Beauty is in the Heart
In “A Worn Path,” by Eudora Welty, the main character’s name, Phoenix, has great significance in the short story. A Phoenix is “a mythological bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live another cycle of years” (“Phoenix Definition”). Phoenix also means “a person…that has become renewed or restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation” (“Phoenix Definition”). In “A Worn Path,” Phoenix Jackson is not a person of great beauty like the mythological bird, but she is a person that has been through a lot of turmoil in all of her years. Her name is a symbol of all of the hardships that she has had to endure in her life and that she has overcome. Phoenix Jackson is a selfless woman, who cares a great deal about her grandson’s well-being and happiness. She goes through many trials and tribulations on her pilgrimage to get the prescription for her grandson. First, Phoenix Jackson “was an old Negro women with her head tied in a red rag…She was very old and small” (Welty 288). She was far from the timeless beauty of the bird that she is named after; but she is relentless on her journey. On her trek to town, she encounters many things …show more content…
It is clear that she is a loving and noble grandmother to go on this long trek to town for her grandson when she has to walk slowly and with a cane. Perhaps, the name, Phoenix, does suit her. For the beauty of the mythological bird may not be in the way she looks, but in the beauty of her heart and the adoration that she has for her grandson. Khalil Gibran once said, “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart” ("50 Quotes on
In “A Worn Path,” by Eudora Welty, the main character’s name, Phoenix, has great significance in the short story. A Phoenix is “a mythological bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live another cycle of years” (“Phoenix Definition”). Phoenix also means “a person…that has become renewed or restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation” (“Phoenix Definition”). In “A Worn Path,” Phoenix Jackson is not a person of great beauty like the mythological bird, but she is a person that has been through a lot of turmoil in all of her years. Her name is a symbol of all of the hardships that she has had to endure in her life and that she has overcome. Phoenix Jackson is a selfless woman, who cares a great deal about her grandson’s well-being and happiness. She goes through many trials and tribulations on her pilgrimage to get the prescription for her grandson. First, Phoenix Jackson “was an old Negro women with her head tied in a red rag…She was very old and small” (Welty 288). She was far from the timeless beauty of the bird that she is named after; but she is relentless on her journey. On her trek to town, she encounters many things …show more content…
It is clear that she is a loving and noble grandmother to go on this long trek to town for her grandson when she has to walk slowly and with a cane. Perhaps, the name, Phoenix, does suit her. For the beauty of the mythological bird may not be in the way she looks, but in the beauty of her heart and the adoration that she has for her grandson. Khalil Gibran once said, “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart” ("50 Quotes on