Phoenix Jackson in A Worn Path

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Phoenix Jackson in A Worn Path

“’Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals!… Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don’t let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way’” (116).

Through the character of Phoenix Jackson in “A Worn Path” Welty produces a picture of an aging African-American woman in the Jim Crow South. In “A Worn Path” we learn of the hardships Jackson faces on her weekly journey for medicine to sooth the pain of her grandson. Welty conveys this these hardships by giving the reader insight into the physical health, the mental health, and the socio-economic status of Jackson.

In “A Worn Path,” Phoenix Jackson’s physical age inhibits both her journey through the woods and life. The round character is weak and feeble. Welty conveys her age by comparing Phoenix to a tree. “Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead” (116). Jackson is personified as an aging tree in. Her fragility is further emphasized...

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