analysis/response

A. Nemoianu Analysis/Response

12/8/2008

Read carefully the following passage from Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path.” In it the protagonist, Phoenix Jackson, also known as Grandma Phoenix, is very close to her destination, almost at the end of her long, lonely trip.

A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.

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. […]

A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain.

“Well, Granny!” he laughed. “What are you doing there?”

“Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be turned over, mister,” she said, reaching up her hand.

He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. “Anything broken, Granny?’

“No, sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough,” said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. “I thank you for your trouble.”

“Where do you live, Granny?” he asked while the two dogs were growling at each other.

“Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can’t even see it from here.”

“On your way home?”

“No sir, going to town.”

“Why, that’s too far!”[…] “Now you go home, Granny.”

“I bound to go to town, mister,” said Phoenix. “The time come around.”

He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. “I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to town to see Santa Claus!”

(The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, 1983)

Prepare for the writing of your formal essay by placing the passage in the context of the entire story in order to determine its significance, in terms of the protagonist’s purpose and its perception by the hunter. Be sure to include the following:

· a full description of the character’s physical characteristics in relation to the task she is undertaking;

· the purpose of the trip;

· the obstacles she encounters on the way to her destination;

· the role of the encounter with the hunter;

· the contrast between the hunter’s and Grandma’s attitudes and language;

This preparatory writing does not need to be in full sentences. You can write an outline of the ideas you want to include in your formal essay or simply list relevant facts from the story, as you recall them, and ideas associated with them.

Write a formal essay in which you comment on the significance of Grandma’s encounter with the hunter within the context of the entire story. Be sure to include the following:

· a clear thesis;

· a summary of the story;

· a description of the protagonist, including both appearance and character;

· the role of the moment captured in this passage in terms of the story’s trajectory, as well as character and theme development;

· appropriate and correct paraphrases and citations in support of your ideas and the literary concepts you use.

Model Response

Before Christmas, Old Phoenix Jackson, the protagonist of Eudora Welty’s story “A Worn Path,” embarks on a day-long trip to Natchez in order to get medicine for her ailing grandson. She has been doing it for a couple of years, ever since her grandson swallowed lye and burned his throat. The story simply follows the old woman up and down hills, over logs laid across creeks, through barbed-wire fences, through fields of cotton and corn, to the medical building in town where she would get the life-saving medication. In fact, it is there, at the end of the story that the readers find out the urgent goal of Grandma’s trip.

Grandma Phoenix is an old woman, heavy but frail, balancing herself with an old umbrella for a cane. Alone in the cold bright December air, Grandma Phoenix talks to herself, to bushes and scarecrows, to keep herself company on the long, worn path. The first human being she encounters, not far from her destination, is a hunter who helps her out of the ditch where she had fallen, and also makes a thoughtless assumption about her motivation: that she is going to town to see Santa. This essay is an attempt to analyze the significance of the hunter episode in the story: How is this encounter different from the preceding ones? Why is the hunter chosen to be the first person Grandma Phoenix runs into on the way to town? What does this encounter reveal about the protagonist and how?

By the time Grandma Phoenix loses her balance because of the unexpected appearance of a dog, and falls into the ditch, where she lies “like a June-bug waiting to be turned over”, her trip to town was threatened once before: weary after crossing a creek on a log, earlier, she loses her consciousness, only to be brought back to life by the imaginary hand of a child handing her a piece of cake. This time around, however, when her senses drift away, the child’s hand does not come to the rescue. This time, a hunter turns up—the first human interlocutor she has up to that point on the path.

Without the hunter, Grandma Phoenix could have finished her trip there, in the ditch. Her self-sacrificial gesture—the hard trip to bring comfort if not cure to her grandson—would have remained just that: a failed effort coming from boundless love for the child. The hunter, unceremoniously pragmatic, brings her to her feet and advises her to go home. Face to face with the hunter, for the first time, Grandma Phoenix appears as a mythical character—coming from “away back yonder” because “the time come around.” Her name certainly brings to mind the Egyptian myth of the self-immolating bird coming back to life every five hundred years, except that, more beautiful than the mythical bird, Grandma Phoenix comes back to life in order to save a helpless human being. Her mind is intent on her goal. The innocent child’s hand saves her once. The second time, it is the hand of a thoughtless hunter, with the killed prey in his bag, who also assumes that the old woman is going to town for her own enjoyment: to see Santa and the Christmas lights.

At this point in the story, the readers still do not know the purpose of the trip. The hunter’s assumption stands in ironic contrast to Grandma’s myth-laden language about her position in time and space. Hers is a noble purpose, one that ordinary people, such as the hunter, helpful though they may be, cannot fathom. A simple woman, Grandma Phoenix is a saint among us, and the encounter with the hunter, close as it is to the end of the story and of the protagonist’s arduous trip, is the first time the readers get a clearer glimpse into Grandma’s stature.