A Worn Path is a short story laden with meaning and symbolism wrote by Eudora Welty. The narrative is about an old African American woman, Phoenix Johnson, walking a familiar path in the rural areas of Natchez, Mississippi, seeking to get medicine for her ailing grandson. The story is written in the third-person point of view, also known as the limited omniscience. The narrative is delivered in this point of view because the author does not reveal many of the protagonist’s details by presenting her realistically to allow greater objectivity. The narration creates sufficient distance between the protagonist and her conflict, thus allowing the reader to see the various aspects of the clashing issues in a way that the main character cannot see. This point of view presents the elderly woman as a mythical symbol, an embodiment of the resilience of the human spirit, which keeps on rising no matter how many times it falls. This point of view is successful and effective in this story for three reasons – it allows the reader to objectively see the conflict in Phoenix’s life and contrasts the warm and affectionate nature of the protagonist with the narrow-minded and disparaging characters that she meets on her way. Finally, it allows the author to use symbolism and metaphors throughout the narrative, as discussed in this paper.
First, the third-person point of view allows the author to characterize the protagonist throughout the story. She is an old woman, perhaps suffering from dementia, which explains her hallucinations. Through this point of view, the reader keeps a distance from Phoenix Jackson without getting lost in the subjectivity that comes with other points of view. The audience of this story interacts with the protagonist’s thoughts objectively, allowing for a clear characterization. Welty writes, “You scarecrow,’ she said. Her face lighted. ‘I ought to be shut up for good,’ she said with laughter. ‘My senses are gone. I’m too old. I am the oldest people I have ever known. Dance, old
scarecrow,’ she said.” She is old but undeterred by her age or circumstances, she has to reach he destination. Through her voice, the audience learns about her determination by being in a position to listen the tone, choice of words, and the underlying resoluteness. She says, “Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals!… Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites… Keep the big wild hogs out of my path” (Welty). The author uses this point of view successfully and efficiently to bring out the protagonist’s characteristics as old, but determined, driven by the love of her grandson, who is probably dead. From Phoenix’s hallucinations and the fact that she has made this trip many times to get a drug for a grandson poisoned by lye, there is a probability that the son is dead. However, this form of characterization contributes to the story’s plot development and themes.
Second, the author uses the limited omniscience point of view successfully to deliver the theme of resilience. Right from the beginning, Welty paints a picture of a resolute old woman who cannot be stopped by any challenge. From the third-person perspective, Welty writes,
Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her.
This style of narration allows the reader to have a clear picture of the person being described. The same mental picture cannot be created through other points of view, such as first-person, dramatic, or omnipresent. For instance, if the above quote is written in the first person to read as “My name is Phoenix Jackson. I am very old and small…”, it would sound highly subjective and the audience may fail to form clear mental image of the resilience that the protagonist embodies. Therefore, Welty uses this point of view effectively to allow the reader to have a clear picture of Phoenix’s resolve.
Finally, the third-person point is used to create distance between the protagonist and her conflict. This aspect of the story could be understood better by being aware of the environment where the events unfold. Phoenix, a black woman, traverses rural areas of Mississippi in the 1940s at the height of Jim Crowism. Therefore, there is deep-running conflict, to some extent, racial in nature, between the protagonist and her surroundings. The author uses this limited omniscience by allowing the audience to focus on the character objectively without giving extraneous details. This conflict comes out first when the big black dog hits her and the conversation that goes on in her mind. Welty writes, “‘Old woman,’ she said to herself, ‘that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you.” This conversation, occurring from the third-person perspective, gives the audience a taste of the conflicts in the story, especially surrounding Phoenix’s life. The fact that she is saved by a white man reinforces the theme of race inferiority associated with blacks. Similarly, when the protagonist arrives in the city, she suddenly becomes mute. While all along her journey, she has a dialogue with herself and even her surroundings, the moment she steps into the doctor’s office, the conversations stop. She cannot even explain herself. Frustrated by Phoenix’s demeanor, one of the attendants asks, “Are you deaf?” (Welty). The protagonist only twitches her face without saying a word. This form of narration, from the third-person perspective, allows the reader to see the conflict in Phoenix’s life, even though she might not be aware of it. In town, she loses her voice because such social structuring and environment embody power, which, as an old black woman, does not have. She is poor, black, and old, lacking the socioeconomic or political influence needed to assert herself in a city dominated by the whites. Therefore, the author succeeds in highlighting the conflicts in the story and around Phoenix’s life by using the third-person perspective.
The point of view in any story allows the reader to evaluate the author’s methods applied to achieve various aspects, such as plot development, characterization, and thematic styles, among other related literary elements. In A Worn Path, Welty uses the third-perspective point of view to characterize the protagonist, show her resilience, and highlight the underlying racial conflict that was rife in the South during the Jim Crowism era of the 1940s as discussed in this paper.
Work Cited
Welty, Eudora. “A Worn Path.” The Atlantic, 1941.