Life is a journey - an interpretation of Eudora Welty´s "A Worn Path"

Franziska Höfer

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2003
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9783638239035
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2, 3 (B), http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut für Anglistics/American Studies), language: English, abstract: "A Worn Path" written by Eudora Welty was first published within her volume ofshort stories "A Curtain of Green" in 1941.1 It is a story about life in its purestnaturalism.Welty´s main character is the old Negro woman Phoenix Jackson. With her tremendousself-sacrifice and the love for her little grandson she frequently goes on an adventurousjourney from the old Natchez Trace into town to get some medicine for her grandchildwho swallowed lye some years ago and is frequently suffering from sore throat.But more than one could think of the story is a metaphor for the way of life thateveryone of us has to go. The story´s path expresses the hard journey of life – thejourney, even Eudora Welty speaks about when being asked about the unsolved fate ofthe grandson: "But it is the journey, the going of the errand, that is the story, and thequestion is not whether the grandchild is in reality alive or dead."2 This can be easilycompared to the path of life and to the fact that it´s result is less important than the pathitself.1 Kreyling, Michael. Understanding Eudora Welty. Columbia: University of Southern CarolinaPress, 1999. 6.2 Welty, Eudora. "Is Phoenix Jackson´s Grandson Really Dead?" The Story and Its Writer – An Introduction toShort Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Shorter 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin´s Press, 1990. 750.