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Phoenix Jackson Reflection

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On a long foot journey across the country to the city of Natchez, the elderly Ms. Phoenix Jackson encounters many troubles. Though she knows the worn path by heart from traveling it many times to get medicine for her grandson, the travel becomes more difficult as she ages. As she makes her way from the country to the city through the Mississippi landscape she worries about all of the things that could cause delay’s such as wild animals, hills, and thorn bushes, meanwhile forgetting the real purpose of her journey. The travels of Phoenix Jackson show us that no matter how the forces of nature take a toll on your body and mind, the human spirit and nature will always persevere. This story brings into the light how love can be so deeply embedded in a human heart to the point where they do things with love out of habit, and how Phoenix’s unselfish love makes …show more content…

The cultural views in this work can mostly be seen when Ms. Phoenix interacts with the man in the woods and the nurse. Both of these characters belittled Ms. Phoenix in their own way. The hunter judges Ms. Phoenix first by her age, even asking her at one point how old she is, by telling her she needs to go home, then by her color, adding that he knows she won’t go home because the “colored people” sure do like to go to town. When Ms. Phoenix makes it to the clinic, the nurse that she speaks to treats her with kindness but at the same time treats her as a charity case. The interactions Phoenix has with these characters brings out the cultural aspects of this story, because it is how colored, poor, elderly, women were often treated. Eudora Welty, being a woman, shaped this vision most likely from experiences she had in her own life. Had this work been written by a male, these types of cultural problems would not have been such a big part of this

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