phenox jackson is a hero
Many people think of a hero as a man or women that do an incredible act and more often than not many people look up to that one person. In the story A Worn Path by Eudora Welty, the main character Phoenix Jackson is defined as a hero. The hero in this story resembles what is known as unconscious heroism, which is a person doing heroic actions and not be aware that they actually are doing something heroic. Phoenix demonstrates this in many ways. Phoenix faces great danger during a trip she made down town one very cold December day to pick up medicine for her grandson. Phoenix is very old, frail, and nearly blind. This trip required her to climb through a barbed wire fence and cross a frozen stream. This particular trip almost kills her as she runs across a hunter. As she finally gets to town, she has a very interesting conversation with some nurses she meets at the hospital.
“She was very old and small and walked slowly in the dark pine shadows” (216). The story starts out by saying that Phoenix Jackson was a small and old Negro woman. For making the journey she thinks that she is just getting medicine for her grandson, what the reader sees a old women doing a very heroic thing by getting her grandsons medicine. This example fits perfectly with the definition of a hero of someone doing something to help another person. As the story progresses we come to find that she is just doing this out of the kindness of her heart so her grandson can be more confortable at home. After the long walk down the dirt path she stops and says “Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far” (217) the author is insinuating that Phoenix is a women in her late 70’s or 80’s by the way she is described. “My senses are gone. I too old!” (218). Phoenix is realizing her senses are gone and she has some idea of what she is doing; she is not at the capability she once was. When old Phoenix was in the hospital and she was talking to she was trying to remember why she came and
“She was very old and small and walked slowly in the dark pine shadows” (216). The story starts out by saying that Phoenix Jackson was a small and old Negro woman. For making the journey she thinks that she is just getting medicine for her grandson, what the reader sees a old women doing a very heroic thing by getting her grandsons medicine. This example fits perfectly with the definition of a hero of someone doing something to help another person. As the story progresses we come to find that she is just doing this out of the kindness of her heart so her grandson can be more confortable at home. After the long walk down the dirt path she stops and says “Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far” (217) the author is insinuating that Phoenix is a women in her late 70’s or 80’s by the way she is described. “My senses are gone. I too old!” (218). Phoenix is realizing her senses are gone and she has some idea of what she is doing; she is not at the capability she once was. When old Phoenix was in the hospital and she was talking to she was trying to remember why she came and