Following Welty’s A Worn Path
The stories meld together into a long history of oppression. Slave ships transport thousands of Africans from the Gold Coast into America's grip, callously beginning black America's racial saga. Laborers collapse after hours of shredding their fingers on cotton plants. Sobbing mothers tenderly clean up the flesh that cat-o-nine tails ripped off their child's back. America eventually witnesses the Emancipation of slaves, and even relative "equality," but an African American's obstacles will never completely subside. Eudora Welty, in her short story "A Worn Path," symbolically illustrates the hurdles that African Americans face: hurdles that white Americans never had to face. Welty symbolically shows, through the perseverance of an aging black woman, that African Americans can and must conquer these unjust obstacles in order to complete the path to racial equality.
In each of the roadblocks that she encounters, the protagonist Phoenix Jackson metaphorically confronts the underlying struggles African Americans face. While traveling to town to acquire medicine for her grandson, Phoenix must untangle her dress from a thorny bush. She must climb through a barbed-wire fence. She gets knocked into a ditch by a loose dog. She faces the barrel of a white man's gun. Though these events could have happened to anyone, Welty intends to allude to racism. The hunter would have helped Phoenix, were she white, to her destination. The attendant at the health clinic would have addressed her more respectfully than "Speak up, Grandma... Are you deaf?" (Welty 97). And were she white, she would not be facing these trials alone; someone would have joined her on the journey or simply gone to get the medicine for her. Each of these events, though, represents a larger scope: an unkind racial slur, a separate and run-down restroom, or a hateful stare, humbling a colored person to hang his head in shame.
Instead of being accompanied on the road, as an elderly person deserves, Phoenix must deal with her problems herself. In depicting Phoenix's perseverance for her grandson, Welty demonstrates the importance of combatting racism. The grandson represents the younger generation, the generation worth sacrificing for. Welty recognizes that the path to equality will be hard: "Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far... Something always take a hold of me on this hill? pleads I should stay" (94). Phoenix faces tests like crossing the log above the stream and getting past memories of bulls and two-headed snakes.
In the short story "A Worn Path," the message that Eudora Welty sends to the readers is one of love, endurance, persistence, and perseverance. Old Phoenix Jackson walks a long way to town, through obstacles of every sort, but no obstacle is bad enough to stop her from her main goal. She may be old and almost blind, but she knows what she has to do and won't give up on it. Her grandson has swallowed lye, and she has a holy duty of making her way to town in order to get medicine for him. The wilderness of the path does not scare her off. She stumbles over and over, but she talks herself through every obstacle. Undoubtedly, the theme of perseverance is what Eudora Welty wants to point out to her readers. Just like the name Phoenix suggests
This story is so simple but tells more than just an old African American trip to town for medicine for her grandson. But from a great insight, Phoenix Jackson developed a sense of responsibility toward her grandson, who actually might be the only person in her life. The moral of the story tells about an old African American woman named Phoenix Jackson who was taking a journey from her home into town to seek some medication for her ill grandson. During this journey, the story describes Phoenix Jackson facing struggles and obstacles against her eye sight and old age, as well as nature’s obstacles, thorn bushes and barbed wire. Through these obstacles, Phoenix Jackson is able to depict her poetic view of the world through symbolism.
“A Worn Path” is a short story written by Eudora Welty. It is a story of an elderly black woman’s journey into town for her grandson’s medicine. Using lots of imagery throughout the story, the narrator tells us that the woman, Phoenix Jackson takes this dangerous journey out of love for her grandson who is in need of medicine. Throughout her journey, she encounters many people who are of great importance to the story.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is a distressing tale of human struggle as it relates to women. The story commences with a hardworking black washwoman named Delia contently and peacefully folds laundry in her quiet home. Her placidity doesn’t last long when her abusive husband, Sykes, emerges just in time to put her back in her ill-treated place. Delia has been taken by this abuse for some fifteen years. She has lived with relentless beatings, adultery, even six-foot long venomous snakes put in places she requires to get to. Her husband’s vindictive acts of torment and the way he has selfishly utilized her can only be defined as malignant. In the end of this leaves the hardworking woman no choice but to make the most arduous decision of her life. That is, to either stand up for herself and let her husband expire or to continue to serve as a victim. "Sweat,” reflects the plight of women during the 1920s through 30s, as the African American culture was undergoing a shift in domestic dynamics. In times of slavery, women generally led African American families and assumed the role as the adherent of the family, taking up domestic responsibilities. On the other hand, the males, slaves at the time, were emasculated by their obligations and treatment by white masters. Emancipation and Reconstruction brought change to these dynamics as African American men commenced working at paying jobs and women were abandoned at home. African American women were assimilated only on the most superficial of calibers into a subcategory of human existence defined by gender-predicated discrimination. (Chambliss) In accordance to this story, Delia was the bread victor fortifying herself and Sykes. Zora Neale Hurston’s 1926 “Sweat” demonstrates the vigor as wel...
The trials and challenges of African Americans have a long and detailed history. Along with the brutal tales of the southern plantations, African Americans shared the struggles of life after their “divine deliverance.” By the 1960s, and much of the 1970s, Americans faced the ending of a deadly a war, and the emergence of many equal rights organizations. The plight of the African Americans took center stage in the spotlight of American media. Many African Americans, previously treated as second class citizens, demanded equal treatment like that of their Caucasian counterparts. In the story “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker, the characters and story plot artistically demonstrated the events of the Reconstruction Era, the importance of formal education to emancipated slaves, and the divergence from mainstream religion and consciousness.
She shows how these fictions are woven into the fabric of everyday life in Jackson, from the laws to ordinary conversations, and how these beliefs get passed from generation to generation. It shows a deep mistrust of whites on the part of the black community, who have been betrayed by them again and again. It also shows how powerful and how dangerous it can be to challenge the stereotypes and dissolve the lines that are meant to separate people from each other on the basis of skin
“A Worn Path” is a short story written by Eudora Welty. It is based on an elderly African-American grandmother named Phoenix Jackson, who goes for a walk to the town of Natchez on a cold December morning to get some medicine for her ailing grandson. This story speaks of the obstacles Phoenix endured along the way and how she overcame them. The theme, central idea or message that the author wishes to convey to his or her readers, in “A Worn Path” is one of determination. Phoenix Jackson is determined to get to Natchez, in order to get medicine for her grandson; she does not let any obstacles get in her way. The theme of determination is shown in many ways throughout this short story.
Strength is the only reason Phoenix accomplished her journey and Phoenix's love for her only living relative is her greatest strength of all. Although the old Negro woman suffers from many handicaps, she starts her journey mentally prepared for the obstacles awaiting her. Phoenix uses her inner strengths and prevails over every barrier. She relies on her trustworthy feet to make up for her impaired vision. Her wit makes up for her frail body. Her determination makes up for her aged memory. But most of all, her love for her grandson her keeps her going. Clearly, the frail, forgetful, and loving old woman can overcome anything.
Eudora Welty presents the short story “A Worn Path” in a remarkable way, revealing a lot of symbolism. It travels around multiple themes throughout the story about an old aged woman walking through a grueling trail to a town to gather medicine for her grandson in Mississippi. This short story takes places in December on a “bright frozen day” where an old Negro woman arises by the name of Phoenix Jackson. I believe she signifies a struggle, but when looking at her a bit deeper, she mostly signifies willpower (Welty, 502). As she goes towards the town on the path, she appears to have walked numerous times before; she has to overcome many problems. What’s important is that with each move she takes it looks to be pretty sluggish, but yet a steady move in the direction of her goal. The story gives an understanding to the determination and confidence of Phoenix Jackson to point out the belief of people in identical lives of endless struggle. In “A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty reveals the idea that sometimes our lives can be a lot like an obstacles course, which are made up of difficulties that we have to overcome somehow.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
The early 1600s started the tyrannical nightmare for African people, who were not seen as humans, but as a capitalization and possession. For years the greed of white men over ruled any kind of emotion or remorse against the exploitation of slaves. Regardless to the fact of such suffering there were many African Americans who made history by standing and rising for change. Similar to the poem, Still I Rise by Maya Angelou who describes how despite the oppression against her and African Americans throughout history, she firmly stands as an activist against racism, and even though her metaphors describe her with determination, soulful emotion is also perceived because of the unjust treatment.
Moberly, Kevin. “TOWARD THE NORTH STAR: EUDORA WELTY’S “A WORN PATH” AND THE SLAVE NARRATIVE TRADITION”
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”.
Phoenix's precarious journey may seem dangerous, but her determination is what carries her through the obstacles she faces as she makes her way through the woods. Phoenix makes her way across the worn path and discovers many active opponents. She continues forward over barriers that would not even be considered a hindrance for the young. The long hill that she takes tires her, the thornbrush attempts to catch her clothes, the log that Phoenix goes across endangers her balance as she walks across it, and the barbed-wire fence threatens to puncture her skin. All of these impediments that Phoenix endures apparently do not affect her because she is determined that nothing will stop her on her journey. She keeps proceeding onward letting nothing deter her determination. ?The hunter(tm)s attempt to instill fear in Phoenix, a fear she disposed of years ago as she came to terms with her plight in society, fail (Sykes 151). She ?realizes that the importance of the trip far exceeds the possible harm that can be done to her brittle ...
In Eudora Welty’s, “A Worn Path” Phoenix Jackson went great lengths risking her own life for her grandson, who couldn’t help himself. On her worn path she faced the world with courage. Although she faced difficulty in her early life, her faith remained the same to help those who were dear to her heart. She walk a worn path relentlessly facing obstacles along the way with a mind that is diminishing overtime. Through the problems that she is faced with, she remains humble. She is admirable because considering her old age, weakness and loss of memory, she is determined. Welty’s details of character, symbolism, conflict and theme creates a compelling and fierce Phoenix Jackson. The moral message in this short story is to show the setting and characterizations