The Journey

The Journey
Carla Session
ENG125
Julie Pal-Agrawal
May 4, 2011

I Used to Live Here Once, was written by Jean Rhys.   In this story a woman visits her childhood home and comes to realize she is no longer alive.   The narrator shadows the woman on her journey to a river and down an unfinished road that leads to the house where she use to live.   Once she reaches her old house, she notices two children a boy and a girl playing under a big mango tree.   The woman calls out to the children by saying, “Hello.” Then, “I used to live here once,” she said. (Clugston, 2010, Chp.7, section 5) The two children ignore the woman.   It may be possible the two children ignore the woman because they did not hear her or they were told by their parents to never talk to strangers.   Is this what is going on?   I think there is a more significant reason.   The speaker tells us in paragraph three that “that the sky had a glassy look….”   This may be because the woman visitor does not see with her own eyes any more, or it could be that she does see with her own eyes and can see the true nature of the sky.
A Worn Path, was written by Eudora Welty.   In this story a very old elderly Negro woman named Phoenix Jackson makes a long journey through the pinewoods into a city called Natchez to obtain medicine for her sick grandson.   Along this worn path that Phoenix Jackson takes it becomes very clear how determined she is to get medicine for her grandson.   Only traveling with the clothes on her back and an umbrella used for a cane, she hears quivering in the thicket and says, “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.” (Clugston, 2010, Chp.6, section 3)   Then she sees a buzzard and thinks she sees a ghost of her grandson but when she reaches out to him he disappears. Her dress is snagged by a barbed wire fence; she came upon a black dog and was rescued by a... [continues]

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