Writing Samples - Fall 2011 cont.

Short Paper #1

“A Worn Path”

Phoenix: The Mythological Bird

           The short story, “A Worn Path”, by Eudora Welty, is chalk-full of symbolism and themes. From the beginning of the story, we see symbolism with the main characters name, Phoenix Jackson; a Phoenix is a type of bird that is mentioned in many Arabian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian mythologies. Typically, they have a 500-1,000 year life span. This is directly related to the short story because Phoenix is roughly one hundred years old, but does not seem or act like she is. For instance in the text she says, “I wasn’t as old as I thought” (31). It seems as though throughout the story nothing can bring Phoenix down, she continues to put up a fight no matter how many struggles she faces.

In the beginning of the story, the reader gets a full description of the way that Phoenix acts, looks, and dresses. We can tell right away that she has been around for a long time. Another symbol in the story is time. The narrator describes the way Phoenix walks based on the way a grandfather clock ticking back and forth. The narrator describes Phoenix by saying, “she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock” (30). A grandfather clock can also be connected to her age because they are very old fashion. The symbol of time is also mentioned in the title, A Worn Path. The word worn implies that she has taken this same path into town numerous times.

Additionally, while she is on her journey into town, she runs into a dog. Phoenix ends up in a ditch where she is unable to get back up onto her feet on her own. She says, “Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far” (30). This demonstrates a memory of the time during slavery. Not only does the feeling of chains around her feet illustrate slavery, but also the fact that when she is walking into town she is walking across farmland where slaves used to work. We also see the symbol of slavery in the main characters name. Her last name is Jackson, which is the name of the person who used to own her.

After Phoenix falls into the ditch from her scare with the dog, she lies there until the hunter comes to help her. The hunter has a dog with him and dead birds. He helps her up and than aims a gun straight at her face. He tries to do this in an attempt to scare her. By going through the experience of being a lower class black woman, and a slave, this does not scare her at all. To show this Phoenix says “No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done” (33). The way that he tries to scare her so she goes home, it gives the reader the sense that he is looking down on her because she is lower class than he is.

Once she finally makes it to town, she remembers the reason she went there in the first place: to go to a health clinic and pick up medicine for her sick grandson. She left him at the house, wrapped up just like a bird. The fact that he is wrapped up like a bird relates back to her name being Phoenix after a mythical bird. We see that she doesn’t have to pay for the medicine because she is a charity case. The overall theme of the entire story is charity. Her life has always been a hard journey for her, but she will always survive just like the young boy will survive as well. They are both survivors.