A worn path short story pdf

The Short Story: Setting and Character

“A writer tries to create believable people in credible, moving situations in the most moving way he can.”

—William Faulkner, Nobel Prize–winning American fiction writer

5

© VideoBlocks

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following: • Define setting and analyze its use in a short story. • Compare and contrast the various types of characters that appear in short stories. • Discuss the various ways characters shape the action in a short story. • Analyze the use of setting and character in this chapter's literary selections.

Character Chapter 5

5.1 Setting Setting identifies conditions, including time and place, of the action in a story. The time may be in the past, present, or future; the location may be real or imaginary. Also, setting is an element that establishes the atmosphere in which the characters live and stimulates the reader’s imagi- nation. Sometimes, it has a cultural aspect as well, which might include local customs, dress, speech, or patterns of thought. To more fully portray people and life in a particular region, writ- ers use local color—consisting of unique images, realistic dialogue, and true-to-life descriptions. Usually, the author describes the setting as the story begins, often presenting necessary factual information succinctly. And, typically, the setting includes a key element—perhaps a time of day, a season, or a political or religious climate—around which the plot will unfold.

In “The Gift of the Magi,” discussed in Chapter 4, the basic time and place questions about the setting are immediately answered: We are told that it’s Christmas Eve and that Della is in the modest flat, with its broken mailbox and broken doorbell, that she and her husband share. She’s sobbing on a “shabby little couch,” anxious about not having enough money to buy an adequate Christmas gift for her husband—”something fine and rare and sterling.” Further, we are told that Della and Jim, though they are being financially squeezed at the moment, have genuine affection for each other, which enables them to accept their situation. Nevertheless, as Della moves to the window, she is struck by the dullness of her life, reflected by “a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard.”

In particular, these details allow the reader to connect to the physical place imaginatively. Additionally, they provide essential information about the couple’s relationship and reveal Della’s present emotional outlook. With the setting sufficiently established, action in the story begins— urgently driven by Della’s feelings and the fact that it’s Christmas Eve and time is running out for gift buying.

5.2 Character A character, of course, is a fictional person in a story. Characters carry out the action of the plot and in doing so they come alive as individuals. Through their appearance, responses, thoughts, relationships, and actions, the reader comes to understand them. Sometimes, in fact, the reader senses changes in a character’s motivations and values even before they are revealed in the story. In other words, characters give a story its life. They are representations of real people who change and develop. As such, literary characters fall into several types:

• Round characters are characters whose behavior is dynamic. They change and develop over the course of the story, revealing multiple aspects of their personalities and natures. Like real people, round characters are complex, most often exhibiting both positive and negative personality traits. They attract audience attention more than flat characters do; they change as their insights develop and deepen; their vitality connects with real life at multiple points. Thebedi in “Country Lovers,” discussed in Chapter 3, is an example of a round character: Her motives, fears, strengths, and weaknesses are all revealed, making her a dynamic and knowable character—an idealist who learns about personal and social acquiescence.

• Flat characters are static rather than dynamic; they are one dimensional and predictable in their behavior. E. M. Forster (1955) observes that flat characters in their purest form “are constructed around a single idea or quality: when there is more than one factor in them,

Character Chapter 5

we get the beginning of a curve toward the round” (135–136). Thebedi’s husband, Njabulo, is an example. He simply accepts life as it comes, marries Thebedi, quietly receives a child who is not his, and continues his routine pattern of work in bricklaying and odd jobs in construction. However, flat characters often add vitality and have a memorable role in a story. Young William Collins, the pompous, imprudent estate heir whose marriage pro- posal Elizabeth turns down in Pride and Prejudice, is such a character. He is described as “not a sensible man,” and notably at various points in the story his behavior reveals the accuracy of that singular characterization. He does not change.

• Stock characters, also referred to as stereotypical figures, are characters who traditionally appear in literature and are readily recognized for exhibiting “role behavior,” such as that of the mad scientist, the damsel in distress, the cruel stepmother, or the boy next door. They are minor characters often used to create humor or provide sharp contrast with main characters in a story.

In many stories, the conflict between the main character (the protagonist) and an opposing char- acter (the antagonist) shapes the action.

• The protagonist is the main character in a story. He or she is the most developed figure, upon whom the plot is centered and its outcome depends. Normally, the audience identifies with and applauds the protagonist’s heroic actions in defeating whomever or whatever the opposition is—or, at the very least, emerging successfully from chaotic, challenging cir- cumstances. Typically, the protagonist is likable and often admirable, but this is not always the case. A classic example is Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. He gives himself over to corrupting ideas that continuously drive him to commit acts of human cruelty. He recklessly ignores the consequences of his actions, which eventually cause several deaths. As this ignoble behavioral pattern unfolds, his portrait reflects the deteriorating state of his soul, exhibiting new shades of ugliness until the portrait becomes that of a monster.

• The antagonist is the individual or force opposing the protagonist, setting up the clas- sic struggle between a hero and a villain. An antagonist must be seen as a credible rival, capable of successfully creating difficulties for the protagonist. The “A & P” store manager, Lengel, fits this role in Updike’s story, discussed in Chapter 2. His actions are few, but they are solid and precise—and completely opposite of the actions Sammy would take. What he tells the girls in bathing suits is enough to make Sammy quit his job and walk out of the store, overcoming any hold that Lengel has on him. In this sense, Sammy wins. But underlying Sammy’s words and actions is a deeper struggle: Sammy perceives his personal worldview to be superior to Lengel’s—and totally different. Sammy sees Lengel’s whole way of life as an antagonistic presence, and he’s content to sever himself from it entirely. Protagonists commonly struggle against threatening ideas, impending chaos, or even nature itself, as the veteran fisherman, Santiago, does so nobly in Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea.

• A foil is a minor character in a story or drama whose nature and observable actions are distinctly different from those of the main character. This sharply contrasting behav- ior allows the reader to better understand the protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses. Similarly, sometimes the behavior of a foil can be a source of inspiration for the protago- nist, stimulating new motivation to change, which, of course, alters the plot or outcome of the story. We are first introduced to the role of foils in stories we hear or read as children. In the Cinderella fairy tale, for example, the stepmother is Cinderella’s antagonist; her two

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

ugly stepsisters are foils, providing a striking contrast to Cinderella’s remarkable natural beauty. This contrast intensifies our identification with Cinderella.

Most often, characters, like people in everyday life, are not static: They change. That’s part of what makes reading fiction exciting and satisfying. Your impressions about particular characters at the beginning of a story and the insights you gain about them by the end of the action can be dramatically different. Huck Finn, for example, is rather indifferent to matters of right and wrong when we first meet him. He is unappreciative of his elders’ efforts to penetrate his indifference through teaching and training. But by the end of the novel, he is capable of acting with purposeful honesty and integrity as he faces the issue of slavery and his friend Jim’s freedom.

Characterization is the term for the methods writers use to reveal a character. Besides describ- ing what characters do, writers make sure the reader knows what characters look like, how they think and interact with others, and what they feel and believe. If a character changes over the course of the story, the writer must allow that change to develop naturally if it is to be credible. In her reflection “On Writing Short Stories,” Flannery O’Connor observed, “In most good stories it is the character’s personality that creates the action of the story. . . . If you start with a real per- sonality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.”

5.3 An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character

In “A Worn Path,” Eudora Welty swiftly and effectively establishes the time of year (December) and the geographic location of the story (the South); she identifies the main character, an old African-American woman (Phoenix Jackson); and she describes the old woman’s appearance and thoughts as the woman begins to move along the path in the pinewoods. Through her use of evocative details, Welty creates a sense of determined struggle in Phoenix. In just a few words, the author sets the external environment and internal conditions that will contribute to the action and the outcome of the story.

Eudora Welty (1909–2001)

Eudora Welty’s parents moved from Ohio to Jackson, Mississippi, where Welty was born. After earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, Welty entered graduate studies at Columbia University in adver- tising (her father doubted she would be able to support herself as a writer). She returned to Jackson, where she spent her life writing short stories and novels. Welty enjoyed photography, lecturing, and teaching. In her fiction, she was a keen observer of Mississippi life, identifying its hardships and struggles, but also offering a vision of hope and change based on family and love relationships. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter in 1973 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

A Worn Path Eudora Welty (1941)

It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods. 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 made a grave and persistent noise in the still air that seemed meditative, like the chirping of a solitary little bird.

She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and with an odor like copper.

Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, “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. Don’t let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.” Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things.

On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the hol- low was the mourning dove—it was not too late for him.

The path ran up a hill. “Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far,” she said, in the voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves. “Something always take a hold of me on this hill—pleads I should stay.”

After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had come. “Up through pines,” she said at length. “Now down through oaks.” Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom of the hill a bush caught her dress.

Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could pull them free in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to tear. “I in the thorny bush,” she said. “Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you

Exposition—The first five paragraphs offer factual,

descriptive information about the main character

and the setting:

• The setting is rural, a cold, early morning in

December in the South. • An “old Negro woman” is

on a solitary journey. • Notice the amount of

detail about her slow pace, her clothes, her untied

shoes, her skin, her hair. • We learn her name,

Phoenix—which is also the mythical creature that rises

from its own ashes. • The information about

how she uses her cane to scatter the small animals

from her path clarifies our picture of her and reveals her character, particularly

her determination.

Enough detail has been given about the woman

to suggest that the story will involve her struggle

against aging: a struggle within herself and with an external reality. When her

path turns uphill and she admits, “Something always

take a hold of me on this hill—pleads I should stay,”

this struggle is identified as a central part of the story.

5

Will she still have strength to deal with the bushes?

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

was a pretty little green bush.” Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane.

“Sun so high!” she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. “The time getting all gone here.”

At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek.

“Now comes the trial,” said Phoenix.

Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a fes- tival figure in some parade, she began to march across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.

“I wasn’t as old as I thought,” she said.

But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands over her knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe.

She did not dare to close her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to him. “That would be acceptable,” she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own hand in the air.

So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretch- ing her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was.

At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, were stand- ing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat a buzzard.

“Who you watching?”

In the furrow she made her way along.

“Glad this not the season for bulls,” she said, looking sideways, “and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in the winter. A pleasure I don’t see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer.”

She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook and was taller than her head. “Through the maze now,” she said, for there was no path.

Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her.

At first she took it for a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.

10

Is her self-assessment of strength realistic?

Is her thinking still clear? 15

Irony is used to show the intensity of her struggle.

Just when she gets “in the clearing” and feels “safe,”

she sees a buzzard, a reminder of death.

20

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

“Ghost,” she said sharply, “who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by.”

But there was no answer—only the ragged dancing in the wind.

She shut her eyes, reached out her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice.

“You scarecrow,” she said. Her face lighted. “I ought to be shut up for good,” she said with laughter. “My senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow,” she said, “while I dancing with you.”

She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn down, shook her head once or twice in a little strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts.

Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering field. At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen.

“Walk pretty,” she said. “This the easy place. This the easy going.”

She followed the track, swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves, past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women under a spell sitting there. “I walking in their sleep,” she said, nodding her head vigorously.

In a ravine she went where a spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix bent and drank. “Sweet-gum makes the water sweet,” she said, and drank more. “Nobody know who made this well, for it was here when I was born.”

The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every limb. “Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles.” Then the track went into the road. Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the live oaks met, and it was as dark as a cave.

A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.

Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. “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.”

A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a chain. “Well, Granny!” he laughed. “What are you doing there?”

“Lying on my back like a June-bug waiting to be turned over, mis- ter,” she said, reaching up her hand.

The field of dead corn and the ghostly atmosphere are

more images of death. 25

Dancing with the scare- crow (whose purpose, of

course, is to scare scaven- ger birds) symbolizes the woman’s intent to drive

away thoughts of death, to continue her journey with

determination.

Details of the setting— here, a description of the

wagon track—are used to tell us that the old woman

is following a familiar path: She is alert and able to

pace herself in the “easy going” part of her journey.

30

The well, which “was here when I was born,” reminds

her of her long life; the drink of water helps renew

her spirits.

35

The dog and the white hunter represent new

external conflicts that the woman must face.

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. “Anything broken, Granny?”

“No sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough,” said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. “I thank you for your trouble.”

“Where do you live, Granny?” he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other.

“Away back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can’t even see it from here.”

“On your way home?”

“No sir, I going to town.”

“Why, that’s too far! That’s as far as I walk when I come out myself, and I get something for my trouble.” He patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a little closed claw. It was one of the bobwhites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was dead. “Now you go on home, Granny!”

“I bound to go to town, mister,” said Phoenix. “The time come around.”

He gave another laugh, filling the whole landscape. “I know you old colored people! Wouldn’t miss going to town to see Santa Claus!”

But something held old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man’s pocket onto the ground.

“How old are you, Granny?” he was saying.

“There is no telling, mister,” she said, “no telling.”

Then she gave a little cry and clapped her hands and said, “Git on away from here, dog! Look! Look at that dog!” She laughed as if in admiration. “He ain’t scared of nobody. He a big black dog.” She whispered, “Sic him!”

“Watch me get rid of that cur,” said the man. “Sic him, Pete! Sic him!”

Phoenix heard the dogs fighting, and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg from under a set- ting hen. Then she slowly straightened up, she stood erect, and the nickel was in her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved.

40

The hunter rescues the old woman from her encounter

with the dog, but there is discernible conflict between

these two characters: The hunter is on a mission of

death and the old woman is on a life-saving mission. 45

Money is used to heighten the contrast between these

two characters and to emphasize their contrasting

racial circumstances: The hunter has money; the old

woman has none.

50

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

“God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing.”

The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. “Well, I scared him off that time,” he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.

She stood straight and faced him.

“Doesn’t the gun scare you?” he said, still pointing it.

“No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done,” she said, holding utterly still.

He smiled, and shouldered the gun. “Well, Granny,” he said, “you must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I’d give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you.”

“I bound to go on my way, mister,” said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the hill.

She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells were ringing. She walked on.

In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where.

She paused quietly on the sidewalk where people were passing by. A lady came along in the crowd, carrying an armful of red-, green- and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.

“Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?” She held up her foot.

“What do you want, Grandma?”

“See my shoe,” said Phoenix. “Do all right for out in the country, but wouldn’t look right to go in a big building.”

“Stand still then, Grandma,” said the lady. She put her packages down on the sidewalk beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly.

“Can’t lace ‘em with a cane,” said Phoenix. “Thank you, missy. I doesn’t mind asking a nice lady to tie up my shoe, when I gets out on the street.”

Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the big build- ing, and into a tower of steps, where she walked up and around and around until her feet knew to stop.

The old woman’s sense of God’s approval of her

retrieving the nickel brings only momentary release

from her conflict with the hunter. He points a gun at her, is insincere in his willingness to give her a

dime, and mocks her age and intentions to go to the

city. But this conflict only strengthens her resolve:

She faces the hunter and continues on her journey.

55

60

Again, the old woman’s character is revealed

through her actions. In asking someone to tie her

shoes now that she’s in the city, she shows self-respect.

65

And the white woman who ties her shoes considers

the old woman worthy of respect—in contrast to

the treatment the hunter gave her.

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head.

“Here I be,” she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body.

“A charity case, I suppose,” said an attendant who sat at the desk before her.

But Phoenix only looked above her head. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net.

“Speak up, Grandma,” the woman said. “What’s your name? We must have your history, you know. Have you been here before? What seems to be the trouble with you?”

Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bother- ing her.

“Are you deaf?” cried the attendant.

But then the nurse came in.

“Oh, that’s just old Aunt Phoenix,” she said. “She doesn’t come for herself—she has a little grandson. She makes these trips just as regular as clockwork. She lives away back off the Old Natchez Trace.” She bent down. “Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don’t you just take a seat? We won’t keep you standing after your long trip.” She pointed.

The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair.

“Now, how is the boy?” asked the nurse.

Old Phoenix did not speak.

“I said, how is the boy?”

But Phoenix only waited and stared straight ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.

“Is his throat any better?” asked the nurse. “Aunt Phoenix, don’t you hear me? Is your grandson’s throat any better since the last time you came for the medicine?”

With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if she were in armor.

“You mustn’t take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix,” the nurse said. “Tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over. He isn’t dead, is he?’

At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke.

“My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and for- got why I made my long trip.”

“Forgot?” The nurse frowned. “After you came so far?”

The medical office is the setting for her journey’s

end—the destination she concentrated on as she

traveled.

70

The old woman does not feel as comfortable in this

setting as she does “on the path” and is certainly not

as responsive. Or she may just be exhausted.

75

80

85

An Annotated Story Illustrating Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgive- ness for waking up frightened in the night. “I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming.”

“Throat never heals, does it?” said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to old Phoenix. By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. “Yes. Swallowed lye. When was it?— January—two, three years ago—”

Phoenix spoke unasked now. “No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get his breath. He not able to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing medicine.”

“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.”

“My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,” Phoenix went on. “We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don’t seem to put him back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so plain now. I not going to forget him again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him from all the others in creation.”

“All right.” The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of medicine. “Charity,” she said, making a check mark in a book.

Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her pocket.

“I thank you,” she said.

“It’s Christmas time, Grandma,” said the attendant. “Could I give you a few pennies out of my purse?”

“Five pennies is a nickel,” said Phoenix stiffly.

“Here’s a nickel,” said the attendant.

Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the nickel and then fished the other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with her head on one side.

Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor.

“This is what come to me to do,” she said. “I going to the store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. I’ll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand.”

The old woman reveals a lot about her inner self by

what she says.

90

Genuine compassion forms the center of her character.

The attendant’s compas- sion is tepid and thin in

contrast to the old wom- an’s driven, compassionate

spirit. 95

100

Love, which inspires her to bring an unimaginable

gift to her grandson, along with his medicine, will give

her strength to “march” herself back to where he

is waiting.

A Story for Reflection on the Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor’s office. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.

“A Worn Path” from A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty. Copyright © 1941 and re- newed 1969 by Eudora Welty. Reprinted by permission of Russell & Volkening as agents for the author and

by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

R E S P O N S E A N D R E F L E C T I O N Q U E S T I O N S

Exploring Setting

1. The setting in this story is in a particular season—the Christmas season. How does this seasonal setting influence your interpretation of the story?

2. The physical setting changes during Phoenix Jackson’s journey. How does each environment she encounters reflect her character?

3. “A worn path” could also be considered the setting for this story. What atmosphere do you imagine when you think about a worn path?

Exploring Character

4. Is Phoenix Jackson a static or a dynamic character? Support your answer with citations from the text. Phoenix can also be considered an “eternal type,” meaning that she symbolizes one or more specific character traits. “Compassion” would be one trait—can you suggest another?

5. What is Phoenix Jackson’s greatest strength? Her greatest weakness? How does Welty reveal these character traits?

6. Why is it appropriate for the main character to be named Phoenix? 7. Consider the minor characters in the story. Explain how they are used to highlight racial tensions.

5.4 A Story for Reflection on the Elements of Setting and Character

Tim O’Brien (b. 1946)

After graduating from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, Tim O’Brien was drafted into the army in 1968 and sent to fight in Vietnam in a war he didn’t support. But he served worthily; he became a sergeant and was awarded the Purple Heart. Since then, he has devoted his life to writing and teaching. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1979 for the novel Going After Cacciato, a book about the Vietnam War. “The Things They Carried” is one of several stories O’Brien published in a book by the same name in 1990; they are fiction but have autobiographical connections to his war experiences. In one of these selections, “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien’s view of war seems to be embedded in this statement:

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. (Geyh, 174)

© Marion Ettlinger/Corbis Entertainment/Corbis

A Story for Reflection on the Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien (1990)

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of fight pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed ten ounces. They were signed “Love, Martha,” but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his ruck- sack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repel- lent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool- Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations,1 and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who prac- ticed field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-size bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R2 in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe3 in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP,4 they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots— 2.1 pounds—and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of pre- mium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the

1 C rations: Combat meals 2 R&R: Rest and rehabilitation leave 3 Than Khe: A village in Vietnam 4 SOP: Standard operating procedure

A Story for Reflection on the Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

RTO,5 carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby- trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon- covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or make- shift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

They were called legs or grunts.

To carry something was to “hump” it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.

Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. The first was a Kodachrome snapshot signed “Love,” though he knew better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he knew she had boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the picture taker spreading out against the brick wall. The second photograph had been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shot—women’s volleyball—and Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression frank and competitive. There was no visible sweat. She wore white gym shorts. Her legs, he thought, were almost certainly the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left knee cocked and carrying her entire weight, which was just over 117 pounds. Lieutenant Cross remembered touching that left knee. A dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back, but he would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath it and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and oppres- sive. He remembered kissing her goodnight at the dorm door. Right then, he thought, he should’ve done something brave. He

5 RTO: Radio and telegraph operator

A Story for Reflection on the Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

should’ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He should’ve risked it. Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done.

What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.

As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.

As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, twenty-six pounds with its battery.

As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&M’s6 for espe- cially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 18 pounds.

As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins car- ried the M-60,7 which weighed twenty-three pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded. In addition, Dobbins carried between ten and fifteen pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders.

As PFCs8 or Spec 4s,9 most of them were common grunts10 and car- ried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault rifle. The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full twenty- round magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as topography and psychology, the riflemen carried anywhere from twelve to twenty magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 pounds at minimum, fourteen pounds at maxi- mum. When it was available, they also carried M-16 maintenance gear—rods and steel brushes and swabs and tubes of LSA oil—all of which weighed about a pound. Among the grunts, some car- ried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reason- ably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighed ten ounces. The typical load was twenty- five rounds. But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried thirty- four rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than twenty pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then down— not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does

6 M&M: Informal term for medical supplies 7 M-60: A United States machine gun, caliber 7.62 mm 8 PFC: A military rank, private first class 9 Spec 4: A junior enlisted rank in the U.S. Army 10 Grunts: Slang for an infantryman in the U.S. military, especially in the Vietnam War

A Story for Reflection on the Elements of Setting and Character Chapter 5

fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself. They stripped off Lavender’s canteens and ammo, all the heavy things, and Rat Kiley said the obvious, the guy’s dead, and Mitchell Sanders used his radio to report one U.S. KIA11 and to request a chopper. Then they wrapped Lavender in his poncho. They carried him out to a dry paddy, established security, and sat smoking the dead man’s dope until the chopper came. Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her. When the dust- off arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward they burned Than Khe. They marched until dusk, then dug their holes, and that night Kiowa kept explaining how you had to be there, how fast it was, how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom- down, he said. Like cement.

In addition to the three standard weapons—the M-60, M-16,12 and M-7913—they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive. They carried catch-as-catch can. At various times, in various situations, they carried M-14s14 and CAR-15s15 and Swedish Ks16 and grease guns17 and captured AK-47s18 and ChiComs19 and RPGs20 and Simonov carbines and black market Uzis21 and .38-caliber Smith & Wesson handguns and 66 mm LAWs22 and shotguns and silencers and blackjacks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives. Lee Strunk carried a slingshot; a weapon of last resort, he called it. Mitchell Sanders carried brass knuckles. Kiowa carried his grandfather’s feathered hatchet. Every third or fourth man carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine23—3.5 pounds with its firing device. They all carried fragmentation grenades—fourteen ounces each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade—twenty-four ounces. Some carried CS or tear-gas24 grenades. Sonic carried white-phosphorus grenades. They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.