Modernism In A Worn Path

When Phoenix falls over to a wild dog and a hunter comes to help her, she is still out of a unspoken fear of a white man and the reality of color prejudice, but also calm even when he points a gun in her face. This variance in personality continues as she arrives at the

It is like a path. Phoenix’s path represents her life as an older woman with her life difficulties getting for her age. In the story, Phoenix has time to appreciate the beauty of the day and gives to herself some rest, but also she fights with her mind and her physical decadences that did not help her to finish her path. “Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane. “Sun so high!"

A Worn Path. A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty. Reprinted by Russell & Volkening for the author. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Throughout the story, it is made clear that Phoenix has poor eyesight and can be described as senile which we see in her personal description of mirages and misidentification of objects during her journey into town. Because of the third person narrative, the reader is given insight into the actual occurrences of the story as opposed to the story Phoenix herself might have told. When Phoenix stumbles upon a scarecrow she exclaims “Ghost… who be you the ghost of” (Welty 3). Because of the readers knowledge as to what the true nature of this “ghost” is, it is clear that Phoenix herself has difficulties discerning the reality from the illusion. If “A Worn Path” were to be told from a first person point of view, through the eyes and mind of Phoenix herself, the reader would be witnessing a story told by the epitome of an unreliable narrator.

While walking up the path, Phoenix has had to overcome obstacles while it seems like death is in the form of chains around her feet. Even so, she continues onward to freedom. The scene continues while Phoenix passes trees and birds and animals, and suddenly she is crawling through a barbed-wire fence. The change in scenery indicates how Phoenix might be somewhat confused, especially because she is old. It also indicates how Phoenix’s journey was not one of peacefulness, rather, it was one of survival.

In the short story Welty’s want the reader to be comfortable with Phoenix as a character. Welty describes Phoenix wearing a long dress reaching her shoe top and a long apron of bleached sugar sacks. When Phoenix talks aloud to herself the author wants the reader to imagine an old woman with characteristics of a warm, comical, young spirited woman side of her. The short story also uses images which evoke from the biblical imagery. Phoenix’s uses biblical connection to show the reader how important her story and the

The old woman is unfazed, which leads the reader to believe she is quite used to this behavior from young white men; in fact, Phoenix actually has the upper hand and the hunter does not even realize it. Elaine Orr points this out in her essay, stating “While he appears the authority, she employs his definitions and rewrites them as riddles, thus deconstructing his privilege”. In another essay the writer states “she is confronted by a white hunter who levels his shotgun at her in an obvious allusion to Jim Crow racial violence” (Moberly). The fact that Phoenix calls the hunters bluff with a gun pointed at her proves this is not her first run-in with an arrogant young white man. The old woman is used to this form of racism and is not daunted by it as she has mind set to complete her walk to

Eudora Welty’s A Worn Path: Conveying the Theme of Sacrificial Love How much does a grandmother love her grandson? It is difficult to show more love than Phoenix Jackson did in Eudora Welty’s short story A Worn Path.

Phoenix says, “I going to the store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper” (Welty). Windmills have no beginning or end points on them, like Phoenix’s continuous journey. She goes into town to retrieve her grandson’s medicine, returns home, then sets off again when the time is needed. No matter the conditions, Phoneix keeps on going, just like a windmill. The windmill equips nature into energy, and represents the hope that her grandson may use his innate skills to push on and extend the worn path further.

The story, up through the climax, displays the consequences of irrational actions. “The winged old man is viewed as an object” by the community as they search to find an explanation for his existence (Pelayo 84). First trying to rid the old man at sea, Elisenda and Pelayo attempt to act on their irrational ideas. They then involve the neighbor woman, priest, and village people to solve this confusing situation (Marquez #). None of their actions are effective as they are irrational, uncomprehensive thoughts.

But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air” Phoenix obviously has issues when it comes to her mind. She imagines ridiculous scenarios and believes that they are real. Luckily, these mental problems do not cause her to give up on herself. Additionally, Welty writes, “At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke.

So the time come around. And I go on another trip for the soothing medicine.” Phoenix is willing to risk her own health and energy to go out and get things for others. From the insight of the nurse she comes on a regular basis. She is constant on coming because she gets the medicine to try and help her grandson get better.

While Phoenix is never actually harmed in the story, towards the close of the story, she is at the pharmacy about to ask for the medicine, when she realizes that she no longer remembers anything about her quest, including the type of medicine that her grandson requires “My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip.” (53). Readers could consider this moment of memory loss as a wound, even though it technically is not defined as a wound.

This poem was written with clear and distinct points of view involving a conflict and resolution. American Literature emerged into a different theme before the end of World War II due to the major changes happening in the south. This movement birthed two extraordinary writers, William Faulkner and Zora Neale Hurston that spoke of the south

The start of modernism being the Pioneer Phase took place between the middle of the First World War and the crucial movements from 1929 to 1933, early 1930s being know as the International Style. Pioneer Phase is a chain of variations and individuals who took charge to the problems faced when dealing with the appropriate design that would symbolise the twentieth century. They did so by focusing on three core elements of design, architecture, graphics and furniture.(P.Greenhalgh,1990, p. 91) The Pioneer Phase could simply be classified as a collaboration of ideas in which designers envisioned how the world could create a way in which improves the “material conditions” and mould the consciousness of humankind.(P.Greenhalgh,1990, p. 3). Modernism