Character in Place: Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path”

The story’s protagonist, Phoenix Jackson, is an aged, impoverished, rural African American woman in pursuit of medicine for her grandson. In the course of a single day, Welty’s character, Phoenix, encounters multiple obstacles in the form of various white people whose treatment of her ranges from patronizing to insensitive. As such, her story depicts the Depression in the United States from the vantage point of a victim insufficiently represented in art—though a victim who, like the mythological phoenix her name evokes, resists annihilation, Phoenix transcends the abuse she experiences.

In praise of the author, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter once wrote, “There is no blurring at the edges, but evidences of an active and disciplined imagination working firmly in a strong line of continuity, the waking faculty of daylight reason recollecting and recording the crazy logic of the dream.” To access critical readings of and biographical information on Welty and her work, consult the Mississippi Writers' entry on Welty which provides information on her Mississippi roots and serves as contextual background for her stories and novels.  C-SPAN's video of "The Life of Eudora Welty" shows her neice, Mary Alice Welty White, and the Director of Eudora Welty House, Bridget Edwards, discussing aspects of this author's life and writing process from the author's house. 

Anchor

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

Individual Grade

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3: Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.3: Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Students should have read the story once independently before starting this project in class.

• Worksheet 1. Characterization
• Worksheet 1.1. Characterization (teacher’s version)
• Worksheet 2. Setting
• Worksheet 2.1. Setting (teacher’s version)
• Worksheet 3. Framing Graphics
• Worksheet 4. Summative Assessment Rubric

Before beginning Activity 3, teachers should access ReadWriteThink's Comic Vocabulary Interactive: an "online tool that offers illustrated definitions of various vocabulary terms associated with the comic book genre." This reference canl offer  vocabulary terms to help students more precisely frame their work.

Activity 1. Characterization

Have students describe and analyze Welty’s use of characterization for her main character Phoenix.

With the help of a graphic organizer (Worksheet 1. Characterization), students prepare in small groups for class-wide discussion of characterization in the story by focusing on and fleshing out Welty’s details and their impact on meaning. You might start by doing the first few paragraphs together to model the process and then let students finish the work with their groups. They should fill out columns 1–3 for now. After class discussion, they will complete column 4.

Once students are back together as a group, facilitate a discussion that advances their description to analysis of characterization’s impact by asking such questions as:

• How would you summarily characterize Phoenix? What key adjectives and adverbs would you use? Where is your textual support?
• How would you summarily characterize the hunter and any other characters you think are key? Again, where is your textual support?
• Which of the author’s metaphors stand out for you? Unpack them—what are you invited to see, hear, and feel in and from the imagery?

Formative Assessment

Give students at least 10–15 minutes to fill out column 4 and hand their organizers in to you for review. Your goal is to assess and give them feedback on how successfully they are synthesizing their appreciation of the author’s multiple approaches to characterization through description (i.e., columns 1–3 on the organizer) and analysis (i.e., from class discussion and column 4).

Activity 2. Setting

Have students describe and analyze Welty’s use of setting in the short story “A Worn Path.”

With the help of a graphic organizer (Worksheet 2. Setting), students prepare in small groups for class-wide discussion of setting in the story by focusing on and fleshing out Welty’s details and their impact on meaning. Again, you might start by doing the first few paragraphs together to model the process and then let students finish the work with their groups. They should fill out columns 1–2 for now. After class discussion, they will complete column 3.

Once you’re back together as a group, facilitate a discussion that advances students’ description to analysis of setting’s impact by asking such questions as:

• How does each setting affect Phoenix? How does each help you to see into her character? Where is your textual support?
• What details stand out for you? Why? How does Welty make them stand out?
• How do these different settings affect your appreciation and understanding of the story?

Assessment

Give students at least 10–15 minutes to fill out column 3 and hand worksheets in for review. Assess and give students feedback on how successfully they are synthesizing their observations about the author’s use of setting into an understanding of its impact on meaning within Phoenix’s journey.

Activity 3. Graphic Representation

Have students substantiate and extend their analyses of “A Worn Path” in graphic representations in order to advance their understanding of the impact of characterization and setting on meaning.

Before beginning Activity 3, students should access ReadWriteThink's Comic Vocabulary Interactive: an "online tool that offers illustrated definitions of various vocabulary terms associated with the comic book genre." This reference will offer them vocabulary to help them more precisely frame their work.

Then present students with these basic ways of combining text and imagery in a graphic panel. From least to most complex:

• The imagery and text communicate the same thing—e.g., a drawing of Phoenix smiling and a caption reading "Phoenix smiles."
• The imagery speaks for itself without text—e.g., two juxtaposed frames, one with an unsmiling Phoenix and the next with a smiling Phoenix.
• The imagery and text provide more information together than each could offer alone—e.g., a picture of Phoenix smiling and a caption reading “She was as happy as she'd ever been.” Meaning can become more complex and layered when either the words or the picture rely on each other—e.g., a picture of Phoenix smiling and a caption reading “She pretended to be happy.”

Students should now review the story and their notes on their completed graphic organizers in order to choose a scene they think especially illuminating of the story’s meaning—i.e., a scene that reveals to them something essential about Phoenix’s character and her pilgrimage.

Have students reread the scene multiple times to help them decide on 4 or 5 different frames they will use to represent their understanding. They should use Worksheet 3. Framing Graphics to help them organize their thoughts.

Students write a formal explication of their graphic representations. They explain their work in each frame, justifying with textual citations why they chose the details of character, setting, and dialogue they have used. Explications should be thoughtfully organized, carefully articulated, and integrate citations according to MLA style. They should begin with an introduction that briefly explains why they chose to represent their particular scenes, and they should conclude with an articulation of key aspects of the meaning in the story as a whole as represented by the scene they chose to illustrate. Students should pay attention to their word choices and sentence structures.

Review Worksheet 4. Summative Assessment Rubric with them before they begin their work. If one of your objectives is to assess how creatively they have structured their graphics—e.g., by alternating between long shots and close-ups to convey different things—you should add an additional criterion.

Additional Resources

• American Studies at the University of Virginia
  • Eudora Welty, “Place in Fiction”

• The Eudora Welty Foundation
  • "Welty and the Craft of Writing" (free media resource kit with DVD of Welty reading three stories including “A Worn Path”; an online companion teacher’s guide included)

• The Eudora Welty Review (subscriptions available for a small fee)