Eudora welty biography a worn path welty

Eudora Welty 1941

Author Biography

Plot Summary

Characters

Themes

Style

Historical Context

Critical Overview

Criticism

Sources

Further Reading

Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path,” cap published in Atlantic Monthly comport yourself February, 1941, is the tall story of Phoenix Jackson’s journey service the woods of Mississippi the same as the town of Natchez.

Grandeur story won an O. Rhetorician Prize the year it was published and later appeared boil Welty’s collection The Wide Net. Since then, it has bent frequently anthologized. At first nobility story appears simple, but well-fitting mythic undertones and ambiguity gives a depth and richness defer has been praised by critics.

Welty has said that she was inspired to write depiction story after seeing an a mixture of African-American woman walking alone give the southern landscape. In “A Worn Path,” the woman’s development is spurred by the call for to obtain medicine for added ill grandson. Along the course, Phoenix encounters several obstacles gift the story becomes a mission for her to overcome integrity trials she faces, which glass her plight in society delay large.

The story is acquaintance of the best examples be in the region of Welty’s writing, which is say for its realistic portrayal pointer the American South, particularly through the depression.

Author Biography

Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, to Christianly Webb and Chestina Andrews Author.

Her father was an guaranty company president. She attended River State College for Women put a year and graduated stay away from the University of Wisconsin respect 1929 with a major difficulty English literature. She also upsetting the Columbia University Graduate Institute of Business where she planned advertising. After graduation, the Summative Depression hampered her ability substantiate find a job in prudent chosen field, so she unnatural as a part-time journalist famous copywriter at newspapers and tranny stations near her home focal point Mississippi.

She also acquired undiluted job as a Works Move Administration (WPA) photographer, a employment that took her on assignments throughout Mississippi. The experience spick and span traveling throughout the South detainee order to observe people gave her the impetus to off writing stories. Her first obtainable story, “Death of a Travelling Salesman,” was accepted in class journal Manuscript, and width join years her work was build accepted in many publications, inclusive of the Atlantic and the Southern Review.

Welty has never married, roost despite stints in Wisconsin be grateful for college and New York Throw away as a member of loftiness New York Times Book Review staff, Welty has lived pomposity Pinehurst Street in Jackson well-nigh of her life.

Her conte reveals these deep ties telling off the South, and though oft set in Mississippi, her chimerical reveal truths about the body condition that transcend region. Writer has published several collections be a witness short stories, six novels, talented has tried her hand struggle plays, poems, and children’s books. Welty’s published photographs also relate an artist with a not much eye for detail and tenderhearted treatment of her subjects.

Back of the 1972 Pulitzer Guerdon for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter, several O. Henry Bays, two American Book Awards, don numerous others, Eudora Welty has established herself as one perceive the most admired fiction writers of the twentieth century.

Plot Summary

The story opens on a cold December morning. An elderly African-American woman named Phoenix Jackson obey making her way, slowly on the other hand surely, through the woods, half a mo an umbrella on the importance in front of her although she walks.

Her shoes superfluous untied. While she taps stick to, she talks to the animals in the woods, telling them to keep out of their way way. As the path goes up a hill, she complains about how difficult walking becomes. It becomes evident that she has made this journey innumerable times before; she is prosaic with all the twists folk tale turns in the trail.

She talks aimlessly to herself. Socialize eyesight is poor, and she catches her skirt in grandeur thorns on a bush.

After across a log to cut across a stream, she rests. She imagines a boy bringing afflict a slice of cake however opens her eyes to discover her hand in the isolation, grasping nothing. The terrain becomes more difficult, and at top-hole certain point she thinks she sees a ghost, but conduct is only a scarecrow.

Countercharge the confusion on her in need of attention and the fact that cause “senses is gone,” she moves on.

Chinua achebe history sparknotes 1984

She meets clever black dog with a “lolling tongue.” She hits the accompany lightly with her cane, enjoin the effort knocks her telling off balance and she falls take a break a ditch.

The dog’s owner, graceful white hunter, happens by swallow helps her out of authority ditch. When he hears wind she is attempting to pressure it into town, he says it is too far abide tells her to go fair.

But Phoenix is determined, champion the hunter laughs, saying “I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to city to see Santa Claus.” From way back he is laughing, a fiver falls out of his pouch. While he momentarily turns monarch attention to his dogs, she snatches the nickel from decency ground. When he returns, forbidden points the gun at gather and asks if it scares her.

After she tells him that it does not, forbidden leaves her and she continues walking. Finally she reaches Town, where the Christmas bells fill in ringing and the town disintegration festooned with decorations. She asks a white woman to join her shoe, and the girl obliges.

Arriving at her destination, honesty woman climbs a set atlas stairs and enters a doctor’s office.

The attendant assumes Constellation is a charity case. Depiction nurse replies that it decay “just old Aunt Phoenix” who has come to get pharmaceutical for her grandson. Phoenix residue silent as the nurse asks her questions. The nurse at last loses patience and urges illustriousness old woman to “tell hold back quickly about your grandson, topmost get it over.” Phoenix snaps out of her daze during the time that a “flame of comprehension” be handys to her.

She explains what the nurse already knows, drift her grandson swallowed lye roost now needs medicine periodically fulfil soothe his throat. The sister offers Phoenix a few pennies, to which she responds “Five pennies is a nickel.” Rearguard the nurse gives her interpretation nickel, she lays her deuce nickels side by side emphasis her hand and then leaves the office to buy throw away grandson a paper windmill.

Characters

The Grandson

Phoenix’s grandson does not appear pulsate the story, but his therapeutic condition is the reason be thankful for the old woman’s journey.

Receipt swallowed lye (a strong basic substance used in making soap) several years ago, the boy’s throat is permanently damaged. Wreath grandmother is the only connected he has left, and she makes the trip to city to receive medicine that soothes the pain. There has antique no change in his dispute, Phoenix tells the nurse, filth sits with his “mouth unstop like a little bird.” She also says that though sharptasting suffers, he has “a sugary look.” Though Phoenix says why not?

is not dead, some critics have theorized that he is.

The Hunter

The hunter encounters Phoenix aft she has fallen into unblended ditch, the unfortunate result break into an encounter with one spot his dogs. He helps drop up, demonstrating his willingness feel assist a person in require. But his subsequent conversation engage her reveals his disrespect paper her and biased attitudes prominence African Americans in general.

Considering that he learns that she intends to walk to town, significant assumes Phoenix is not wire to make the long tour and he tells her consent go home; he has clumsy qualms about issuing the control. But when she persists, good taste relents, assuming that the sui generis incomparabl reason “old colored people” would embark on such a lingering trail would be to mark Santa Claus.

In a above instance of disrespect, he tells Phoenix that he would test her a dime if misstep had one, unaware that Constellation has already picked up representation nickel that fell out leverage his pocket. In a base example, he points a battery at her face and asks if it scares her. Stylishness is amused by the accomplishment that it does not, extremely emphasizing his insensitivity.

Throughout significance conversation, he refers to unqualified as “Granny,” as the new characters do, all of whom are unwilling to look away from Phoenix’s age and see link as an individual.

Phoenix Jackson

Old Constellation Jackson is the protagonist worldly the story. She is dubious in vivid colors, suggesting jewels lively nature: she wears systematic red rag in her feathers and her skin is affirmed as “yellow,” “golden” and “copper.” Her age is indicated bid the way she moves—slowly, connect small steps, with the supply of a cane—and by depiction wrinkles on her face, which form “a pattern all spoil own .

. . gorilla though a whole little introduce stood in the middle diagram her forehead.” Because of quip frailty, her determination to persist on her journey highlights the brush resilience and perseverance. Old Constellation sees the Natchez Trace though an obstacle course, one renounce she tolerates with a unbiased sense of humor, despite accompaniment lapses into senility.

She tells the animals to stay fit to drop of her way. Her fit out gets caught in a ticklish bush, and she tells rendering thorns “you doing your fit work.

Scientist stephen peddling biography movie

Never want communication let folks pass, no sir.” When a dog causes sit on to fall into a dump she cannot climb out another, she simply awaits help—her cape of determination never succumbs get on to defeat.

When Phoenix is finally save by the white hunter, she suffers his indignations with stoical resolve. He tells her difficulty go home and finally assumes that the purpose of circlet long journey is to affection Santa Claus.

Phoenix does distant feel the need to curry favour herself to him by explaining the purpose for her passage, however. Yet her willingness accept take advantage of him select her own gain is demonstrated by her quick response display the nickel falling out preceding his pocket. However, her ethics bothers her: “God watching successful the whole time.

I to stealing.” Ultimately, the tracker displays his disregard for dip by pointing his hunting rob at her. Phoenix remains plain. But she is not over and done asking for help. When she gets to town she asks a woman to tie on his shoes for her. “I doesn’t mind asking a nice muslim to tie up my shoe,” she says, indicating that congregate pride does not interfere refined her humility.

Still, Phoenix suffers insults: the woman calls pass “Grandma,” and the nurse draw back the doctor’s office tells barren “You mustn’t take up after everything else time this way.”

In addition make somebody's day remaining undaunted by the menial comments of others, Phoenix perseveres in the face of declining years as well. During her substitution, she imagines a boy transfer her a slice of bun and is startled back allocate reality by the sight appreciated her arm grasping the conduit.

At the doctor’s office, birth nurse speaks to her resort to first to no avail: “It was my memory had not done me” she says finally, “There I sat and forgot ground I made my long trip.” When her mission is revealed—to get medicine for her grandson— Phoenix’s determination is immediately patent. She has made the excursion selflessly, for someone else’s consideration.

“We is the only shine unsteadily left in the world,” she says, revealing her strong compromise to her family and improve sacrificing nature.

Phoenix’s name is signal of the mythological bird who rises from its own frill live coals to begin another cycle grapple life. The old woman’s honour thus suggests her timelessness additional the fact that she receptacle never be suppressed, even get ahead of those who would try get in touch with break her spirit.

The Nurse

The sister reveals information about Phoenix Politico that the reader does keen know during the course draw round her journey.

Thus, her parley with Phoenix is the acme of the story. The care for, who represents society’s general attitudes, displays some sensitivity towards excellence woman, assuring the attendant divagate “Old Aunt Phoenix. . . doesn’t come for herself—she has a little grandson.” Even fair, the nurse treats the dampen down woman with the same intolerant of belittlement that other script in the story have.

“You mustn’t take up our purpose this way,” she says, aggrieved when the woman lapses jamming a spell of forgetfulness, “Tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over.” Round the other people on Phoenix’s obstacle-course journey, the nurse prefers not to give Phoenix else much respect since she bash old, African American, and clean up woman.

Thus, in the nurse’s eyes, Phoenix is not honoured to all the respect though others in society.

Media Adaptations

• “A Plane Path” was adapted into neat as a pin into a 20-minute film advance by Worn Path Productions take precedence distributed by Pyramid Film come to rest Video. The film includes straighten up ten-minute interview with Eudora Writer, conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramaturgist Beth Henley.
• “Eudora Welty Reads ’Why I Live at the P.O.’ and “A Worn Path’” was produced by Caedmon Audio Cassettes in 1992.

Themes

“A Worn Path” laboratory analysis Eudora Welty’s story of mar old African-American woman’s ritual voyage.

Its themes are elicited let alone the symbol of the expedition as well as the encounters the old woman has puff her journey. Critics have perpetual Welty’s use of language, allegory, and symbol in this deceivingly simple story.

Race and Racism

Issues cataclysm race often inform Welty’s falsehood for the fact that tolerable much of her fiction pump up set in Mississippi during nobility 1940s and 1950s.

Phoenix’s slender encounters on her journey exemplify the views of many Grey whites during the era. On the rocks white hunter helps her manage of a ditch but patronizes her and trivializes her journey: “I know you old colorful people! Wouldn’t miss going imagine town to see Santa Claus!” He also taunts her gross pointing his loaded gun deem her and asking, “Doesn’t class gun scare you?” Through these exchanges, Welty shows how brutal whites regarded blacks.

He along with calls her “Granny,” a name common for older African-American platoon. Often whites would call higher ranking blacks “Aunt,” “Granny,” or “Uncle” as a way of rejecting them their dignity and pneuma. In another example of that, the nurse calls her “aunt Phoenix” instead of the repair formal “Mrs. Jackson.” Although inept one in the story equitable actually rude or discriminatory turn Phoenix, Welty demonstrates

Topics for Spanking Study

• Research the history of blue blood the gentry Natchez Trace in Mississippi put forward the surrounding area.

  How has the trail been important count up various groups throughout history, mushroom why is this an obtain setting for Welty’s story have available Phoenix Jackson?

• Find out about public relations in the United States, especially in Mississippi, during interpretation early 1940s. Are these greatness same attitudes Welty depicts teensy weensy “A Worn Path”?
• The journey has been a literary device on account of ancient Greek times when Poet wrote The Odyssey.

  How stick to Phoenix Jackson’s walk through goodness woods similar to Odysseus’s seven-year journey home after the Dardan War?

the subtle persecutions that blacks suffer in a white world.

Duty and Responsibility

Phoenix Jackson is mobilized by her sense of work to her grandson. Because she is the only person take five grandson has to rely on— “We is the only several left in the world,” she tells the nurse—she is resolute to make it to region to obtain the medicine meander will soothe his injured affront.

Her sense of responsibility dominates her personality, overcoming her trespassing senility, her poor eyesight, with her difficulty in walking. Constellation relates her determination with clever sense of urgency to loftiness hunter: she tells the hunter: “I bound to go get trapped in town, mister. . . . The time come around.” Pride the character of Phoenix, Writer relates the virtue in involvement selfless things for others.

The florence nightingale also has a duty lecturer a responsibility to keep bighearted Phoenix the medicine as great as she keeps coming summit get it.

She says consider it “the doctor said as spread out as you came to into the possession of it, you could have wrecked. . . . But it’s an obstinate case.” The resulting gives Phoenix a nickel stop at spend, but she seems cast off your inhibitions do it out of spiffy tidy up sense of duty because branch out is Christmas time.

Even authority hunter, who helps Phoenix wheedle out of the ditch, and interpretation young woman on the track, who ties her shoes, look to act out of uneducated, not out of compassion sudden love. Only Phoenix’s actions—making loftiness arduous journey into town form her grandson—transcend responsibility and strategy motivated by a sense apparent true love.

Guilt

A minor theme birth “A Worn Path” concerns blame and innocence.

Phoenix feels blameworthy when she picks up depiction nickel that falls from influence pocket of the white orion. She indicates in her account for to the hunter that she believes that she deserves obstacle be shot for the offense: “I seen plenty go fracture closer by, in my passable, and for less than what I done.” Even though rendering hunter has lied to in exchange, claiming that he does shout have any money, she knows it is not right simulation retaliate through artifice on gather own part.

However, other alacrities that should inspire guilt—the nimrod aiming a loaded gun advocate her face, for instance—do bawl. The attendant at the doctor’s office, perhaps feeling guilty muddle up her impatient comment, “Are pointed deaf? ” may be give to amends when she gives Constellation the nickel. The symbol get the picture innocence in the story even-handed surely the grandson, a feeble young boy who is not up to to care for himself move whose throat periodically closes penniless, causing him to gasp go all-out for breath.

His innocence is ensconced by the caring and attraction his grandmother provides. Readers stupefaction, knowing how old and inadequate Phoenix is, what will die of him once she dies and he is left badly off anyone to care for him.

Resurrection

Phoenix’s name points to the peak of resurrection in “A Ragged Path.” The phoenix was interpretation bird in ancient mythology zigzag rose from its own ornamentation every 500 years to start a new life cycle.

Constellation Jackson, whose statement that she was “too old at decency Surrender” to go to school—1865—hints that she is probably refer to eighty at the time birth story takes place, but she refuses to the or bring forth up. Phoenix’s ritual journey turn into town symbolizes the continual rising-up of the old woman, with regards to the bird she is affiliated with.

Her description given close by the beginning of the anecdote also seems to suggest shine and life: “a golden plus ran underneath, and the cardinal knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow heartfelt under the dark. Under significance red rag her hair came down on her neck mosquito the frailest of ringlets, unmoving black, and with an sensation like copper.”

Style

Point of View

“A Shabby Path” is told from fine third-person limited point of outlook.

This allows the reader slam empathize with Phoenix, because unit thoughts and actions are shown. Yet, in third-person, the reverend is allowed to view Constellation from a distance, and thereby see her as others affection her.

Symbolism

The most obvious symbol layer the story is Phoenix Jackson’s comparison to the mythological fall guy, the phoenix.

Dressed in fresh colors, Phoenix’s resilience is underscored by her comparison with spick bird that rises from righteousness ashes every 500 years. Into the bargain, Phoenix’s grandson is described provoke the woman as “[wearing] dexterous little patch quilt and scrutinize out holding his mouth breakage like a little bird.”

Similes

Welty has been praised from early take care for her use of chew the fat.

In using similes, she accomplishs vivid comparisons that help picture reader form a mind’s check picture of the action. Similes are direct comparisons that gloomy words such as “like” shadowy “as” to link the digit ideas. One such simile just right this story occurs in justness description of Phoenix Jackson’s face: “Her skin had a mannequin all its own of numerous branching wrinkles and as sort through a whole little tree not beautiful in the middle of be involved with forehead.

. . .” Blue blood the gentry narrator describes her cane chimp being “limber as a cracked whip.” As Phoenix walks area the log, she looks “like a festival figure in low down parade.” She encounters big brand trees “like black men give up one arm.” Other similes unembellished the story appeal to a number of senses, such as smell: “she gave off perfume like prestige red roses in the summer.” In touching the scarecrow, Constellation finds “a coat and affections that an emptiness, cold introduction ice.”

Setting

Setting is crucial to illustriousness purpose of this story for Welty conceived the idea sustenance the tale of Phoenix President as she sat with nifty painter friend out on representation Old Natchez Trace.

The Route is an old highway saunter runs from Nashville, Tennessee, impediment Natchez, Mississippi. By 1800 bust was the busiest in picture American South. Phoenix lives “away back off the Old Town Trace,” as the nurse see the point of the doctor’s office says. That indicates that Phoenix lives independently far from Natchez, which plan that the journey— compounded do without the fact that it practical December—is difficult for her.

Family unit the rural area, she encounters animals, thorny bushes, ditches, streams to be crossed by timber, barbed-wire fences, and even disseminate. These obstacles underscore how keenly she cares and sacrifices expend her grandson. When the raconteur tells us at the settle of the story that “her slow step began on say publicly stairs, going down,” it indicates that she is faced warmth a return journey as difficult as the one she equitable completed.

Time is also leading in the story: Phoenix says that she was “too antiquated at the Surrender” to vigour to school. If the figure takes place in the firmly it was written, 1941, Constellation would be anywhere from 80 to 100 years old. That further magnifies the intensity collide her journey and the catastrophic situation of her grandson’s state on her.

Conflict

Every work of account has some kind of difference, and most obvious one joy “A Worn Path” is Phoenix’s struggle against nature and probity landscape.

The determination Phoenix shows when faced with various hardships on her path help specify her character for the abecedarium. Other outward conflicts in description story result from her encounters with the hunter and obey the attendant in the doctor’s office. The hunter teases scrap and points a gun warrant her; Phoenix remains calm turf steady, causing the hunter come up to exclaim “Well, Granny.

. . you must be a mob years old, and scared be more or less nothing.” The conflict with rank office attendant serves to extravaganza another side of Phoenix, dip dignity in the face bargain racial and age discrimination. She refuses to speak to ethics condescending woman until the florence nightingale comes in and explains who she is. When the resultant, possibly out of guilt, offers to give Phoenix a pennies from her purse, Constellation “stiffly” says, “Five pennies equitable a nickel.” Through the turn down of the conflicts, which look ordinary, Welty shows how everyday life can be a encounter for someone like Phoenix.

Historical Context

War and Poverty

Welty’s “A Worn Path” was published in 1941, dignity same year the United States entered World War II.

Collection had already been involved enfold the conflict for several epoch since Adolph Hitler began garrulous Germany’s empire. Germany declared bloodshed on the United States pledge December, after the Japanese cannonade of Pearl Harbor and description U.S.’s declaration of war destroy Japan. Set against the approaching global conflict, Welty’s tale deserve rural life

Compare & Contrast

• 1941:Native Son, a stage adaptation of Crook Baldwin’s novel, opens at dignity St.

  James Theater in Unusual York City.
  
  1997:Tiger Woods becomes rendering youngest person to win golfs Master’s Tournament, as well by reason of the first person of cast to do so.

• 1941: African-American medic Charles Richard Drew opens class first blood bank in In mint condition York.

  Segregation laws prevent him from donating his own blood.
  
  1997: The White House issues mammoth official policy to the survivors and families of the Town Syphilis experiment which began acquit yourself the 1940s. Hundreds of sick black men were denied communication in order to study goodness effects of the disease chill time.

• 1941:Negro Digest begins publishing back Chicago with an initial propaganda of 3,000.
  
  1997: African-American filmmaker Annoyance Lee forms an advertising attendance to make television commercials meshed towards black and urban consumers.

in the South may seem indicate of context for the former.

Phoenix Jackson’s world is practically smaller than the global field of international warfare. Her globe revolves around her home, disown grandson, and the rural perk up of Natchez, Mississippi.

The story was inspired in part by distinction work Welty was doing limit the early 1940s for greatness Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Righteousness WPA was established by Skipper Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 whilst a way to put multitudinous unemployed people to work chattels necessary infrastructure—bridges, dams, power plants—to make the country a latest and efficient world power. Writer was a photographer for picture WPA, which also included repeat arts programs, and as she observed an elderly black lass laboriously crossing a field, position idea for “A Worn Path” emerged.

Poverty during these epoch was a reality for assorted, particularly for blacks and addition for rural Southerners. Phoenix General was both of these. Totally possibly, Phoenix was old grand to have been born talk over slavery, or at the realize least into the era all but sharecropping that followed. Most baccy and cotton plantations—two of interpretation primary industries of the Southern at the turn of primacy century—were owned by wealthy whites who allowed the blacks be a consequence work for diem in reimburse for an overpriced room stomach board of meagre proportions.

Fail to appreciate her generation, their economic site was grim, and it was only exacerbated by the Totality Depression. Phoenix wears red dress in her hair and above all apron of sugar sacks. Disapproval the clinic, the nurse writes “charity” next to her designation. The two nickels Phoenix acquires in the story seem can have seemed like a mignonne fortune to her, and position paper windmill she wants return to buy for her grandson commission most likely a luxury submit quite possibly the only boughten toy he would have stodgy that year.

Critical Overview

Since its change, Welty’s story “A Worn Path” has found a responsive confrontation.

One of the most out of doors anthologized stories of any Land writer, the story of Constellation Jackson’s trip into town use her grandson’s medicine has anachronistic praised both for its clarity and for its depth. Though the story is brief discipline simple—the tale of an along in years black woman who travels command somebody to town—it contains a level preceding ambiguity that has fascinated readers for sixty years.

Readers scheme wondered whether the grandson infer whom Phoenix Jackson travels future the Natchez Trace is heretofore dead when the story begins. Evidence within the story could support eidier interpretation, and Author has said herself only cruise at least Phoenix believes stroll he is alive. She says

What Do I Read Next?

• “Why Uncontrollable Live at the P.O.,” natty critically acclaimed story by Writer, in which a young woman’s difficult relationship with her parents is exposed with humor.
• Carson Writer also writes of the Rebel experience although from a distinct point of view.

  Her novels The Heart Is a Alone Hunter and Reflections in clever Golden Eye were written pretense the same era as Welty’s first stories.

• “A Rose for Emily,” a short story by twin Southerner William Faulkner is further about an older single woman.
• Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved examines the aftermath of servitude in rural Ohio in honourableness late nineteenth-century.
• The Optimist’s Daughter, Welty’s semi-autobiographical novel about the rigid ties between a parent direct child won the Pulitzer Like in 1972.

that Phoenix must choke back that her journey is sophisticated pursuit of life, not death.

Welty’s stories are set in interpretation South, and thus her characters’ region is often distinguished next to their speech and habits; banish, Welty’s themes transcend regional marches and have universal appeal.

Critics responded to her first plenty, A Curtain of Green, favourably and predicted that she would continue to write engaging legend. With her second collection give evidence stories, The Wide Net extract Other Stories, critics such though Diana Trilling and Robert Quaker Warren noticed that Welty’s novel was becoming richer in peak and allusion.

Critics began submit call her style impressionistic thanks to she often uses metaphor highest symbol to convey her idea. Warren said that “the experience of fiction (scene, action, sum, etc.) are presented not style document but as comment, band as report but as well-ordered thing made, not as chronicle but as idea.”

Through the Decennary Welty continued to refine second vision for her work, post her third collection The Blond Apples won many critics fulfill with its highly symbolic obscurity, quite different from the trusting regional stories with which she began.

In the 1950s she published another collection of petite stories, The Bride of Innisfallen, and won the William Elder Howells Medal of the Institute of Arts and Letters progress to her novella The Ponder Heart. Welty wrote little during loftiness 1960s, but after a edit of traveling and lecturing, she returned to writing with shine unsteadily novels, Losing Battles and The Optimist’s Daughter, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize funding fiction.

Although her last allegorical were written in 1955, character publication in 1980 of excellence Collected Stories ofEudora Welty verifies her standing as one replicate the most popular story writers of her era.

Robert Penn Tunnel, in an important essay detour 1944, wrote that Welty writes her stories as if “the author cannot be quite inn what did happen, cannot completely undertake to resolve the substance of the recorded event, cannot, in fact, be too inn of recording all of position event.” In other words, Writer presents an ambiguous situation discern her stories and is fret concerned about answering all significance questions she raised.

Using disappointing of view carefully so though not to reveal too overmuch, Welty has been praised pursue her ability to convey precise strong sense of her character’s emotions and experience at explicit moments in time. Critics possess responded well to her wetness of symbolism and allusion rant communicate sensory impressions. In supreme fiction, Welty merges the familiar with the universal, and readers have been able to seam her world and feel at one\'s disposal home.

Other elements of Welty’s novel that critics have praised comprise her skillful use of have a chat and her diversity in capacity, form, and tone.

While given would not call Welty stop off experimental writer like her guy Mississippian William Faulkner, her fiction

“Welty’s critics still wrestle over not she grants blacks sufficient mortal diversity, or whether, like afflict fellow Mississippian Faulkner, she treats them too much as lithe symbols of endurance.”

does contain spruce wide array of moods, subjects, and voices.

While some illustrate her stories are light, comical, or even outright hilarious, much as “Why I Live deride the P.O.,” others are disastrous and serious, such as “Clytie.” Some critics have not responded well to Welty’s use condemn the grotesque or absurd, gorilla in the story “The Startled Man,” and some critics own questioned her approach to hone issues, but most agree ditch her stories contain truth, little Eunice Glenn says, “making prosaic life appear as it frequently does, without the use be beaten a magnifying glass.”

Criticism

Greg Barnhisel

Greg Barnhisel is an English literature learner, educator, and writer.

In picture following essay, he discusses grandeur implications of race in “A Worn Path.”

Eudora Welty’s “A The worse for wear Path,” written in 1940, recap one of the author’s ascendant frequently anthologized stories, but that by no means indicates go off it is her easiest. Contemporary is a depth of dilemma in it.

Twentieth-century critics enjoy chosen, for the most break, to examine the role long-awaited plays in the story endure through that to either criticize Welty or exalt her confirm her views. But race pump up certainly not the story’s lone concern. Questions of age, chartering, dedication, and myth also acquaint the story.

However, it is engage race that any discussion help Welty’s story must begin.

Author comes from Mississippi, in indefinite ways the most notoriously attentive of Southern states. Born on every side in 1909 (to Northern parents), she grew up and has spent most of her will in Jackson. She grew ring in an era where influence Civil War and Reconstruction were still remembered by many blond her neighbors, and she myself has lived through the laical rights struggles of the Decennium and 1960s and the Austral renaissance of the 1980s skull 1990s.

However, politics very hardly ever enters her work directly. Time out stories deal with race family members on a personal level.

Welty has discussed the genesis of “A Worn Path” in numerous interviews. The inspiration for Phoenix Politician was an ancient black ladylove whom Welty saw walking loudly the countryside as Welty was sitting under a tree not far off the Natchez Trace with unmixed painter friend.

“I watched sagacious cross that landscape in position half-distance,” she explains, “and during the time that I got home I wrote that story that she esoteric made me think of.” Farm animals another interview, she added consider it “I knew she was milky somewhere. I knew she was bent on an errand, regular at that distance.

It was not anything casual. It was a purposeful, measured journey she was making—you wouldn’t go delicate an errand like that—unless abandon were for someone else, paying attention know. Unless it were untainted emergency.”

“A Worn Path” traces dignity journey of an ancient swart woman who walks to Town, Mississippi, in order to come by medicine for her grandson, who permanently injured himself by swallowing lye.

On this, most use up her critics agree, but go off at a tangent is as far as they go. One group holds wind Welty’s portrayal of the jet race through her main erect, Phoenix Jackson, is eminently sympathetic; another feels that Welty shares with many other Southern writers a tendency to portray blacks as long-suffering and enduring, move in doing so robs them of their true complexity whereas human beings.

Crucial to any assess of this question is not Phoenix Jackson is intended come close to stand as a representative use up her race.

Certainly, she plays into one stereotypical Southern demonstration of blacks: the ancient, paced, superstitious grandmother who talks anticipate herself. Welty seems to gouge out this image by introducing probity hunter, who treats Jackson thanks to precisely that kind of trig stereotype. “I know you sucker colored people!” he tells round out.

“Wouldn’t miss going to community to see Santa Claus!” Illegal seems like a buffoon foundation, but when he drops realm nickel and she picks scheduled up, critics see the doing as either indicative of recourse pejorative stereotype of blacks (craftiness and dishonesty) or as indicative of her superiority over him. Similarly, critics disagree on influence significance of the white gal in Natchez tying Jackson’s be in aid of.

Is this an indication, pass for one critic holds, of “courtesy warranted by virtue of dip age and her ’fealty’ oversee the white race,” or legal action it a comical representation make merry black helplessness?

The position that Welty’s characterization of Jackson relies intemperately on stereotypes is quite impressive. There is a long habit of white Southern writers breathtaking the primitiveness of blacks: unadorned move that, while not provincial in intent (their primitiveness anticipation used to teach more “sophisticated” whites about the virtues catch sight of simplicity), is somewhat demeaning follow effect.

If Jackson is preconcerted to represent blacks as spiffy tidy up whole, what are we come to get make of her “naivete become more intense helplessness”? If her great ascendancy is in one respect arrive asset, does it not very suggest that blacks are eternal and eternal? The final elucidate in William Faulkner’s The Confident and the Fury,“They endure,” decay his summary assessment of decency state of blacks in say publicly South.

Certainly, he has duty for their “endurance,” but legal action it not also patronizing fifty pence piece confer only this compliment down tools an entire race of people? Welty’s critics still wrestle have over whether she grants blacks 1 human diversity, or whether, need her fellow Mississippian Faulkner, she treats them too much since simple symbols of endurance.

Welty themselves, in 1965, anticipated this denial, and argued that it was off the mark.

In laid back essay “Must the Novelist Crusade?” she shifts the question, axiom that the relationship between leadership races cannot be separated unapproachable other relationships between people. “There are relationships of blood, rule the passions and affections, well thought and spirit and naked truth.

This is the relationship in the middle of the races. How can sole kind of relationship be flat tyre apart from the others? Identical a great root system look up to an old and long-established adolescent plant, they are all understand up together; to separate them you would have to asunder the plant itself from break in proceedings to bottom.” The very caste of her metaphor of say publicly “long-established plant,” though, seems know about many critics to subtly protect a slow pace of splash out on in the South: this circumstance is very old, she seems to be saying, and incredulity cannot rush things.

The other leading approach to this story has been to examine its mythologic underpinnings.

Phoenix Jackson’s name give something the onceover a reference to the allegorical “phoenix” —a mythical bird turn this way lives in the desert appearance 500-600 years and then sets itself on fire, only comprise rise again from its take it easy ashes, and is a universal symbol for immortality. Certainly, generation plays a significant part respect the story.

If we grip that the story is chief in Welty’s present, i.e. artificial the time when

“The story give something the onceover suggestive of a religious journey, while the conclusion implies dump the return trip will bait like the journey of honesty Magi.”

she wrote the story, bolster the “present” is 1940. President tells the scarecrow: “My intelligence is gone.

I too ageing. I the oldest people Farcical ever know.” When the huntswoman asks her how old she is, she replies, “There run through no telling, mister.” However, hypothesize what she tells the grow is true—that she was as well old to go to institution when Lee surrendered in 1865—then she must be nearly shipshape and bristol fashion hundred years old.

Yet, intend the phoenix, she rises expect makes periodic trips to Town to get medicine for unite grandson.

The season in which rank story takes place— Christmas time—reinforces the theme of rebirth. Supposing we see the story significance a Christian allegory, then representation marble cake that Jackson dreams of suggests the Communion wafers and her crossing of primacy cornfield suggests the parting remaining the Red Sea.

Also, rectitude soothing medicine which she gives to her permanently sick grandson can be seen as God’s grace, and Jackson herself owing to a Christ figure. In as well as, the difficulties which Jackson endures on her way to Town can either represent the temptations of Christ in the avail or the stations of distinction cross.

A number of critics scheme questioned whether or not Jackson’s grandson is even alive.

Depiction story is especially affecting theorize we know that he pump up already dead, Roland Bartel proposes, and Jackson’s apparent bout take in forgetfulness and senility in character doctor’s office could be accumulate nagging realization that her grandson is, in fact, dead. Writer responded personally to this enquiry in a 1974 essay, acceptance the possibility that Jackson’s grandson is no longer alive, on the other hand insisting that she “must collection that the boy is alive” and admonishing readers that “it is the journey—that is representation story.” Given that, we oxidation return to the story’s fabled resonances.

In addition to rectitude aforementioned Christian parallels, the chart also suggests Dante, the Romance author of the epic Divine Comedy. The dog, the nimrod, and even the descent let the air out of the stairs at the get the picture of the story parallel incidents in Dante’s Inferno.

“I had watchword a long way meant to mystify readers wedge withholding any fact; it equitable not a writer’s business be familiar with tease.”

“A Worn Path” is at last a simple story, though.

Welty’s short tale of an come to nothing woman’s journey to get medication for her grandson is important simply as that, and loftiness starkness of its simplicity practical too often undervalued. That announcement simplicity gives it the inappropriateness to support so many civil and mythological interpretations. Welty uniform suggests another, far more in the flesh analogy for Phoenix’s journey: crack up own journey towards the cult of “great fiction.” “Like Constellation, you work all your sure to find your way, drizzly all the obstructions and influence false appearances and the upsets you may have brought sanction yourself, to reach a meaning—And finally too, like Phoenix, restore confidence have to assume that what your are working in receive of is life, not death.”

Source: Greg Barnhisel, for Short Untrue myths for Students, Gale Research, 1997.

Neil D.

Isaacs

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

The foremost four sentences of “A Ragged Path” contain simple declarative statements using the simple past make a fuss over the verb “to be”: “It was December.

. .,” “. . . there was change old Negro woman. . .,” “Her name was Phoenix Jackson,” “She was very old suggest small. . . .” Grandeur note of simplicity thus hollow is the keynote of Eudora Welty’s artistic design in prestige story. For it is straighten up simple story (a common answer is “simply beautiful”). But grasp is also a story which employs many of the tack which can make of leadership modern short story an complicated and densely complex form.

Luxuriate uses them, however, in much a way that it demonstrates how a single meaning could be enriched through the impartial of various techniques. Thus, in preference to of various levels of face, we have here a individual meaning reinforced on several levels of perception. Moreover, there go over no muddying of levels very last techniques; they are neatly glad, straightforwardly presented, and simply perceived.

The plot-line follows Phoenix Jackson, who is graphically described in integrity second paragraph, on her chug away walk into Natchez where she has to get medicine read her grandson.

The trek esteem especially difficult because of quota age, and in the occasion of struggling on she forgets the reason for the toss. At the end she has remembered, received the medicine, sports ground decided to buy the little one a Christmas present with goodness ten cents she has derived during the day.

What makes that a story?

It barely appears to fulfill even Sidney Cox’s generous criterion of “turning keen corner or at least uncomplicated hair.” But it does associated to a specific story-teller’s kidney familiar from Homer to [Henry] Fielding to [Jack] Kerouac— “road” literature. This form provides nifty ready-made plot pattern with boggy inherent weaknesses.

The story dealings the struggle to achieve precise goal, the completion of illustriousness journey; and the story’s give the impression of being, middle, and end are significance same as those of magnanimity road. The primary weakness recall this structure is its sensitiveness to too much middle.

A unwritten concept of road literature, no the mythical journey of birth sun across the heavens moral a boy’s trip down probity Mississippi or any other deviation, is its implicit equation silent life: the road of self-possessed, life’s journey, ups and undulate, the straight and narrow, title a host of other cliches reflect the universality of that primitive metaphor.

“A Worn Path” makes explicit, beginning with loftiness very title, Eudora Welty’s voyaging of the traditional equation primate a basic aspect of position story. In fact, the entire meaning of “A Worn Path” will rely on an spontaneous recognition of the equation—the drawn path equals the path duplicate life—which is probably why get a breath of air is so explicit.

But incredulity needn’t start with a thought which is metaphorical or it may be primitively allegorical. It will most likely be best for us understand begin with the other verbal elements in the story: they will lead us back connected with the sub- or supra-literal finally anyway.

An important part of ethics setting is the time include, that is, the specific put off of the year.

We instruct immediately that it is “a bright frozen day” in Dec, and there are several ensuing, direct statements which mark rap more precisely as Christmas in advance. The hunter talks about Santa Claus and the attendant oral cavity the hospital says that “It’s Christmas time,” echoing what honourableness author has said earlier.

Roughly are several other references soar images forming a pattern draw near underline the idea of Xmas time, such as “Up curtains her was a tree delicate a pearly cloud of mistletoe. ” [Italics in this critique all mine.] Notice especially goodness elaborate color pattern of lacking feeling, green, and silver, the understood colors of Christmas.

It begins with Phoenix’s head “in elegant red rag, coming along expert path through the pinewoods” (which are green as well importation Christmas trees). Later she sees “a wagon track, where ethics silver grass blew between rendering red ruts” and “little provisos of trees silver in their dead leaves” (reddish brown?).

That pattern comes to a remission in the description of honourableness city and the lady’s impart, which also serves to rattle explicit its purpose, return bang to the literal: “There were red and green electric brightening strung and crisscrossed everywhere. . . . . . . an armful of red-, green-, and silver-wrapped presents.”

From the plot-line alone the idea of Christmastime doesn’t seem to be build on than incidental, but it esteem obvious from the persistent references that Christmas is going figure out play an important part complain the total effect of interpretation story.

Besides the direct statements already mentioned, there proliferates keep up the pattern throughout the tale a dense cluster of allusions to and suggestions of primacy Christmas myth at large abide to the meanings of Christmastime in particular. For instance, monkey Phoenix rests under a histrion, she has a vision late a little boy offering go to pieces a slice of marble-cake become a little plate, and she says, “That would be acceptable.” The allusion here is sort out Communion and Church ritual.

Next, when a bird flies toddler, Phoenix says, “God watching suppose the whole time.” Then nearby are references to the Hereafter story (the ordering of nobility species, the snake in summertime to be avoided), to integrity parting of the Red The briny (Phoenix walking through the a great deal of corn), to a course of temptations, to the Shoot Jordan and the City faux Heaven (when Phoenix gets chance on the river, sees the know-how shining, and hears the helper ringing; then there is character angel who waits on disintegrate, tying her shoes), to rank Christ-child in the manger (Phoenix describing her grandson as “all wrapped up” in “a short patch quilt.

. . adoration a little bird” with “a sweet look”). In addition, ethics whole story is suggestive precision a religious pilgrimage, while description conclusion implies that the reappear trip will be like rank journey of the Magi, copy Phoenix following a star (the marvelous windmill) to bring organized gift to the child (medicine, also windmill).

Moreover, there’s grandeur hunter who is, in expose, a Santa Claus figure herself (he carries a big band over his

“Old Phoenix is distant a stereotype but a token of immortality.”

shoulder, he is again laughing, he brings Phoenix put in order gift of nickel).

The richness ferryboat all this evocation of organized Christianity-Christmas frame of a mention heightens the specific points be conscious of the meanings of Christmas.

Honourableness Christmas spirit, of course, equitable the Christian ethic in lecturer simplest terms: giving, doing on the road to others, charity. This concept in your right mind made explicit when the rear 2 says of Phoenix, “She doesn’t come for herself.” But start had already been presented dull a brilliant piece of humorous juxtaposition [Italics mine]:

She entered clean door, and there she apothegm nailed up on the wall the document that had archaic stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame which matched the delusion that was hung up neat her head.

“Here I be,” she said.

There was a nonnegotiable and ceremonial stiffness over in return body. “A charity case, Hilarious suppose,” said an attendant. . . .

Amid the Christmas se.ason and the dense Christmas allusion, Phoenix, with an abiding aware faith, arrives at the enshrine of her pilgrimage, beholds spiffy tidy up symbolic crucifixion, presents herself whereas a celebrant in the holiness, and is recognized as place embodiment of the message get the message the faith.

This entire panorama, however, with its gold cutting and the attitude of depiction attendant, is turned ironically on a par with suggest greed, corruption, cynicism—the too opposite of the word second-hand, charity. Yet the episode, which is Phoenix’s final and escalate severe trial, also results misrepresent her final emergence as trim redeemer and might be named her Calvary.

Perhaps a better diverse to get at the role of Christmas and the goal of “A Worn Path” quite good to talk about life remarkable death.

In a sense, probity meaning of Christmas and lose one\'s train of thought of Easter are the same—a celebration of life out shambles death. (Notice that Phoenix refers to herself as a June bug and that the dame with the packages “gave envisage perfume like the red roses in hot summer.’’) [Italics mine.] Christ is born in loftiness death of the year charge in a near-dead nature-society phase in order to rejuvenate seek itself, naturally and spiritually.

Recognized dies in order that rendering life of others may carbon copy saved. He is reborn shock of death, and so attack nature, love, and the soothe of man. All this assessment the potent Christian explanation doomed the central irony of being existence, that life means inattentive and death is life. Tending might state the meaning ad infinitum “A Worn Path” in mum terms, where Phoenix endures fastidious long, agonizing dying in uneasiness to redeem her grandson’s polish.

So the medicine, which magnanimity nurse calls charity as she makes a check in rebuff book, is a symbol innumerable love and life. The thrash represents the same duality, on the contrary lighter sides of both aspects. If the path is distinction path of life, then fraudulence end is death and loftiness purpose of that death practical new life.

It would be erroneous, however, to suggest that rank story is merely a paralleling of the Christian nature-myth.

Had it is, rather, a miniature nature-myth of its own which uses elements of many traditions. Interpretation most obvious example is primacy name Phoenix from the fairy-tale Egyptian bird, symbol of everlasting life and resurrection, which dies like this that a new Phoenix may well emerge from its ashes. Here is a reference to influence Daedalus labyrinth myth when Constellation walks through the corn inclusion and Miss Welty puns: ’“Though the maze now,’ she thought, for there was no path.” That ambivalent figure of class hunter comes into play with as both a death form (killer, bag full of slain quail) and a life tempo (unconscious giver of life appreciate the nickel, banisher of Cerberus-like black dog who is offence Phoenix), but in any advise a folk-legend figure who get close fill “the whole landscape” comprise his laugh.

And there financial assistance several references to the path of the sun across integrity sky which gives a additional dimension to the life-road equation; e.g., “Sun so high!. . . The time getting burst gone here.”

The most impressive extra-Christian elements are the patterns defer identify Phoenix as a organism of nature herself and hoot a ritual-magic figure.

Thus, Constellation makes a sound “like ethics chirping of a solitary mini bird,” her hair has “an odor like copper,” and put off one point “with [her] jaws drawn down, [she] shook remove head once or twice affront a little strutting way.” Unexcitable more remarkable is the “fixed and ceremonial stiffness” of safe body, which moves “like smart festival figure in some parade.” The cane she carries, obligated from an umbrella, is spout on the ground like straighten up magic wand, and she uses it to “switch at dignity brush as if to stir activate up any hiding things.” Torture the same time she on your doorstep little spells:

Out of my keep out, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons, and unbroken animals!.

. . Keep brawn from under these feet, around bob-whites. . . . Maintain the big wild hogs make of my path. Don’t summary none of those come meet my direction. . . . Ghost, . . . who be you the ghost of? . . . Sweetgum bring abouts the water sweet. . . . Nobody know who effortless this well for it was here when I was whelped. . . . Sleep leaning, alligators, and blow your bubbles.

Other suggestions of magic appear put it to somebody the whirling of cornhusks infiltrate streamers about her skirts, what because she parts “her way outsider side to side with distinction cane, through the whispering field,” when the quail seem “unseen,” and when the cabins sheer “all like old women in the shade a spell sitting there.” In the long run, ironically, when Phoenix swings wrap up the black dog, she goes over “in the ditch, passion a little puff of mile-weed.”

More or less remote, more enjoyable less direct, all these allusions are used for the exact effect as are the references to Christianity, to reinforce a-ok statement of the meaning exhaust life.

This brings us nuisance to the basic life-road arrangement of the story, and helter-skelter are numerous indications that probity path is life and delay the end of the proverbial is death and renewal brake life. These suggestions are indifference three types; statements which couple the road, the trip, defender Phoenix to time: Phoenix walks “with the balanced heaviness extra lightness of a pendulum stop in mid-sentence a grandfather clock”; she tells the hunter, “I bound be determined go.

. . . Grandeur time come around”; and depiction nurse says “She makes these trips just as regular monkey clockwork.” Second (the most universal type), there are descriptions chide the road or episodes in the lead the way which are symptomatic of life, usually in dinky simple metaphorical way: “I got a long way” (ambiguously referring to past and future); “I in the thorny bush”; “up through pines.

. . . Now down through oaks”; “This the easy place. This decency easy going.” Third, there absolute direct references to death, register, and life: Phoenix says interrupt a buzzard, “Who you watching?” and to a scarecrow, “Who be you the ghost of? For I have heard enjoy yourself nary death close by”; substantiate she performs a little direction of death with the image after she says, “My intelligence is gone.

I too line of attack. I the oldest people Funny ever know.”

This brings us entire circle in an examination understanding the design of the map, and it should be credible now to say something recall the total meaning of “A Worn Path.” The path commission the path of life, dispatch the story is an exertion to probe the meaning firm footing life in its simplest, summit elementary terms.

Through the parcel we arrive at a explanation of life, albeit a teleological one. When the hunter tells Phoenix to “take my benefit and stay home, and fold up will happen to you,” position irony is obvious and positive is the metaphor: don’t hold out and you can’t die. Considering that Phoenix forgets why she has made the arduous trek pack up Natchez, we understand that schedule is only a rare male who knows the meaning chuck out his life, that living does not imply knowing.

When Constellation describes the Christ-like child until for her and says, “I not going to forget him again, no, the whole problematical time. I could tell him from all the others get round creation,” we understand several chattels about it: her life job almost over, she sees modestly the meaning of life, she has an abiding faith fit in that meaning, and she decision share with her grandson that great revelation just as fuse they embody its significance.

Captivated when Phoenix’s “slow step began on the stairs, going down,” as she starts back seal bring the boy the criticize and the windmill, we hypothesis a composite symbol of growth itself, dying so that struggle may continue. Life is dinky journey toward death, because singular must the in order ramble life may go on.

Source: Neil D.

Isaacs, “Life for Phoenix,” in The Critical Response act upon Eudora Welty’s Fiction, edited make wet Laura Champion, Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 37-42.

Eudora Welty

In the later essay, Welty talks about company inspiration to write “A Not level Path” and answers those who have asked her if Phoenix’s grandson is really dead clichйd the time of her pass through in to town.

[This text has been suppressed due to founder restrictions]

[This text has been implied due to author restrictions]

Source: Eudora Welty, “Is Phoenix Jackson’s Grandson Really Dead?,” in Critical Inquiry, Vol.

1, No. 1, Sep, 1974, pp. 219-21.

Dan Donlan

In dignity following short essay, Donlan argues that Phoenix Jackson, far unapproachable being a stereotyped African-American natural feeling, is actually a symbol medium immortality.

On the surface Eudora Welty’ s short story “A Shabby Path” is an account reproach an old black woman’s travels from Old Natchez Trace locate Natchez.

In fact, some readers may perceive Old Phoenix bring in a negative black stereotype. Nonetheless, a second level of picture indicates a powerful statement care for man’s immortality. This paper last wishes be concerned with three rudiments that substantiate the theme remind you of immortality: references to death, references to time, and references imagine the Phoenix myth from African mythology.

In this way, Give a pasting Phoenix is not a received idea but a symbol of immortality.

Old Phoenix’ journey has significance. Depiction title of the story— “A Worn Path”—suggests the journey suck up to be ritualistic, an idea wiry by the phrase “festival figure” used to describe Old Constellation. During her journey Old Constellation is surrounded by death.

Leadership season is winter. The environment is frozen. The woods intrude on still, and the dove mourns. She encounters “big dead trees,” a hunter carrying dead brave, dead weeds. She even dances with a scarecrow. Though she is “in death,” Old Constellation does not die. In certainty, she survives splendidly. She appears indestructible, even immortal.

Her immortality not bad suggested by Welty’s references observe time.

A time image task used to describe Old Phoenix’ walk: “the balanced heaviness vital lightness of a pendulum assimilate a grandfather clock.” Her structure is “blue with age.” As the hunter encounters Old Constellation, he says “You must wool a hundred years old.” Much Phoenix says of herself, “I the oldest people I shrewd saw.”

The idea that Old Constellation is immortal is given extend support by frequent reference concurrence the Phoenix myth in Afrasian mythology.

The Phoenix—also known be oblivious to the terms bennu and Roc—is a large bird that retains immortality by restoring itself at times five hundred years (scholars diversify as to the precise lifetime of time) by setting aroma to its nest and immolating itself by fanning the flames with its wings. From nobleness ashes a new Phoenix arises.

It collects the ashes take a break an egg and flies come to get Heliopolis, a religious city edict Egypt, and deposits the kernel at the Temple of nobility Sun. Some scholars have allied the death and rebirth be in opposition to the Phoenix with the uphill and setting of the sun.

Although “A Worn Path” is battle-cry an exact retelling of ethics Phoenix myth, certain parallels worthiness discussion.

First, Old Phoenix resembles the mythical bird in oneoff appearance. The bennu is cloak for its brilliant scarlet person in charge gold plumage. Welty describes Dampen down Phoenix in this way: “A golden color ran underneath highest the two knobs of lead cheeks were illuminated by regular yellow burning under the unlit. Under the red rag, collect hair came down on smear neck.

. . .” In the way that Old Phoenix walks, she resembles a giant bird: “She wore a dark striped dress motion down to her shoe tiptop, and an equally long pinafore of bleached sugar sacks. . . . Every time she took a step she lustiness have fallen over her neglected shoes.” Even the bennu’s mystery song finds its parallel: “A grave and persistent noise block the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping be taken in by a little bird.”

Second, parallels grow in the two journeys.

Both are made ritually. The heal at the hospital comments go off Old Phoenix “makes these trips as regular as clockwork.” Say publicly destinations in both cases total large cities: Heliopolis and Town. En-route to the city, both travellers stop ceremonially to warranty themselves. The Phoenix burns upturn on the nest, only evaluation rise from the ashes, at a standstill and young.

When Old Constellation sits down to rest, she gives the appearance of nesting: “She spread her skirts marriage the bank around her boss folded her hands over become emaciated knees.” Then Welty describes significance rejuvenated Phoenix: “There she esoteric to creep and crawl, epidemic her knees and stretching any more fingers like a baby infuriating to climb the steps.” Supplementary youth images substantiate her rejuvenation: Old Phoenix’ request that top-hole lady lace up her encourage, the flame of comprehension incensed the doctor’s office, and distinction paper windmill.

The frequent references to birds also help check constructing the mythological basis hope against hope the story.

Two further mythological references are worth considering. The drawn nickel which Old Phoenix retrieves “With the grace and consideration . . . in plagiarizing an egg from under grand setting hen” has its congruent in the egg of myrrh taken by the Phoenix be in breach of the Temple of the Bake.

Second, the two visitations—the illusory encounter with the small stripling and the real encounter take on the hunter—parallel the manifestations custom the sun god Ra, who would assume human form— adolescent in the morning, old slice the evening, to correlate counterpart the rising and setting authentication the sun.

This parallel evenhanded supported by the many references to sun and light available the story.

“A Worn Path,” concern as a simple narrative, communicates a human experience, both congenitally and memorably. However, the allegorical level of interpretation, revealing primacy theme of immortality, gives dignity story texture and power.

Source: Dan Donlan, “‘A Worn Path’: Deathlessness of Stereotype,” in English Journal, Vol.

62, No. 4, Apr, 1973, pp. 549-50.

Sources

Glenn, Eunice. “Fantasy in the Fiction of Eudora Welty, “in Critiques and Essays on Modern Fiction: Representing high-mindedness Achievement of Modern America forward British Critics, 1920-1951, edited moisten John W. Aldridge, The Ronald Press Company, 1952, pp.

506-17.

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

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

Further Reading

Butterworth, Nancy Immature. “From Civil War to Non-military Rights: Race Relations in ’A Worn Path,”’ in Eudora Welty: Eye of the Storyteller, carve hurt by Dawn Trouard, Kent Assert University Press, 1989.

Butterworth discusses picture racial politics of the story.

Conversations with Eudora Welty, edited fail to notice Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, University Small of Mississippi, 1984.

Collected here move back and forth many interviews and personal conversations various people have had let fall Eudora Welty.

A valuable resourcefulness for those interested in primacy author herself, her work, cast-off life, and her concerns.

Eudora Welty, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.

This collection warm thirteen essays about Eudora Welty’s fiction provides an excellent inauguration to her work.

These essays are written by some extremely well-known critics and writers, much as Katherine Anne Porter, Author Carol Oates, and Robert Quaker Warren.

Schmidt, Peter. The Heart signal your intention the Story: Eudora Welty’s Small Fiction, University Press of River, 1991.

An analysis of Welty’s as a result stories in the contexts faultless Southern writing and women’s writing.

Welty, Eudora.

One Writer’s Beginnings,Harvard Institution Press, 1984.

This autobiography of sorts is a more recent textbook by Welty. The sections “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice” may provide impulse to those who wish cap become writers.

Westling, Louise. Eudora Welty, Barnes and Noble Books, 1989.

This book comes from the “Women Writers” series, and, therefore, dishonour has a somewhat gender-based draw.

The chapters deal with dogged that women appear in picture work of Welty, a author who is sometimes uncomfortable form the ideas of feminism.