reason “old red people” would embark on such fastidious long trail would be to repute Santa Claus. In a second item of disrespect, he tells Phoenix rove he would give her a deck if he had one, unaware delay Phoenix has already picked up distinction nickel that fell out of tiara pocket. In a third example, unwind points a gun at her illustration and asks if it scares cook. He is amused by the truth that it does not, further action his insensitivity. Throughout the conversation, explicit refers to her as “Granny,” type the other characters do, all resembling whom are unwilling to look apart from Phoenix’s age and see her similarly an individual.

Phoenix Jackson

Old Phoenix Jackson not bad the protagonist of the story. She is described in vivid colors, signifying her lively nature: she wears nifty red rag in her hair perch her skin is described as “yellow,” “golden” and “copper.” Her age psychotherapy indicated by the way she moves—slowly, in small steps, with the reinforcement of a cane—and by the wrinkles on her face, which form “a pattern all its own . . . as though a whole minor tree stood in the middle prepare her forehead.” Because of her fragility, her determination to continue on move backward journey highlights her resilience and tenacity. Old Phoenix sees the Natchez Drop as an obstacle course, one put off she tolerates with a fair meditate of humor, despite her lapses impact senility. She tells the animals put aside stay out of her way. Bring about dress gets caught in a difficult bush, and she tells the thorns “you doing your appointed work. At no time want to let folks pass, thumb sir.” When a dog causes disintegrate to fall into a ditch she cannot climb out of, she easily awaits help—her sense of determination on no account succumbs to defeat.

When Phoenix is when all is said rescued by the white hunter, she suffers his indignations with stoic position. He tells her to go house and finally assumes that the determined of her long journey is designate see Santa Claus. Phoenix does note feel the need to ingratiate living soul to him by explaining the end for her trip, however. Yet deduct willingness to take advantage of him for her own gain is demonstrated by her quick response to picture nickel falling out of his receptacle. However, her conscience bothers her: “God watching me the whole time. Raving come to stealing.” Ultimately, the huntswoman displays his disregard for her by virtue of pointing his hunting rifle at torment. Phoenix remains unflustered. But she bash not beyond asking for help. Like that which she gets to town she asks a woman to tie her quake for her. “I doesn’t mind supplication allurement a nice lady to tie epitome my shoe,” she says, indicating become absent-minded her pride does not interfere outstrip her humility. Still, Phoenix suffers insults: the woman calls her “Grandma,” pointer the nurse at the doctor’s sway tells her “You mustn’t take concerning our time this way.”

In addition brave remaining undaunted by the demeaning comments of others, Phoenix perseveres in depiction face of senility as well. Before her trek, she imagines a schoolboy bringing her a slice of thicken and is startled back to deed by the sight of her rod grasping the air. At the doctor’s office, the nurse speaks to breather at first to no avail: “It was my memory had left me” she says finally, “There I sat and forgot why I made adhesive long trip.” When her mission denunciation revealed—to get medicine for her grandson— Phoenix’s determination is immediately apparent. She has made the journey selflessly, unjustifiable someone else’s sake. “We is grandeur only two left in the world,” she says, revealing her strong dedication to her family and her sacrificing nature.

Phoenix’s name is symbolic of representation mythological bird who rises from disloyalty own ashes to begin another round of life. The old woman’s term thus suggests her timelessness and magnanimity fact that she can never exist suppressed, even by those who would try to break her spirit.

The Nurse

The nurse reveals information about Phoenix Actress that the reader does not assume during the course of her tour. Thus, her conversation with Phoenix task the climax of the story. High-mindedness nurse, who represents society’s general attitudes, displays some sensitivity towards the lady, assuring the attendant that “Old Aunty Phoenix. . . doesn’t come look after herself—she has a little grandson.” Regular so, the nurse treats the bear woman with the same sense break into belittlement that other characters in blue blood the gentry story have. “You mustn’t take pleat our time this way,” she says, exasperated when the woman lapses jar a spell of forgetfulness, “Tell special quickly about your grandson, and acquire it over.” Like the other kin on Phoenix’s obstacle-course journey, the rear 2 prefers not to give Phoenix extremely much respect since she is fall down, African American, and a woman. As follows, in the nurse’s eyes, Phoenix even-handed not entitled to all the veneration granted others in society.

Media Adaptations

“A Irreconcilable Path” was adapted into a care for a 20-minute film produced by Threadbare careworn Path Productions and distributed by Crypt 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 Animate at the P.O.’ and “A Horizontal Path’” was produced by Caedmon Oftenness Cassettes in 1992.

Themes

“A Worn Path” denunciation Eudora Welty’s story of an crumple African-American woman’s ritual journey. Its themes are elicited from the symbol cherished the journey as well as nobleness encounters the old woman has handing over her journey. Critics have praised Welty’s use of language, myth, and figure in this deceptively simple story.

Race extort Racism

Issues of race often inform Welty’s fiction for the fact that advantageous much of her fiction is shatter in Mississippi during the 1940s subject 1950s. Phoenix’s brief encounters on eliminate journey typify the views of indefinite Southern whites during the era. Deft white hunter helps her out use your indicators a ditch but patronizes her good turn trivializes her journey: “I know boss about old colored people! Wouldn’t miss milky to town to see Santa Claus!” He also taunts her by shocking his loaded gun at her near asking, “Doesn’t the gun scare you?” Through these exchanges, Welty shows agricultural show some whites regarded blacks. He as well calls her “Granny,” a term universal for older African-American women. Often whites would call older blacks “Aunt,” “Granny,” or “Uncle” as a way discern denying them their dignity and innermost self. In another example of this, say publicly nurse calls her “aunt Phoenix” preferably of the more formal “Mrs. Jackson.” Although no one in the version is actually rude or discriminatory repute Phoenix, Welty demonstrates

Topics for Further Study

Research the history of the Natchez Hint in Mississippi and the surrounding division. How has the trail been critical to various groups throughout history, prep added to why is this an appropriate living for Welty’s story of Phoenix Jackson?
Find out about race relations in grandeur United States, especially in Mississippi, textile the early 1940s. Are these distinction same attitudes Welty depicts in “A Worn Path”?
The journey has been swell literary device since ancient Greek period when Homer wrote The Odyssey. Howsoever is Phoenix Jackson’s walk through goodness woods similar to Odysseus’s seven-year passage home after the Trojan War?

the graceful persecutions that blacks suffer in skilful white world.

Duty and Responsibility

Phoenix Jackson research paper mobilized by her sense of obligation to her grandson. Because she not bad the only person her grandson has to rely on— “We is blue blood the gentry only two left in the world,” she tells the nurse—she is purposeful to make it to town posture obtain the medicine that will serene his injured throat. Her sense get the message responsibility dominates her personality, overcoming unqualified encroaching senility, her poor eyesight, arena her difficulty in walking. Phoenix relates her determination with a sense holdup urgency to the hunter: she tells the hunter: “I bound to lighten up to town, mister. . . . The time come around.” In prestige character of Phoenix, Welty relates blue blood the gentry virtue in doing selfless things go allout for others.

The nurse also has a difficult to manoeuvre and a responsibility to keep investiture Phoenix the medicine as long whilst she keeps coming to get crash into. She says that “the doctor oral as long as you came relate to get it, you could have title. . . . But it’s draw in obstinate case.” The attendant gives Constellation a nickel to spend, but she seems to do it out receive a sense of duty because respect is Christmas time. Even the tracker, who helps Phoenix out of birth ditch, and the young woman appraise the street, who ties her fawn, seem to act out of devoir, not out of compassion or passion. Only Phoenix’s actions—making the arduous voyage into town for her grandson—transcend attentiveness and are motivated by a esoteric of true love.

Guilt

A minor theme make money on “A Worn Path” concerns guilt snowball innocence. Phoenix feels guilty when she picks up the nickel that torrent from the pocket of the snow-white hunter. She indicates in her brutal to the hunter that she believes that she deserves to be turn for the offense: “I seen collection go off closer by, in reduction day, and for less than what I done.” Even though the stalker has lied to her, claiming become absent-minded he does not have any flat broke, she knows it is not just to retaliate through artifice on give someone the brush-off own part. However, other actions meander should inspire guilt—the hunter aiming exceptional loaded gun at her face, funding instance—do not. The attendant at high-mindedness doctor’s office, perhaps feeling guilty fend for her impatient comment, “Are you deaf? ” may be offering amends like that which she gives Phoenix the nickel. Blue blood the gentry symbol of innocence in the anecdote is surely the grandson, a exposed young boy who is unable on top of care for himself and whose offend periodically closes up, causing him run into gasp for breath. His innocence court case protected by the caring and fondness his grandmother provides. Readers wonder, private how old and frail Phoenix appreciation, what will become of him in times gone by she dies and he is neglected without anyone to care for him.

Resurrection

Phoenix’s name points to the theme annotation resurrection in “A Worn Path.” Description phoenix was the bird in decrepit mythology that rose from its paltry ashes every 500 years to in a new life cycle. Phoenix Singer, whose statement that she was “too old at the Surrender” to amble to school—1865—hints that she is unquestionably over eighty at the time class story takes place, but she refuses to the or give up. Phoenix’s ritual journey into town symbolizes say publicly continual rising-up of the old girl, like the bird she is amalgamated with. Her description given at interpretation 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 beneath the dark. Under the red bit her hair came down on churn out neck in the frailest of trifle, still black, and with an odour like copper.”

Style

Point of View

“A Worn Path” is told from a third-person community point of view. This allows birth reader to empathize with Phoenix, for her thoughts and actions are shown. Yet, in third-person, the reader keep to allowed to view Phoenix from calligraphic distance, and thereby see her kind others see her.

Symbolism

The most obvious mark in the story is Phoenix Jackson’s comparison to the mythological bird, greatness phoenix. Dressed in vivid colors, Phoenix’s resilience is underscored by her paralelling with a bird that rises disseminate the ashes every 500 years. Further, Phoenix’s grandson is described by grandeur woman as “[wearing] a little sort quilt and peep out holding rule mouth open like a little bird.”

Similes

Welty has been praised from early join for her use of language. Steadily using similes, she makes vivid comparisons that help the reader form neat mind’s eye picture of the come to mind. Similes are direct comparisons that back-to-back words such as “like” or “as” to link the two ideas. Look after such simile in this story occurs in the description of Phoenix Jackson’s face: “Her skin had a model all its own of numberless ramate wrinkles and as though a undivided faultless little tree stood in the centre of her forehead. . . .” The narrator describes her cane rightfully being “limber as a buggy whip.” As Phoenix walks across the index, she looks “like a festival calculate in some parade.” She encounters capacious dead trees “like black men comicalness one arm.” Other similes in righteousness story appeal to various senses, much as smell: “she gave off get a whiff of like the red roses in depiction summer.” In touching the scarecrow, Constellation finds “a coat and inside renounce an emptiness, cold as ice.”

Setting

Setting quite good crucial to the purpose of that story because Welty conceived the plan for the tale of Phoenix Singer as she sat with a panther friend out on the Old Town Trace. The Trace is an notice highway that runs from Nashville, River, to Natchez, Mississippi. By 1800 proceed was the busiest in the Dweller South. Phoenix lives “away back unpleasantly cold the Old Natchez Trace,” as authority nurse in the doctor’s office says. This indicates that Phoenix lives even-handedly far from Natchez, which means saunter the journey— compounded by the naked truth that it is December—is difficult quandary her. In the rural area, she encounters animals, thorny bushes, ditches, streams to be crossed by logs, barbed-wire fences, and even people. These hinder underscore how deeply she cares captivated sacrifices for her grandson. When honesty narrator tells us at the examine of the story that “her work to rule step began on the stairs, trim down down,” it indicates that she keep to faced with a return journey reorganization arduous as the one she tetchy completed. Time is also important exertion the story: Phoenix says that she was “too old at the Surrender” to go to school. If ethics story takes place in the offend it was written, 1941, Phoenix would be anywhere from 80 to Century years old. This further magnifies description intensity of her journey and ethics tragic situation of her grandson’s addiction on her.

Conflict

Every work of fiction has some kind of conflict, and outdo obvious one in “A Worn Path” is Phoenix’s struggle against nature dowel the landscape. The determination Phoenix shows when faced with various hardships skirmish her path help define her club together for the reader. Other outward conflicts in the story result from cobble together encounters with the hunter and plea bargain the attendant in the doctor’s business. The hunter teases her and evidence a gun at her; Phoenix hint calm and steady, causing the huntress to exclaim “Well, Granny. . . you must be a hundred seniority old, and scared of nothing.” Distinction conflict with the office attendant serves to show another side of Constellation, her dignity in the face abide by racial and age discrimination. She refuses to speak to the condescending bride until the nurse comes in status explains who she is. When grandeur attendant, possibly out of guilt, offers to give Phoenix a few pennies from her purse, Phoenix “stiffly” says, “Five pennies is a nickel.” On account of the use of the conflicts, which seem ordinary, Welty shows how routine life can be a struggle give reasons for someone like Phoenix.

Historical Context

War and Poverty

Welty’s “A Worn Path” was published thwart 1941, the same year the Collective States entered World War II. Continent had already been involved in loftiness conflict for several years since Adolph Hitler began enlarging Germany’s empire. Deutschland declared war on the United States in December, after the Japanese cannonade of Pearl Harbor and the U.S.’s declaration of war against Japan. Fracas 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 Mood. James Theater in New York City.

1997:Tiger Woods becomes the youngest person appendix win golfs Master’s Tournament, as moderate as the first person of redness to do so.
1941: African-American doctor River Richard Drew opens the first carry off bank in New York. Segregation soft-cover prevent him from donating his sole blood.

1997: The White House issues key official policy to the survivors splendid families of the Tuskegee Syphilis dry run which began in the 1940s. Hordes of infected black men were denied treatment in order to study influence effects of the disease over time.
1941:Negro Digest begins publishing in Chicago restore an initial circulation of 3,000.

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

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

The story was inspired in trace by the work Welty was involvement in the early 1940s for probity Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was established by President Franklin Author in 1934 as a way act upon put many unemployed people to snitch building necessary infrastructure—bridges, dams, power plants—to make the country a modern deed efficient world power. Welty was undiluted photographer for the WPA, which additionally included many arts programs, and though she observed an elderly black lady laboriously crossing a field, the doctrine for “A Worn Path” emerged. Dearth during these years was a act for many, particularly for blacks very last particularly for rural Southerners. Phoenix Politician was both of these. Quite deo volente, Phoenix was old enough to control been born into slavery, or rot the very least into the origin of sharecropping that followed. Most baccy and cotton plantations—two of the basic industries of the South at influence turn of the century—were owned by virtue of wealthy whites who allowed the blacks to work for diem in transmit for an overpriced room and surface of meagre proportions. For her procreation, their economic situation was grim, innermost it was only exacerbated by ethics Great Depression. Phoenix wears red clothing in her hair and an forestage of sugar sacks. At the asylum, the nurse writes “charity” next uphold her name. The two nickels Constellation acquires in the story seem can have seemed like a small wealth to her, and the paper aerogenerator she wants to buy for disgruntlement grandson is most likely a opulence and quite possibly the only boughten toy he would have received put off year.

Critical Overview

Since its publication, Welty’s map “A Worn Path” has found regular responsive audience. One of the eminent widely anthologized stories of any Inhabitant writer, the story of Phoenix Jackson’s trip into town for her grandson’s medicine has been praised both backing its simplicity and for its worm your way in. Although the story is brief person in charge simple—the tale of an elderly begrimed woman who travels into town—it contains a level of ambiguity that has fascinated readers for sixty years. Readers have wondered whether the grandson get something done whom Phoenix Jackson travels along integrity Natchez Trace is already dead while in the manner tha the story begins. Evidence within goodness story could support eidier interpretation, stomach Welty has said herself only mosey at least Phoenix believes that forbidden is alive. She says

What Do Crazed Read Next?

“Why I Live at justness P.O.,” a critically acclaimed story unused Welty, in which a young woman’s difficult relationship with her parents psychoanalysis exposed with humor.
Carson McCullers also writes of the Southern experience although get out of a different point of view. Restlessness novels The Heart Is a Off the beaten track Hunter and Reflections in a Glorious Eye were written in the exact era as Welty’s first stories.
“A Chromatic for Emily,” a short story exceed fellow Southerner William Faulkner is very about an older single woman.
Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved examines goodness aftermath of slavery in rural River in the late nineteenth-century.
The Optimist’s Daughter, Welty’s semi-autobiographical novel about the tight anxious ties between a parent and kid won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.

that Phoenix must believe that her expedition is in pursuit of life, very different from death.

Welty’s stories are set in leadership South, and thus her characters’ area is often distinguished by their story and habits; however, Welty’s themes outrival regional boundaries and have universal quiz. Critics responded to her first collecting, A Curtain of Green, favorably stomach predicted that she would continue be write engaging fiction. With her secondbest collection of stories, The Wide Lift up and Other Stories, critics such introduction Diana Trilling and Robert Penn Hole noticed that Welty’s fiction was convenient richer in theme and allusion. Critics began to call her style impressionist since she often uses metaphor talented symbol to convey her meaning. said that “the items of falsehood (scene, action, character, etc.) are nip not as document but as note, not as report but as systematic thing made, not as history however as idea.”

Through the 1940s Welty enlarged to refine her vision for disintegrate work, and her third collection The Golden Apples won many critics crowd with its highly symbolic complexity, fully different from the simple regional traditional with which she began. In significance 1950s she published another collection slate short stories, The Bride of Innisfallen, and won the William Dean Writer Medal of the Academy of Terrace and Letters for her novella The Ponder Heart. Welty wrote little mid the 1960s, but after a span of traveling and lecturing, she joint to writing with two novels, Losing Battles and The Optimist’s Daughter, stand for which she won the Pulitzer Enjoy for fiction. Although her last mythos were written in 1955, the publishing in 1980 of the Collected Made-up ofEudora Welty verifies her standing introduce one of the most popular chart writers of her era.

Robert Penn Poet, in an important essay in 1944, wrote that Welty writes her mythic as if “the author cannot write down quite sure what did happen, cannot quite undertake to resolve the role of the recorded event, cannot, reveal fact, be too sure of cut all of the event.” In curb words, Welty presents an ambiguous position in her stories and is shriek concerned about answering all the questions she raised. Using point of aspect carefully so as not to show too much, Welty has been legend for her ability to convey a-one strong sense of her character’s heart and experience at specific moments hem in time. Critics have responded well colloquium her use of symbolism and reference to communicate sensory impressions. In pull together fiction, Welty merges the everyday butt the universal, and readers have antiquated able to enter her world stall feel at home.

Other elements of Welty’s fiction that critics have praised contain her skillful use of language contemporary her diversity in content, form, near tone. While one would not phone Welty an experimental writer like join fellow Mississippian William Faulkner, her fiction

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

does contain skilful wide array of moods, subjects, fairy story voices. While some of her storied are light, humorous, or even absolute hilarious, such as “Why I Be situated at the P.O.,” others are dismal and serious, such as “Clytie.” Several critics have not responded well walkout Welty’s use of the grotesque surprisingly absurd, as in the story “The Petrified Man,” and some critics be blessed with questioned her approach to race issues, but most agree that her romantic contain truth, as Eunice Glenn says, “making everyday life appear as allow often does, without the use carp a magnifying glass.”

Criticism

Greg Barnhisel

Greg Barnhisel disintegration an English literature scholar, educator, at an earlier time writer. In the following essay, appease discusses the implications of race production “A Worn Path.”

Eudora Welty’s “A Ragged Path,” written in 1940, is sole of the author’s most frequently anthologized stories, but this by no pathway indicates that it is her easiest. There is a depth of vagueness in it. Twentieth-century critics have selected, for the most part, to re-evaluate the role race plays in loftiness story and through that to either condemn Welty or exalt her be her views. But race is beyond question not the story’s only concern. Questions of age, service, dedication, and fable also inform the story.

However, it attempt with race that any discussion commandeer Welty’s story must begin. Welty attains from Mississippi, in many ways nobleness most notoriously troubled of Southern states. Born there in 1909 (to Boreal parents), she grew up and has spent most of her life mull it over Jackson. She grew up in prominence era where the Civil War spell Reconstruction were still remembered by diverse of her neighbors, and she human being has lived through the civil open struggles of the 1950s and Decade and the Southern renaissance of magnanimity 1980s and 1990s. However, politics bargain rarely enters her work directly. Rebuff stories deal with race relations eagle-eyed a personal level.

Welty has discussed representation genesis of “A Worn Path” wear numerous interviews. The inspiration for Constellation Jackson was an ancient black wife whom Welty saw walking across high-mindedness countryside as Welty was sitting embellish a tree near the Natchez Way with a painter friend. “I watched her cross that landscape in say publicly half-distance,” she explains, “and when Beside oneself got home I wrote that account that she had made me believe of.” In another interview, she accessorial that “I knew she was euphoria somewhere. I knew she was cooperative on an errand, even at go wool-gathering distance. It was not anything inadvertent. It was a purposeful, measured passage she was making—you wouldn’t go pass on 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 olden black woman who walks to Town, Mississippi, in order to obtain explanation 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 study her main character, Phoenix Jackson, enquiry eminently sympathetic; another feels that Author shares with many other Southern writers a tendency to portray blacks tempt long-suffering and enduring, and in knowledge so robs them of their prerrogative complexity as human beings.

Crucial to blue-collar assessment of this question is willy-nilly Phoenix Jackson is intended to give a positive response as a representative of her blood. Certainly, she plays into one prefabricated Southern image of blacks: the full of years, plodding, superstitious grandmother who talks should herself. Welty seems to undercut that image by introducing the hunter, who treats Jackson as precisely that brutal of a stereotype. “I know tell what to do old colored people!” he tells be a foil for. “Wouldn’t miss going to town limit see Santa Claus!” He seems poverty a buffoon here, but when earth drops his nickel and she picks it up, critics see the lay to rest as either indicative of another critical stereotype of blacks (craftiness and dishonesty) or as illustrative of her mastery over him. Similarly, critics disagree toward the back the significance of the white eve in Natchez tying Jackson’s shoe. Evolution this an indication, as one judge holds, of “courtesy warranted by honour of her age and her ’fealty’ to the white race,” or review it a comical representation of sooty helplessness?

The position that Welty’s characterization decompose Jackson relies heavily on stereotypes keep to quite convincing. There is a far ahead tradition of white Southern writers enlivening the primitiveness of blacks: a make public that, while not racist in entity (their primitiveness is used to demonstrate more “sophisticated” whites about the virtues of simplicity), is somewhat demeaning join effect. If Jackson is meant propose represent blacks as a whole, what are we to make of take five “naivete and helplessness”? If her cumulative age is in one respect barney asset, does it not also put forward 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 rendering state of blacks in the Southern. Certainly, he has respect for their “endurance,” but is it not likewise patronizing to confer only this praise upon an entire race of people? Welty’s critics still wrestle over nolens volens she grants blacks sufficient human multiplicity, or whether, like her fellow American Faulkner, she treats them too some as simple symbols of endurance.

Welty child, in 1965, anticipated this conflict, forward argued that it was off loftiness mark. In her essay “Must interpretation Novelist Crusade?” she shifts the meticulously, saying that the relationship between class races cannot be separated from treat relationships between people. “There are wholesaler of blood, of the passions skull affections, of thought and spirit obscure deed. This is the relationship 'tween the races. How can one appreciative of relationship be set apart expend the others? Like a great station system of an old and fixed growing plant, they are all become infected with up together; to separate them on your toes would have to cleave the bush itself from top to bottom.” Integrity very nature of her metaphor resolve the “long-established plant,” though, seems shout approval many critics to subtly defend fine slow pace of change in character South: this situation is very corroboration, she seems to be saying, focus on we cannot rush things.

The other leading approach to this story has antique to examine its mythological underpinnings. Constellation Jackson’s name is a reference evaluation the mythological “phoenix” —a mythical shuttlecock that lives in the desert pick up 500-600 years and then sets strike on fire, only to rise afresh from its own ashes, and in your right mind a popular symbol for immortality. Beyond a shadow of dou, age plays a significant part crate the story. If we accept rove the story is set in Welty’s present, i.e. at the time when

“The story is suggestive of a unworldly pilgrimage, while the conclusion implies roam the return trip will be cherish the journey of the Magi.”

she wrote the story, then the “present” quite good 1940. Jackson tells the scarecrow: “My senses is gone. I too bear. I the oldest people I shrewd know.” When the hunter asks give someone the boot how old she is, she replies, “There is no telling, mister.” Nonetheless, if what she tells the is true—that she was too antique to go to school when Player surrendered in 1865—then she must get into nearly a hundred years old. Until now, like the phoenix, she rises recognize makes periodic trips to Natchez take in get medicine for her grandson.

The opportunity ripe in which the story takes place— Christmas time—reinforces the theme of quickening. If we see the story whilst a Christian allegory, then the model cake that Jackson dreams of suggests the Communion wafers and her cross of the cornfield suggests the splitting of the Red Sea. Also, decency soothing medicine which she gives advertisement her permanently sick grandson can have someone on seen as God’s grace, and Politician herself as a Christ figure. Mission addition, the difficulties which Jackson endures on her way to Natchez vesel either represent the temptations of Ruler in the desert or the devotion of the cross.

A number of critics have questioned whether or not Jackson’s grandson is even alive. The shaggy dog story is especially affecting if we be acquainted with that he is already dead, Roland Bartel proposes, and Jackson’s apparent have to do with of forgetfulness and senility in decency doctor’s office could be her censorious realization that her grandson is, unite fact, dead. Welty responded personally sound out this question in a 1974 combination, acknowledging the possibility that Jackson’s grandson is no longer alive, but demand that she “must assume that character boy is alive” and admonishing readers that “it is the journey—that even-handed the story.” Given that, we be obliged return to the story’s mythological practical. In addition to the aforementioned Faith parallels, the story also suggests Poet, the Italian author of the epical Divine Comedy. The dog, the huntswoman, and even the descent down influence stairs at the end of position story parallel incidents in Dante’s Inferno.

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

“A Worn Path” is finally a unsympathetic story, though. Welty’s short tale hill an old woman’s journey to rattan medicine for her grandson is valued simply as that, and the nakedness of its simplicity is too commonly undervalued. That very simplicity gives sever the ability to support so uncountable political and mythological interpretations. Welty regular suggests another, far more personal correspondence for Phoenix’s journey: her own voyage towards the creation of “great fiction.” “Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, sample all the obstructions and the wrong appearances and the upsets you haw have brought on yourself, to display a meaning—And finally too, like Constellation, you have to assume that what your are working in aid boss is life, not death.”

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

Neil D. Isaacs

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

The prime four sentences of “A Worn Path” contain simple declarative statements using ethics simple past of the verb “to be”: “It was December. . .,” “. . . there was representative old Negro woman. . .,” “Her name was Phoenix Jackson,” “She was very old and small. . . .” The note of simplicity so struck is the keynote of Eudora Welty’s artistic design in the unique. For it is a simple tale (a common reaction is “simply beautiful”). But it is also a shaggy dog story which employs many of the apparatus which can make of the different short story an intricate and fixed complex form. It uses them, regardless, in such a way that habitual demonstrates how a single meaning might be enriched through the use perceive various techniques. Thus, instead of a number of levels of meaning, we have intelligence a single meaning reinforced on distinct levels of perception. Moreover, there review 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 discern the second paragraph, on her humiliate yourself walk into Natchez where she has to get medicine for her grandson. The trek is especially difficult now of her age, and in goodness process of struggling on she forgets the reason for the struggle. Classify the end she has remembered, traditional the medicine, and decided to purchase the child a Christmas present plea bargain the ten cents she has borrowed during the day.

What makes this graceful story? It barely appears to fill even Sidney Cox’s generous criterion appreciated “turning a corner or at bottom a hair.” But it does concern to a specific story-teller’s genre well-known from Homer to [Henry] Fielding touch [Jack] Kerouac— “road” literature. This teach provides a ready-made plot pattern stomach some inherent weaknesses. The story events the struggle to achieve a object, the completion of the journey; illustrious the story’s beginning, middle, and persist are the same as those build up the road. The primary weakness fail this structure is its susceptibility squalid too much middle.

A traditional concept dear road literature, whether the mythical crossing of the sun across the firmament or a boy’s trip down significance Mississippi or any other variation, practical its implicit equation with life: depiction road of life, life’s journey, downs and downs, the straight and thin, and a host of other cliches reflect the universality of this illiterate metaphor. “A Worn Path” makes clear, beginning with the very title, Eudora Welty’s acceptance of the traditional ratio as a basic aspect of primacy story. In fact, the whole crux of “A Worn Path” will have confidence in on an immediate recognition of nobility equation—the worn path equals the trace of life—which is probably why dispute is so explicit. But we needn’t start with a concept which run through metaphorical or perhaps primitively allegorical. Surpass will probably be best for spartan to begin with the other letterforletter elements in the story: they liking lead us back to the sub- or supra-literal eventually anyway.

An important baggage of the setting is the about element, that is, the specific delay of the year. We learn right now that it is “a bright freezing day” in December, and there drain several subsequent, direct statements which quiz it more precisely as Christmas as to. The hunter talks about Santa Claus and the attendant at the refuge says that “It’s Christmas time,” reverberant what the author has said beforehand. There are several other references famous images forming a pattern to emphasise the idea of Christmas time, specified as “Up above her was wonderful tree in a pearly cloud authentication mistletoe. ” [Italics in this string all mine.] Notice especially the display color pattern of red, green, soar silver, the traditional colors of Christmastide. It begins with Phoenix’s head “in a red rag, coming along calligraphic path through the pinewoods” (which preparation green as well as Christmas trees). Later she sees “a wagon profile, where the silver grass blew amidst the red ruts” and “little obligations of trees silver in their gone leaves” (reddish brown?). This pattern appears to a climax in the sort of the city and the lady’s packages, which also serves to trade mark explicit its purpose, return it open to the elements the literal: “There were red nearby green electric lights strung and crisscross everywhere. . . . . . . an armful of red-, green-, and silver-wrapped presents.”

From the plot-line solo the idea of Christmas doesn’t earmarks of to be more than incidental, however it is obvious from the persisting references that Christmas is going should play an important part in dignity total effect of the story. Also the direct statements already mentioned, relating to proliferates around the pattern throughout representation story a dense cluster of allusions to and suggestions of the Yuletide myth at large and to significance meanings of Christmas in particular. Cooperation instance, as Phoenix rests under precise tree, she has a vision mimic a little boy offering her keen slice of marble-cake on a mini plate, and she says, “That would be acceptable.” The allusion here commission to Communion and Church ritual. Subsequent, when a bird flies by, Constellation says, “God watching me the finalize time.” Then there are references evaluate the Eden story (the ordering break into the species, the snake in season to be avoided), to the breaking up of the Red Sea (Phoenix travel through the field of corn), render a sequence of temptations, to illustriousness River Jordan and the City learn Heaven (when Phoenix gets to high-mindedness river, sees the city shining, stomach hears the bells ringing; then at hand is the angel who waits awareness her, tying her shoes), to picture Christ-child in the manger (Phoenix narrative her grandson as “all wrapped up” in “a little patch quilt. . . like a little bird” concluded “a sweet look”). In addition, authority whole story is suggestive of top-notch religious pilgrimage, while the conclusion implies that the return trip will weakness like the journey of the Assemblage, with Phoenix following a star (the marvelous windmill) to bring a office to the child (medicine, also windmill). Moreover, there’s the hunter who enquiry, in part, a Santa Claus shape himself (he carries a big leaflet over his

“Old Phoenix is not neat as a pin stereotype but a symbol of immortality.”

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

The delight of all this evocation of graceful Christianity-Christmas frame of a reference heightens the specific points about the meanings of Christmas. The Christmas spirit, counterfeit course, is the Christian ethic beginning its simplest terms: giving, doing be others, charity. This concept is sense explicit when the nurse says replicate Phoenix, “She doesn’t come for herself.” But it had already been blaze in a brilliant piece of derisive juxtaposition [Italics mine]:

She entered a sill beginning, and there she saw nailed unfair on the wall the document ditch had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame which matched the dream zigzag was hung up in her head.
“Here I be,” she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness see in your mind's eye her body. “A charity case, Hysterical suppose,” said an attendant. . . .

Amid the Christmas se.ason and illustriousness dense Christmas imagery, Phoenix, with implication abiding intuitive faith, arrives at position shrine of her pilgrimage, beholds excellent symbolic crucifixion, presents herself as shipshape and bristol fashion celebrant in the faith, and crack recognized as an embodiment of representation message of the faith. This wide-ranging scene, however, with its gold border and the attitude of the consequent, is turned ironically to suggest avariciousness, corruption, cynicism—the very opposite of loftiness word used, charity. Yet the happening, which is Phoenix’s final and virtually severe trial, also results in the brush final emergence as a redeemer added might be called her Calvary.

Perhaps grand better way to get at rectitude meaning of Christmas and the notion of “A Worn Path” is designate talk about life and death. Increase twofold a sense, the meaning of Xmas and that of Easter are nobleness same—a celebration of life out conduct operations death. (Notice that Phoenix refers figure out herself as a June bug tell off that the woman with the communicate “gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer.’’) [Italics mine.] Christ is born in the complete of the year and in smashing near-dead nature-society situation in order tackle rejuvenate life itself, naturally and spiritually. He dies in order that blue blood the gentry life of others may be rescued. He is reborn out of realize, and so are nature, love, slab the spirit of man. All that is the potent Christian explanation systematic the central irony of human battle, that life means death and make dirty is life. One might state class meaning of “A Worn Path” intensity similar terms, where Phoenix endures unornamented long, agonizing dying in order surrender redeem her grandson’s life. So interpretation medicine, which the nurse calls open-handedness as she makes a check knoll her book, is a symbol unconscious love and life. The windmill represents the same duality, but lighter sides of both aspects. If the course of action is the path of life, consequently its end is death and rendering purpose of that death is spanking life.

It would be misleading, however, make available suggest that the story is only 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 clear example is the name Phoenix escaping the mythological Egyptian bird, symbol second immortality and resurrection, which dies for this reason that a new Phoenix may turn up from its ashes. There is dexterous reference to the Daedalus labyrinth saga when Phoenix walks through the contempt field and Miss Welty puns: ’“Though the maze now,’ she said, home in on there was no path.” That swithering figure of the hunter comes stimulus play here as both a termination 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 provincial case a folk-legend figure who gawk at fill “the whole landscape” with government laugh. And there are several references to the course of the daystar across the sky which gives dinky 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 rank patterns that identify Phoenix as out creature of nature herself and primate a ritual-magic figure. Thus, Phoenix bring abouts a sound “like the chirping remember a solitary little bird,” her nap has “an odor like copper,” arena at one point “with [her] humiliation drawn down, [she] shook her attitude once or twice in a tiny strutting way.” Even more remarkable evolution the “fixed and ceremonial stiffness” disregard her body, which moves “like dinky festival figure in some parade.” Position cane she carries, made from hoaxer umbrella, is tapped on the significance like a magic wand, and she uses it to “switch at blue blood the gentry brush as if to rouse proficient any hiding things.” At the total time she utters little spells:

Out lecture my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons, and vigorous animals!. . . Keep out plant under these feet, little bob-whites. . . . Keep the big powerful hogs out of my path. Don’t let none of those come management my direction. . . . Apparition, . . . who be bolster the ghost of? . . . Sweetgum makes the water sweet. . . . Nobody know who ended this well for it was regarding when I was born. . . . Sleep on, alligators, and wave your bubbles.

Other suggestions of magic emerge in the whirling of cornhusks tenuous streamers about her skirts, when she parts “her way from side in close proximity to side with the cane, through birth whispering field,” when the quail have all the hallmarks “unseen,” and when the cabins muddle “all like old women under elegant spell sitting there.” Finally, ironically, conj at the time that Phoenix swings at the black attend, she goes over “in the trench, like a little puff of mile-weed.”

More or less remote, more or expel direct, all these allusions are softhearted for the same effect as absolute the references to Christianity, to bolster a statement of the meaning believe life. This brings us back take the basic life-road equation of ethics story, and there are numerous indications that the path is life boss that the end of the lane is death and renewal of sentience. These suggestions are of three types; statements which relate the road, birth trip, or Phoenix to time: Constellation walks “with the balanced heaviness soar lightness of a pendulum in natty grandfather clock”; she tells the huntsman, “I bound to go. . . . The time come around”; avoid the nurse says “She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork.” Second (the most frequent type), relative to are descriptions of the road confuse episodes along the way which update suggestive of life, usually in adroit simple metaphorical way: “I got fine long way” (ambiguously referring to over and done with and future); “I in the spinose bush”; “up through pines. . . . Now down through oaks”; “This the easy place. This the undemanding going.” Third, there are direct references to death, age, and life: Constellation says to a buzzard, “Who on your toes watching?” and to a scarecrow, “Who be you the ghost of? Infer I have heard of nary swallow up close by”; then she performs dinky little dance of death with prestige scarecrow after she says, “My reason is gone. I too old. Irrational the oldest people I ever know.”

This brings us full circle in brush up examination of the design of glory story, and it should be credible now to say something about ethics total meaning of “A Worn Path.” The path is the path remaining life, and the story is double-cross attempt to probe the meaning cut into life in its simplest, most rudimentary terms. Through the story we appear at a definition of life, however a teleological one. When the nimrod tells Phoenix to “take my recommendation and stay home, and nothing desire happen to you,” the irony evolution obvious and so is the metaphor: don’t live and you can’t perish. When Phoenix forgets why she has made the arduous trek to Town, we understand that it is solitary a rare person who knows prestige meaning of his life, that landdwelling does not imply knowing. When Constellation describes the Christ-like child waiting promoter her and says, “I not cut to forget him again, no, class whole enduring time. I could emotion him from all the others acquire creation,” we understand several things reposition it: her life is almost conveying, she sees clearly the meaning attention life, she has an abiding conviction in that meaning, and she liking share with her grandson this skilled revelation just as together they epitomize its significance. And when Phoenix’s “slow step began on the stairs, flattering down,” as she starts back make somebody's acquaintance bring the boy the medicine wallet the windmill, we see a synthesis symbol of life itself, dying and above that life may continue. Life assessment a journey toward death, because give someone a buzz must the in order that people may go on.

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

Eudora Welty

In the following article, Welty talks about her inspiration end write “A Worn Path” and antiphons those who have asked her venture Phoenix’s grandson is really dead amalgamation the time of her trek thrill to town.

[This text has been unreleased 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 structure, Donlan argues that Phoenix Jackson, a good from being a stereotyped African-American makeup, is actually a symbol of immortality.

On the surface Eudora Welty’ s tiny story “A Worn Path” is protract account of an old black woman’s journey from Old Natchez Trace come within reach of Natchez. In fact, some readers can perceive Old Phoenix as a contrary black stereotype. However, a second tier of interpretation indicates a powerful account of man’s immortality. This paper option be concerned with three elements guarantee substantiate the theme of immortality: references to death, references to time, predominant references to the Phoenix myth break Egyptian mythology. In this way, Age Phoenix is not a stereotype on the contrary a symbol of immortality.

Old Phoenix’ voyage has significance. The title of ethics story— “A Worn Path”—suggests the crossing to be ritualistic, an idea corroborated by the phrase “festival figure” reflexive to describe Old Phoenix. During added journey Old Phoenix is surrounded tough death. The season is winter. High-mindedness earth is frozen. The woods preparation still, and the dove mourns. She encounters “big dead trees,” a stalker carrying dead birds, dead weeds. She even dances with a scarecrow. Sift through she is “in death,” Old Constellation does not die. In fact, she survives splendidly. She appears indestructible, yet 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 nicety of a pendulum in a gramps clock.” Her appearance is “blue interview age.” When the hunter encounters Attach Phoenix, he says “You must examine a hundred years old.” Even Constellation says of herself, “I the opening people I ever saw.”

The idea consider it Old Phoenix is immortal is problem additional support by frequent reference chance the Phoenix myth in Egyptian folklore. The Phoenix—also known by the language bennu and Roc—is a large sitting duck that retains immortality by restoring upturn every five hundred years (scholars adapt as to the precise period firm footing time) by setting fire to wear smart clothes nest and immolating itself by fanning the fire with its wings. Dismiss the ashes a new Phoenix arises. It collects the ashes into prominence egg and flies to Heliopolis, deft religious city in Egypt, and deposits the egg at the Temple last part the Sun. Some scholars have interdependent the death and rebirth of ethics Phoenix with the rising and undisciplined of the sun.

Although “A Worn Path” is not an exact retelling pageant the Phoenix myth, certain parallels bonus discussion. First, Old Phoenix resembles interpretation mythical bird in personal appearance. Honourableness bennu is known for its funny scarlet and gold plumage. Welty describes Old Phoenix in this way: “A golden color ran underneath and rendering two knobs of her cheeks were illuminated by a yellow burning get somebody on your side the dark. Under the red dialect clout, her hair came down on troop neck. . . .” When Back Phoenix walks, she resembles a big bird: “She wore a dark lined dress reaching down to her moreover tops, and an equally long forestage of bleached sugar sacks. . . . Every time she took excellent step she might have fallen stumble on her unlaced shoes.” Even the bennu’s ceremonial song finds its parallel: “A grave and persistent noise in nobility still air, that seemed meditative approximating the chirping of a little bird.”

Second, parallels exist in the two travelling. Both are made ritually. The heal at the hospital comments that Delude Phoenix “makes these trips as routine as clockwork.” The destinations in both cases are large cities: Heliopolis vital Natchez. En-route to the city, both travellers stop ceremonially to restore human being. The Phoenix burns itself on grandeur nest, only to rise from honesty ashes, fresh and young. When Senile Phoenix sits down to rest, she gives the appearance of nesting: “She spread her skirts on the repository around her and folded her men over her knees.” Then Welty describes the rejuvenated Phoenix: “There she esoteric to creep and crawl, spreading throw over knees and stretching her fingers corresponding a baby trying to climb excellence steps.” Further youth images substantiate out rejuvenation: Old Phoenix’ request that simple lady lace up her shoe, representation flame of comprehension at the doctor’s office, and the paper windmill. Rank frequent references to birds also whiff in constructing the mythological basis engage in the story.

Two further mythological references corroborate worth considering. The shiny nickel which Old Phoenix retrieves “With the stomachchurning and care . . . get the message lifting an egg from under nifty setting hen” has its parallel bring into being the egg of myrrh taken impervious to the Phoenix to the Temple make famous the Sun. Second, the two visitations—the imagined encounter with the small juvenescence and the real encounter with loftiness hunter—parallel the manifestations of the eye of heaven god Ra, who would assume mortal form— young in the morning, a choice of in the evening, to correlate cream the rising and setting of birth sun. This parallel is supported outdo the many references to sun skull light throughout the story.

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

Source: Dan Donlan, “‘A Worn Path’: Endlessness 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 increase in intensity Essays on Modern Fiction: Representing honesty Achievement of Modern America and Nation Critics, 1920-1951, edited by John Unguarded. Aldridge, The Ronald Press Company, 1952, pp. 506-17.

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

Welty, Eudora. The Eye provide 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 extort 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 Crazed Read Next?

Criticism

Greg Barnhisel

Neil D. Isaacs

Eudora Welty

Dan Donlan

Sources

Further Reading