Worn Path
Phoenix’s Long Journey
Motherhood is expressed in an unusual manner in “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty. Phoenix is described in detail as an old, very poor African American woman who talks out loud to herself and has an estranged imagination while she starts out on a long journey through the woods to town. She was so poor that the author says “She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her” (1). She appears very delusional and or may have dementia because she does all type of weird things and her language is of someone who’s illiterate and in reading this story it makes you wonder why someone has not Baker Acted her already. For example, she talks to the animals as if they were actually engaged in a conversation with them when she says “Out of my way, all of you foxes, owls, beetles, rabbits, coons and wild animals! … Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites … Keep the big wild hogs out of my path” … (1). Hearing her talk like this alone would make you think that you yourself are crazy or either well on the way to being crazy. I mean who in their right mind would engage in conversing with animals in such a manner. Everything she says is either not a complete sentence or makes no sense whatsoever. For example it’s definitely expressed when she says “Seems like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far” (1). Now the proper grammar would have been “It seems like chains are shackled to my feet by the time I get this far” Moving on in the story she really starts to blow me to the moon when she comes to see the scarecrow and she thinks it’s a ghost and she would then speaking out of context again saying “Ghost, she said sharply, who you be the ghost of ? For I have heard of nary death close by” (3). This is definitely someone who has gone off the deep end or is very near. She then haves the audacity to tell the scarecrow “Dance, old scarecrow, while I dancing with you” (3),
Motherhood is expressed in an unusual manner in “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty. Phoenix is described in detail as an old, very poor African American woman who talks out loud to herself and has an estranged imagination while she starts out on a long journey through the woods to town. She was so poor that the author says “She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her” (1). She appears very delusional and or may have dementia because she does all type of weird things and her language is of someone who’s illiterate and in reading this story it makes you wonder why someone has not Baker Acted her already. For example, she talks to the animals as if they were actually engaged in a conversation with them when she says “Out of my way, all of you foxes, owls, beetles, rabbits, coons and wild animals! … Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites … Keep the big wild hogs out of my path” … (1). Hearing her talk like this alone would make you think that you yourself are crazy or either well on the way to being crazy. I mean who in their right mind would engage in conversing with animals in such a manner. Everything she says is either not a complete sentence or makes no sense whatsoever. For example it’s definitely expressed when she says “Seems like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far” (1). Now the proper grammar would have been “It seems like chains are shackled to my feet by the time I get this far” Moving on in the story she really starts to blow me to the moon when she comes to see the scarecrow and she thinks it’s a ghost and she would then speaking out of context again saying “Ghost, she said sharply, who you be the ghost of ? For I have heard of nary death close by” (3). This is definitely someone who has gone off the deep end or is very near. She then haves the audacity to tell the scarecrow “Dance, old scarecrow, while I dancing with you” (3),