A Worn Path / Eudora Welty

The characterization of Phoenix is very interesting.  She is an old black woman and seems to be senile.  She continually takes to herself as she walks along.  She also says sporadic things as she is talking to other people.  Another thing that she might be senile is once she reaches the doctors office she forgets why she came.  Phoenix is clothes are very cheep and she wares a rag over her head.  These descriptive characteristics she how poor she is.  The other characters in the story suggest her setting.  Racial discrimination is still around because the black children are playing out of town and the boy she meets long the way points a gun in her face.  The story also mentions that she remembers the end of the civil war.  “‘All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it,’ said the nurse. ‘But it’s an obstinate case’” (Welty 230).  She has been around he town for a long time because everyone seems to know her.  The doctor also has been giving her medicine for her grandson for three years.  She makes this journey about once a month all year long on a regular schedule.  Her name I also think is interesting because she is getting older but out of her work and effort her grandson is surviving like a ner phoenix rising from the ashes of an old one.