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The Character Of Phoenix Jackson In Eudora Welty's A Worn Path

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Register to read the introduction… The main reason why Phoenix makes this long journey is to get medicine for her grandson whom she loves dearly. Her love carries her forward as she patiently and persistently overcomes the obstacles she encounters [while on] her journey? (Evans 269-270). Phoenix is a caring individual who takes this long and agonizing worn path ?in order to redeem her grandson(tm)s life (Isaacs 40). Phoenix is her grandson(tm)s only support. Despite her love for her grandson, there is nothing anyone can do for the grandson, but she must take the worn path to get something to help her grandson endure the pain. The long journey that she takes is a symbol of her love and devotion for her grandson. This love and devotion that is emphasized in Phoenix (tm)s character is what leads her to take the prolonged, treacherous path. Phoenix(tm)s love for her grandson is a love that sends her on a heroic quest for medicine and is absolutely natural?enduring as the daily and seasonal cycles?[and] innate? (Marrs 288). Even when she momentarily forgets why she had traveled to the doctor(tm)s office, she is acting intuitively out of love, [and] Phoenix(tm)s love lives as long as its place does; her love is as enduring as the Natchez it self (Marrs 288). Also her ?physical and spiritual endurance so late in her life has its only source of inspiration in her love for the boy. Phoenix will keep on wearing down the path to Natchez for as long as her grandson needs her, for love is the only alternative to a life in isolation? (Gretlund 338). At the end of the story Phoenix, gets enough money to buy a windmill for her grandson. The windmill is a perfect representation of life, and Phoenix has many more years to live. Phoenix(tm)s life is her journey through the woods once a year. Her consideration and love for her grandson is what makes her live as long as possible in order to care for …show more content…
?Life and Death in Eudora Welty(tm)s A Worn Path(tm). Studies in Short Fiction. 14.3 (1977): 288-290.

Evans, Robert C., Anne C. Little, and Barbara Wiedemann. Short Fiction: A Critical Companion. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1997. 265-270.

Gretlund, Jan N.. Eudora Welty(tm)s Aesthetics of Place. Odense UP, 1994. 322, 337-338.

Isaacs, Neil D.. Life for Phoenix.? The Critical Response to Eudora Welty(tm)s Fiction. ed. Laurie Champion. London: Greenwood, 1994. 37-42.

Marrs, Suzanne. Eudora Welty(tm)s Photography: Images into Fiction. Critical Essays on Eudora Welty. W. Craig Turner and Lee Emling Harding. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1989. 288-289.

Sykes, Dennis J.. ?Welty(tm)s The Worn Path. Explicator. 56.3: 151-153. 1998 Spring.

Welty, Eudora. ?The Worn Path.? Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PH, 2001.

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