A worn path genre
< Back To Teaching Specific Texts c Worn Path Submitted by Trudy Schrandt (profile) Title and Author: Worn Path (full text) by Eudora Welty Genre: Short story Themes: If we are going to last, we have to overcome selfishness by loving others; the most unfortunate and isolated are often superior; better to live with the uncertainty of life than the certainty of death Class Type: Male, different age groups, most with chemical dependency or violence issues This is the story of an elderly black woman traveling to town during the Christmas season for medicine for her young grandson. She has traveled this worn path many times before as she does on this day. She encounters elements of nature that would stay her progress. As she approaches town, she meets and deals with the dangers a white hunter presents. Once in town, her abilities seem to be more challenged than they were in the country. As she arrives at the doctor's office, the ordeal of her journey seems to get the best of her as she is unable to answer questions put to her by the staff. Rallying so that she can obtain the needed medicine and return to her grandson, she is able to obtain a nickel to add to another nickel she stole from the hunter in order to buy a paper windmill for her grandson before she returns by the same path. Approach: I often use this as the first reading for a new session. When they have completed the reading, they often wonder why I had them read a story about some crazy old woman. This provides me with the opportunity to show that by taking a closer look at characters and their actions they can come to understand a great deal. It is also an opportunity to show how symbols work to intensify the story and its meaning. I DO NOT teach symbols during the term, but by exposing the students to a story containing as many as this one does, I find that the participants come back again and again throughout the.
A Worn Path by Eudora Welty is a short story about an elderly African- American woman who undertakes a familiar journey on a road in a rural area to acquire medicine for her grandson. She expresses herself, both to her surroundings and in short spurts of spoken monologue, warning away animals and expressing the pain she feels in her weary bones. At its heart, A Worn Path is a tale of undying love and devotion that pushes us toward a goal. Plot[edit] In A Worn Path, an old woman named Phoenix Jackson is walking through the woods into town.[2] On her way she encounters many obstacles, including thorny bushes, barbed wire, and a large dog, among others. She meets a hunter, pocketing a nickel that he drops, and a lady who ties her shoes. Her reason for going to Natchez is to pick up a supply of medicine for her grandson, who accidentally swallowed lye a few years before. She tells the nurse in the hospital that the damage to his throat never fully heals, and every so often his throat will begin to swell shut. It is Old Phoenix's love for her grandson that causes her to face the trial of the journey to town, every time it is necessary, with no questions asked. Symbolism[edit] Popular with Literature classes,[citation needed] the symbolism in the piece and the lesson(s) to be learned from it are open to interpretation. Many critics have commented on the significance of the main character's name in relation to the folkloric phoenix, relating to her indomitable ability to rise again and make her journey. [3][4] Many writers argue that it emphasizes racial and economic inequalities in the Deep South during the Depression.[5][6] It is similar to the story of Odysseus, who faces many trials along his journey.[7] Welty herself has said it is a story about how a writer works.[citation needed] References[edit] ^ A Worn Path. OCLC Worldcat. Retrieved 15 December 2013. ^ Dazey.
Phoenix Jackson makes her biannual visit to Natchez, walking for half a day in December to reach the medical clinic at which she receives, as charity, soothing medicine for her grandson. Having swallowed lye, he has suffered without healing for several years. Phoenix has made the journey enough times that her path to Natchez seems a worn path. Furthermore, part of that is the old Natchez trace, a road worn deep into the Mississippi landscape by centuries of travelers returning northeast after boating down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Phoenix is the oldest person she knows, though she does not know exactly how old she is, only that she was too old to go to school at the end of the Civil War and therefore never learned to read. Mainly because of her age, the simple walk from her remote home into Natchez is a difficult enough journey to take on epic proportions. She fears delays caused by wild animals getting in her way: foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, and raccoons. She comfortably reflects that snakes and alligators hibernate in December. Thorn bushes and barbed-wire fences, log bridges and hills are major barriers for her. The cornfield she must cross from her initial path to a wagon road is a maze, haunted to her nearsightedness by a ghost that turns out to be a scarecrow. She must also struggle against her tendency to slip into a dream and forget her task, as when she stops for a rest and dreams of a boy offering her a piece of cake. Her perception of these obstacles emphasizes her intense physical, mental, and moral effort to complete this journey. Despite the difficulty of her trip, she clearly enjoys her adventure. She talks happily to the landscape, warning the small animals to stay safely out of her way and showing patience with the thorn bush, which behaves naturally in catching her dress. She speaks good-humoredly of the dangers of the barbed wire.
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Cummings Guides Home.|. Contact This Site. Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings.© 2011. Type of Work and Publication Year. A Worn Path is a short story about a very old black woman who perseveres heroically in difficult circumstances. The Atlantic Monthly first published the story in February 1941. Setting. The action takes place in December, circa 1940, in southwestern Mississippi. The scene begins in the the wilderness and then shifts to the city of Natchez. Characters Phoenix Jackson: Very old black woman with poor eyesight who walks a long distance through wilderness and fields to obtain medicine for her grandchild. She is the main character. White Hunter: Man who helps Phoenix to her feet after she falls into a ditch. Black Children: Children Phoenix encounters just before she reaches Natchez. Natchez Pedestrian: Woman who ties Phoenix's shoes. Attendant: Receptionist in a physician's office. Nurse: Physician's nurse, who gives Phoenix medicine for her grandchild. Grandson of Phoenix: Child who once swallowed lye. He requires medicine to treat his throat. Point of View. Eudora Welty presents the story in third-person point of view. She reveals the thoughts of the main character, Phoenix Jackson, in dialogue in which Phoenix talks to herself. The author also sometimes reveals the activity of Phoenix's mind in the narration, as in the following passage: Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. Plot Summary. Source Welty, Eudora. A Worn Path. Literature and the Writing Process. 5th ed. Mc Mahan, Elizabeth; Susan X Day, and Robert Fund, eds. Upper Saddle River, N. J. Prentice Hall, 1999. Pages 363-368. Early on a cold December morning, an old Negro woman taps along with her cane on a path through a pine forest. Phoenix Jackson is her name. Around.
The Southern gothic genre is usually defined broadly as literature set in the South, concerned with social and cultural issues of the South, and featuring supernatural, grotesque, and/or morbid elements. Seems like a good fit for this tale, right? If Welty were still alive, she'd have some serious beef with us for even mentioning this genre in our analysis of her story. She vehemently rejected the Southern gothic label, even famously protesting in an interview with Alice Walker, They better not call me that! Despite her objections, critics still regularly place Welty in the Southern gothic category alongside writers such as William Faulkner and Flannery O' Connor. So we'll just explore why. For A Worn Path, the Southern part is easy. The story is set in Mississippi and the vivid descriptions of the environment as well as the dialect entrench us firmly in the Southern setting. But the story is not just set in the South; it's about the South, dealing with such issues as the aftermath of slavery. It is very evident when Phoenix enters the doctor's office that she is a relic from a different era—she is dressed differently, she is not involved in the major popular holiday going on around her, she can't participate in economic exchanges, and she can't read. She even explains that she can't read because she was too old at the end of the Civil War to go to school. Phoenix is a representation of the lack of opportunities that were available to black women even after emancipation and the continued ripples of poverty, racism, and marginalization spreading well into the 20th century from the era of slavery. As for the gothic part, there's plenty of that, too. The border between reality and imagination is hazy; larger-than-life beasts like rampaging black dogs and two-headed snakes abound, and life and death exist side-by-side with a slippery boundary between them. For instance, when.
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