Native American literature. A Worn Path'' by Eudora Welty - Essay Example

? Native American literature A worn path The Eudora Welty was born on April 13, the year 1909, in the town of Jackson, Mississippi, to her parents Christian Webb and Chestina Andrews Welty. In her masterpiece of writing titled A worn path, the story opens on a chilly December morning. An elderly African?American woman by the name Phoenix Jackson was making her way, slowly while at the same time surely, through the woods, tapping an umbrella on the bare ground in front of her as she walked. Her shoes lay untied. While she tapped along, she spoke to the animals in the woods, convincing them to keep out of her way. As the path went up a hill, she complains about how difficult walking had become. It had become evident that she has made this journey many times before; she is familiar with all the twists and turns in the trail. She spoke aimlessly to herself. Her eyesight lay poor, and she unfortunately caught her skirt in the thorns on a bush (Welty 43). "A Worn Path" is finally a simple story, though. The authors’ short tale of an old woman's journey to get medicine for her grandson is valuable simply as that and the starkness of its simplicity often lay undervalued. That same simplicity gave it the ability to support so many political and mythological interpretations. The author goes to the extent of another, far more personal analogy for Phoenix's journey: her own journey towards the creation of great fiction. Like Phoenix, one ought to work all his life to find his or her way, through all the obstructions and the false appearances and the upsets one might have had brought on oneself. This was with an aim to reach a meaning, and consequently too, like Phoenix, they had to assume that what one lay working in aid of his life, not death (Welty 58). The first four sentences of "A Worn Path" contain simple declarative statements using the simple past of the verb ‘to be the name Phoenix Jackson, and the words she was very small and old. The note of simplicity thus struck is the keynote of the authors’ artistic design in the story. For it, is a simple story commonly facing reaction as simply beautiful? Nevertheless, it is also a story that employs many of the devices that can make of the modern short story an intricate and densely complex form. It uses them, but in such a way, that it demonstrates how a single meaning may be enriched using various techniques. Thus, in place of various levels of meaning, we have here a single meaning reinforced on several levels of perception. Additionally, there is no muddying of levels, or techniques. Instead, they lay straightforwardly presented, neatly arranged, and simply perceived (Welty 62). The other primary approach to this story has been to examine its mythological emphasis. Phoenix Jackson's name lies as a reference to the mythological phoenix. This is a mythical bird that lives in the desert for approximately 500?600 years. Afterwards, it sets itself on fire, only to rise again from its own ashes. From that moment henceforth, it lies as a popular symbol for immortality. Certainly, age plays a major part in the story. If we accept that the story is set in the authors present, that is, at the time when she wrote the story, then the "present" is 1940. At around this time, Jackson tells the scarecrow that his senses lay gone, and that he was already too old. He, the oldest people I ever know. In the instance during which the hunter asked her how old she was, she replied that there was no telling. However, if what she told the nurse was true, that she was too old to go to school when Lee surrendered in the year 1865, then she must have aged nearly a hundred years old. Yet, like the phoenix, she raised to makes periodic trips to Natchez to get medicine for her grandson (Welty 74). The plot?line follows Phoenix Jackson, who lies graphically described in the second paragraph, on her long walk into Natchez where she has to get medicine for her grandson. The trek is rather difficult, especially because of her age, and in the process of struggling on, she tends to forget the reason for the struggle. At the end, she remembered to receive the medicine, and decided whether to buy the child a Christmas present with the ten cents she has acquired during the day (Welty 93). A traditional concept of road literature, whether the mythical journeys of the sun across the heavens or a boy’s trip down the Mississippi or any other variation, is its implicit equation with life (Kazin 81). This revolves around the road of life, vicissitudes, life's journey, the straight and narrow, and lying as a host of other cliches reflects the universality of this primitive metappedhor. "A Worn Path'' makes explicit, beginning with the very title, the author’s acceptance of the traditional equation as a basic aspect of the story. In fact, the whole meaning of "A Worn Path'' will rely on an immediate recognition of the equation-the worn path equals the path of life-which is probably why it is so explicit. Nevertheless, we need not start with a concept that is metappedhorical or perhaps primitively allegorical. It will probably be best for us to begin with the other literal elements in the story: they will lead us back to the sub-or supra-literal eventually anyway (Kazin 108). An important part of the setting is the time element, that is, the precise time of the year. We learn immediately that it is a bright frozen day in December. In addition, there lay several subsequent, direct statements that mark it more precisely as Christmas time. The hunter spoke about Santa Claus and the attendant at the hospital saying that it was Christmas time, and further echoing, what the author has said earlier. There lay several other references and images forming a pattern to underline the idea of Christmas time, such, as Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. Notice especially the elaborate color pattern of red, green, and silver, the traditional colors of Christmas. This pattern comes to a climax in the description of the city and the woman’s packages, which also served to make clear its purpose, return it to the literal. There were red, green electric lights strung, and crises, crossed everywhere an armful of green, red, and silver-wrapped presents (Welty 101). It would be rather misleading, to suggest that the story is merely a paralleling of the Christian nature myth. It laid rather, a diminutive nature or a myth of its own that uses elements of many traditions. The most obvious example is the name Phoenix from the mythological Egyptian bird, symbol of immortality and resurrection, which dies with the intention that a new Phoenix may emerge from its ashes. There lies the reference to the Daedalus labyrinth myth when Phoenix walked through the cornfield and Miss Welty puns. Though the maze now, were words she said, for there was no path. The very ambivalent figure of the hunter comes into play as both a death figure, either a killer bearing a bag full of slain quail, and a life figure. This was either an unconscious giver of life with the nickel, a banisher of Cerberus. Was in the like of a black dog that attacked Phoenix. In any case, however, a folk, or rather a legend is a figure that can fill the entire landscape with his laugh. Moreover, there lay several references to the course of the sun across the sky that gave a new dimension to the life (97). The most impressive extra-Christian elements lay the patterns that identify Phoenix as a creature of nature herself and as a ritual-magic figure. Thus, Phoenix makes a sound like the chirping of a solitary little bird, her hair has an odor like copper, and at one particular point with her mouth drawn down, she shook her head once in a little strutting way. Even more remarkable, was the fixed and yet ceremonial stiffness of her body, which moves like a festival figure in some parade. The cane she carried lay made from an umbrella, which she lay tapping on the ground like a magic wand, and she used it to switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things. At the same time, she utters little spells: Out of my way, all you beetles, fox owls, jackrabbits, coons, and wild animals, kept out from under these feet. Command flows such as the order to keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Do not let none of those come running my direction. Ghost, who be you the ghost of ? Sweet gum made the water sweet. Nobody knew who made this well for it was here when I was born. Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles. Other suggestions of magic appear in the whirling of cornhusks in streamers about her skirts, when she parts her way from side to side with the cane, and through the whispering field, when the quail seem unseen, and when the cabins lay all like old women under a spell sitting there. Finally, and yet ironically, when Phoenix swings at the black dog, she went over in the ditch, like a little puff of mile-weed. Works Cited Kazin, Alfred. On native grounds: an interpretation of modern American prose literature. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 2002. Print. Welty, Eudora. Is Phoenix Jackson's grandson really dead? ; A worn path. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Print. Welty, Eudora. A worn path. Mankato, Minn.: Creative Education, 1991. Print. Read More