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A Worn Path: the Journey of Life

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A Worn Path: the Journey of Life
A Worn Path
The Journey of Life The story is based on an elderly Negro women’s journey into town for medicine for her grandson. While overcoming challenges her character is born. Along the way she encounters physical Challenges, obstacles and danger. She climbs hills, crosses streams, crawls under barbed-wire fences; she faces dangers while out in the wilderness and a hunter who threatens her life with a gun. This happens on a single trip to town in December early in the morning. Phoenix is quite remarkable woman. Phoenix’s ability to make the journey and overcome these challenges shows her strong determination, dedication, devotion and the will power to endure hardship to finish her task. Her only task was to get the medicine that her grandson needed; do to swallowing lye. Along her journey Phoenix encounters a hunter after she has fallen into a ditch by the hunter’s dog. He proceeds to help her up, demonstrating his willingness to assist a person in need. But his conversation with her reveals his disrespect for her and biased attitudes towards African American in general. The hunter is a flat character. Phoenix is a round character. She is the major character in this story; also she is the protagonist of the story. She is described in vivid colors, suggesting her lively nature: she wears a red rag on her head, a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks: all neat and tidy, and her skin is described as “yellow,” “golden” and “copper.” Her age is indicated by the way she moves-slowly, in small steps, with the assistance of a cane made from an umbrella, “and her eyes were blue with age”. By the wrinkles on her face, which form “a pattern all its own…as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead.” The grandson is a flat character in the story “A Worn Path”. Phoenix’s grandson never appears in the story, only his medical condition is the reason for Phoenixes journey.

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