Every author creates their story to have a dynamic structure and sequence of events to make their story more appealing to their target audience. For instance, Eudora Welty created “A Worn Path”, which is a short story that followed the path of Phoenix Jackson on her journey to acquire medicine for her ill grandson. The story was set up and organized to cause the reader to constantly think about the specific details of the journey and why the grandmother embarked on the path to the city. In this way, the author has room to create a lot of intricate scenes to further describe the characters to the reader. This short story creates scenes that test the validity of Jackson’s journey and her overall strive to successfully complete her objective. …show more content…
For instance, Welty describes Jackson's hair by saying, "Under the rag her hair came down on her necklace in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper." In addition, by Welty portraying Jackson as an older woman, it allowed me to further understand the obstacles that she had to endure due to her age and physical impediments. Furthermore, due to her poor eye vision and inability to read, it caused for her to think with her heart and mind by going based off of her knowledge of the past trips to the medical clinic. Despite all of these disabilities, her love and determination to receive the medicine for her grandson helped her overcome obstacles such as: a barbed wire fence, thorn bushes, unstable log bridges, and threats from people along the way. Jackson also decided to buy her grandson a windmill with a nickel she stole and a nickel she received as a form of charity to bring her grandson joy through the
This type of "narrative" writing gives believability to the people, and a sense of realism to the story.
In the short stories A Worn Path by Eudora Welty and The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter, both women overcame several obstacles. In A Worn Path, Phoenix Jackson faced obstacles such as her age, physical challenges, and how others viewed her. Granny faced obstacles such as dying, feeling betrayed by her children, and disappointment in her love life.
Mr. Jackson didn’t have the best childhood since his father as well as his sister died of typhoid when he was only two. His mother was widowed before she was thirty and left with great debt ultimately impoverishing their family. She later remarried only to have her husband strongly dislike her children. This inevitably caused Thomas to move to his uncle who worked a saw mill. Sadly he died only a few years after Thomas’s arrival.
Phoenix’s journey is a little long just by walking alone in the middle of the
In the short story “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty, An old woman named Phoenix walks a long way town.While walking her skirt got caught on in a bush. She sits by a lake and when she does she imagines a boy giving her cake. She goes into a dead corn field and she sees a figure that she thinks is man but it turns out to be a scarecrow. She lays on the ground talking to herself when a hunter passes her. He drops a nickel and she take it. Once she reaches town she ask a women to tie her shoes. Once, the lady is done she goes into the building. The attendant ask Phoenix is there and she says to get medicine for her grandson.The lady gives Phoenix five cents. Phoenix says she going to use it to buy her son a windmill. Phoenix responses well to rudeness.
“The Corner Store” by Eudora Welty, Welty is very descriptive when discussing the store that was in her hometown. Throughout the essay, she creates a dominant impression by her use of sensory details such as touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. Welty attempts to create a description of the store that demonstrates a friendly old fashion atmosphere which in paragraph eight she expresses with the use of the sensory detail sight. The author uses the sensory detail sight when she describes the store in great detail. For example, the barrel that held the cold drinks, the color of the water, the soda flavors, and her favorite soda that only exists locally. Then she continues by describing Mr. Sessions always prepared in front of the barrel to
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty presents Wanda Fay on the surface as selfish, manipulative, insecure, thoughtless, shallow, spoiled, and flighty as well as thoughtlessly and carelessly cruel. On the contrary, it wasn’t difficult for me to see Fay as a victim of her family and her upbringing, the elite class of Mount Salus, and her own personal aspirations. Throughout the novel, even though I despised Fay and her weaknesses I did feel sorry for her. Her apprehension discovering that her family was downstairs when she finally decided to leave the bedroom to see her husband, the Judge’s, body for the last time showed me that she had probably hoped to escape her family by marrying the Judge, only to discover that she was forced to confront them when the Judge passed away and no longer ‘belonged’ to her. The Optimist’s daughter is a deliberate metaphor for society. Eudora Welty was slightly prescient, as she never focuses on political issues, but instead crass materialism/boundless energy vs. civilized values/privilege and class.
A Worn Path is a short story by Eudora Welty, in which an old woman named Phoenix Jackson walks a very long way to get medicine for her grandson. The title itself is a foreshadow to the rough journey that she will be undertaking in the story. The story mostly sheds light on the story of Phoenix Jackson, who is the protagonist of the story, however there is no clear antagonist present. During the journey along the worn path, there is little to no character development, and due to that fact, the grandma could be described as a flat and static character due to how uncomplicated her character is. However, what makes the character so unique is the motivation, to get medicine for her grandson, that drives her to go through such lengths in cold weather using an umbrella as a cane.
...age by Melanie Luken” is influence me in many ways. Author had organized her thoughts logically. Each paragraph has author’s experience and happens in the right time plot; it tights back to thesis of the story. In fact, I am learning to incorporate this type of narrative into my writing as well.
In the story A Worn Path, Eudora Welty shows an old woman living in a time period where racial prejudice is rampant and out of control. Phoenix Jackson is a grandmother whose only motivation for living is to nurture her grandson back to health. The strength of love may make people do or say unusual and implausible things. The central idea of this story is that love can empower someone to over come many life-threatening obstacles. The idea is shown when an old woman conquers all odds against her to show her everlasting love for her grandson. Throughout the story Phoenix Jackson has to overcome many types of obstacles that hinder her in her devotion to help her grandson.
A narrative is specified to amuse, to attract, and grasp a reader’s attention. The types of narratives are fictitious, real or unification or both. However, they may consist of folk tale stories, mysteries, science fiction; romances, horror stories, adventure stories, fables, myths and legends, historical narratives, ballads, slice of life, and personal experience (“Narrative,” 2008). Therefore, narrative text has five shared elements. These are setting, characters, plot, theme, and vocabulary (“Narrative and Informational Text,” 2008). Narrative literature is originally written to communicate a story. Therefore, narrative literature that is written in an excellent way will have conflicts and can discuss shared aspects of human occurrence.
Mrs. Jackson’s journey into town forces her to face obstacles of every kind. The trip itself is physically exhausting on her frail body. She endures emotional abuse from multiple people in regards to her race and age. For example, when she comes across the hunter. He threatens her with a gun telling her to stay
In “A Worn Path” colors are used to emphasize the depth and breadth of the story, and to reinforce the parallel images of the mythical phoenix and the protagonist Phoenix Jackson. Eudora Welty’s story is rich with references to colors that are both illustrative and perceptive, drawing us in to investigate an additional historical facet of the story.
Eudora Welty was born in 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, grew up in a prosperous home with her two younger brothers. Her parent was an Ohio-born insurance man and a strong-minded West Virginian schoolteacher, who settled in Jackson in 1904 after their marriage. Eudora’s school life began attending a white-only school. As born and brought up under strict supervision and influence, at the age of sixteen she somehow convinced her parents to attend college far enough from home, to Columbus, Mississippi and then to Madison, Wisconsin. After graduation in 1930, she moved to New York to attend Columbia Business School. While living in New York, Harlem Jazz theatre occupied her more than her class did. She returned to Jackson in 1931 following her father’s untimely death, where she worked for a local radio station and also wrote articles for a newspaper. Later she worked as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration in 1935. As a part of her job she traveled by car or by bus through the depth of Mississippi, and saw poverty of black and white people, which she had never imagined before. This time photography became her passion. She was somehow influenced by black and Southern culture as seen in her novel or short story called “Some Notes on River Country” or “A Worn Path”.
In the simplest form, there is a basic structural pattern to narratives, as expressed through Tzvetan Todorov’s explanation of narrative movement between two equilibriums. A narrative begins in a stable position until something causes disequilibrium, however, by the end of the story, the equilibrium is re-established, though it is different than the beginning (O’Shaughnessy 1999: 268). Joseph Cam...