Eudora Welty Character Analysis Essay

Superior Essays
Eudora Welty crafts a short story centered on an old, African American woman, Phoenix, journeying to a destination far from her home. Phoenix embodies all the essential qualities of a successful journeyer, such as perseverance, endurance, craftiness, and courage. Through her journey, Phoenix is tested many times, and she always answers with resilience and confidence. Phoenix is a character that crosses instances of death many times, but instead of being afraid, she welcomes the challenges. It is her bravery, self-assurance, and dependence among her resources that proves Phoenix is a character that does not fear death, but rather coexists with it, as it is the natural balance of the world. Phoenix is closer to death than any of the other characters …show more content…
Subsequently, Phoenix thinks she sees a man in the field of dead corn. Again, Welty shows us her visual and mental inadequacies when it is revealed that there is no man, but rather a scarecrow. Then, Phoenix mistakes the figure to be a ghost. Thinking she is confronting a ghost, she talks with directness and conviction. She says, “who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by’”(144). However, she then learns it is not a ghost when reaches in the scarecrows coat, and feels “an emptiness, cold as ice”(144). Essentially, Phoenix is being confronted with a figure, whom she took to be a living man, but is in fact just a scarecrow, which presents her with a sense of coldness and emptiness. This is a significant allusion to death, but more importantly Phoenix’s reaction drives the notion that Phoenix is comfortable in the presence of death. Phoenix says “You scarecrow” and her face “lighted”(144). Furthermore, she laughs and dances with the scarecrow, as though the living is dancing with the nonliving. Additionally, the cornfield itself plays a role in the coexistence of death. Although the cornfield thrives in the summer, and Welty made it clear it is December and the cornfield is dead, it still whispers to

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