In the two short stories “A Worn Path and Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates and Eudora Welty are stories of self-determination and free will in both stories the main characters struggle because they want to be themselves. The protagonist in these two stories differ from one and other Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You been” she wants to be herself and she don’t no one to tell her what to do. In the other hand Phoenix has a mission to complete while confronting many challenges. Every day people found challenges that stand in their way to accomplish their mission from dogs, and hunters in the woods to crazy guys in gold cars waiting for you outside but with cheer determination most accomplished their mission. …show more content…
Oates write that Connie has a “habit of craning her neck to glace into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right (312).” Connie was deceptive with her family and with her friends her mother always told her about why he can be like her sister. Her sister June a twenty-four years old and still living at home. In “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty we meet a Phoenix Jackson an elderly black woman that is self-determinate in get the medicine for her grandson that is sick. Phoenix started her journey in an “early morning” she uses a small stick made from an umbrella and also she cannot see well. In her way to accomplish her mission she was attacked by dog and she was saved by a hunter friendly at the beginning. The hunter point his gun at her because he saw her picking a nickel that he drop but she’s not afraid because she was determinate with her
Many typical adventures in classic novels follow a pattern of events using the archetype, the Hero, which defines the nature of the protagonist’s journey. However, some stories don’t fit the layout of a Hero’s journey. The nature of this story structure often limits itself to the interpretation of a male’s heroic quest involving accomplishments in order to prove one’s masculinity. The alternate story pattern, a heroine’s journey, was created to satisfy the type of journey a female would experience. The heroine's journey defies the general perspective of heroism, instead highlighting the bravery in defying expectations of one’s character and refusing to be held back by the expectations of others. Walk Two Moons is a book written by Sharon Creech which tells the story of Salamanca Hiddle, a teenage girl who retraces the journey of her mother who left her. On her journey, Sal is able to relive her own story through her friend, Phoebe, whose mother also left. The book Walk Two Moons is representative of a heroine’s journey rather than a hero’s journey because Sal must leave her home to escape
When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses
As teenagers, we feel like we know all the complexities of life, and that the changes we experience during puberty are the ultimate variabilities of our lives, but the irony of this is that they still have so much more to learn. The story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was written by Joyce Carol Oates, an influential, feminist author in the 1960s. The story was inspired by the real-life serial killer, Charles Schmid, also known as the “Pied Piper of Tucson”, who like the antagonist in the story, Arnold Friend, preyed on young girls as his victims (Sharma 5). An important element that influenced the story is that it was written in the 1960's, a period known as the Second-Wave of feminism, this was a time when women across America began to break free from the patriarchal system and assert their rights as citizens outside of the home (The 1960s-70s American Feminist Movement: Breaking Down Barriers
Connie has the need to be viewed as older and as more mature than she really is, all the while still displaying childlike behavior. She shows this childlike behavior by “craning her neck to glance in mirrors [and] checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right” (Oates 323). This shows that Connie is very insecure and needs other people’s approval. Although on one side she is very childish, on the other side she has a strong desire to be treated like an adult. This longing for adulthood is part of her coming of age, and is demonstrated by her going out to “bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant[s]” and meeting boys, staying out with those boys for three hours at a time, and lying to her parents about where she has been and who she has been with (Oates 325, 326). “Everything about her ha[s] two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” (Oates 324). Even her physical movements represent her two-sided nature: “her walk that could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearin...
Reader Response Essay - Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Everyone wants to know who they are, and why they were put here. People often wonder about their futures and what kind of person they really are. In the novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye, both of the protagonists, despite the different settings, the other characters, their restrictions and the different people that they are, are searching for the same thing - themselves.
There is Phoenix Jackson she is a grandmother who always travels a long and horrible path that she takes in order to get her grandson medicine for him. Ms. Jackson is an older lady who is traveling in the middle of December “She was a very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows”. (Welty) While traveling in the woods Ms. Jackson gets tangled in a bush where here dress gets tangled but after she finally gets herself free she finally gets to the foot of the hill where she rests. Many of the events that happened in this story is not the normal that we have for today. For instance what older woman would go walking into the cold woods in December by herself and keeps walking until she is completely tired. While she is in the woods Ms. Jackson encounters a black dog that trips her and made her fall into a ditch. When the hunter who was with the dog came he helped her up and told her she needs to go back home instead if going into town. When the hunter helped her a nickel fell out of his pocket, when he left she picked it up and put it in her apron, once the hunter came back he pointed a gun to Ms. Jackson face and she stood there and faced him. When asked was she scared “No. sir I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day and for less than what I done” (Welty). This shows that Ms. Jackson is strong and even though she is older she is not the typical elderly person. After traveling
At home Connie would listen to her Mom talk or gossip about other teens and what they were doing, but Connie never led on to her mother as to what she and her friends were doing. Connie would act very differently at home when she was around her family as if she was still in the childhood stage of being good, innocent, and obeying of her parents. Connie would day dream a lot about how life would be if ...
Connie’s clothes and infatuation with her own beauty symbolize her lack of maturity or knowing her true self, which in the end enables her to be manipulated by Arnold Friend. Connie was enamored with her own beauty; in the beginning of the story Oates states that Connie “knew
In Eudora Welty 's "A Worn Path" the reader is told of the journey of Phoenix Jackson an elderly African-American woman. Beginning the story, her journey appears irrelevant. Jackson travels through the woods and over hills powering through the many hardships that an elderly woman would face. Towards the conclusion of this story, a reader recognizes the meaning of Phoenix’s journey. Through the entire story she has been journeying to obtain medicine for her grandson that had fallen ill from “swallowing lye"(p. 105). In Welty’s story it is easily recognizable to the reader that the theme of the story is how one will face extreme hardships for the ones that they love, specifically Phoenix struggles with her vision, being senile, and just the burden
Oates drew the character of Connie very well - she possesses many of the qualities that teenaged children share. According to developmental psychologists, adolescents become highly critical of siblings, and peer relationships take precedence over familial ties during these years (Feldman, 455). These traits are apparent in Connie’s unflattering description of her older sister June, “…she was so plain and chunky…” (209) and the fact that Connie spends many nights out with friends, but refuses to attend an afternoon picnic with her family (211).
After going through many trials Poseidon threw at him, Odysseus was determined to get home. He was devoted to his home, and he took every chance he had to push himself forward. As Odysseus states “..what i want and all my days i pine for is to go back to my house and see my day of homecoming. And if some God batters me for out on the wine-blue water, I will endure it, keeping Additionally, Rumpelstiltskin spent more than 20 years to find his son, who was stolen from him, never doubting himself. Searching for his lost boy, his determination moved him forward throughout his journey.Harriet Tubman believed that every slave should be free, she took many routes during her journey to find ways for the slaves to escape. Not knowing the way she was going, Tubman was still determined to make it to Canada, she crossed unknown paths beyond Philadelphia to lead the slaves to their freedom and their new homes. Having your mind determined on one thing can venture a journey further ahead than those who go on random will. Determination can lead a hero into the right path, it helps one choose what they want to do and how they're going to do
In “Welty’s The Worn Path” Dennis Sykes asserts the similarities between phoenix Jackson and the struggle for black equality after the civil war in the south. Sykes compares Phoenix Jackson to the blind prophet Tiresias in the poem “The Waste Land” by T.S. Elliot. The author also points out insightfully that a parallel exists between phoenix’s journey and the journey of southern blacks after the Civil War. The writer observes phoenix's perseverance as she struggles through the journey. Sykes points out the similarities between phoenix's journey and the journey of black southerners: against scurrying hogs or thorny bush. The author adds that Welty showed phoenix’s struggle through imagery. Sykes asserts that the document or the wall reflects
Every author creates their story to have a dynamic structure and sequence of events to make their story more appealing to their target audience. For instance, Eudora Welty created “A Worn Path”, which is a short story that followed the path of Phoenix Jackson on her journey to acquire medicine for her ill grandson. The story was set up and organized to cause the reader to constantly think about the specific details of the journey and why the grandmother embarked on the path to the city. In this way, the author has room to create a lot of intricate scenes to further describe the characters to the reader. This short story creates scenes that test the validity of Jackson’s journey and her overall strive to successfully complete her objective.
After reading "A Worn Path", I believed the story to be a metaphor about the "path of life", how one can never turn back (as one must keep going forward), that there are obstacles along the way and to overcome these obstacles, one must fend for themselves, and ultimately, there is a surprise when the journey comes to a close. Although I still believe this to be true, the more central idea that I pulled from this short story is that the path represents the everlasting mark that Phoenix will leave on the world, as she constantly sacrifices her well being in order to save her grandson, despite her physical limitations.