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Date: 30/03/2019
Natural imagery
The purpose of imagery in literature is to appeal to the human logic to deepen the reader’s understanding of a story (Vandaele). Imagery is the use of vivid and descriptive language in a piece of literal work to add intensity to the story the author intends to share with the readers. Imagery includes all the five senses in expressing the feelings, reactions, and actions to a phenomenon. The senses are a basis of the types of imagery which include visual imagery, tactile imagery, gustatory imagery, auditory imagery, and olfactory imagery. Other forms are subjective imagery which corresponds to personal experiences such as feeling hungry and kinesthetic imagery which corresponds to movements. Visual imagery relates to the graphics, photographs, or the sense of light, tactile imagery relates to the sense of touch, gustatory imagery relates to the sense of taste, auditory imagery relates to the sense of hearing such as onomatopoeia, and olfactory imagery relates to the sense of smell.
Natural imagery uses figurative language as well in stories. For instance, in a story, one may use light which is from nature to denote knowledge. Natural imagery helps in setting the tone and the mood of the story. An example of the use of natural of natural imagery in novels is when the author uses the bright and sunny day as the first line of the story to represent a good story. Such openings assure the reader that the novel is a good novel since the starting is a positive one. The opening lines are responsible for setting the entire mood of the novel stereotypically even though the setting may involve some dark tones to conflict the bright mood but also help the reader learn to appreciate the good times. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of natural imagery in “The Worn Path” and what the natural images represent in the story particularly pertaining who Phoenix is and what she may symbolize, and how nature plays a role in determining the final significance of the story.
In the story “The Worn Path,” the name of the main character Phoenix is natural imagery of the phoenix bird that is believed to be able to rise from its ashes in myths. The name denotes that indeed Phoenix is a strong woman who is capable of getting back up even if she faces difficulties as worse as getting burnt and being reduced to ashes. In the story, she is depicted as an elderly African-American woman walking to town to get her grandson’s medicine. Welty uses her as an elderly character that walks through the thick, dangerous forest all alone despite her almost complete blindness that required her to use a cane to walk. The difficulties are symbolized by the danger of the forest and her conditions that is being old, little and blind but despite that she has to walk through to town to get her grandson the medicine he needs.
The worn path symbolizes her journey which is filled with love, faith, and sadness all wound up in the background of death. She has to walk through a tough path which is snowy and frozen to get to her grandson’s medicine (Welty 1274). Buzzards are present to symbolize death, destruction, and decay which all connotes death but with a hint of rebirth. Death is wound around the journey that little yet old Phoenix is embarked on through a dangerous forest all by herself despite her condition of blindness. The title itself sets out the mood of the story. Worn path evokes feelings of difficulty, fear, and death in the story even before one reads the story itself. Welty bases the story on a vulnerable blind, an old woman traveling all alone in a dangerous forest.
In the third paragraph of “The Worn Path,” Phoenix is seen using her cane to part her way through the fields just like Moses from the bible used his cane to part the waters of the red sea to deliver the children of Israel from Egypt. She also commands the woodland creatures are taking into practice the way power that God gave to human beings in Genesis over the animals and all creatures on earth. Welty uses the Bible to depict the nature of how the earth is supposed to be run. Humans are in charge just the way Phoenix in the story was in charge of the woodland creatures. The connection in the story to the Bible makes the story relevant since most people believe that the bible is the foundation of human life.
The story also has a lot of trees such as oak trees, cypress trees, sweet gum trees, pine trees, and trees with mistletoes and mosses. Welty even describes Phoenix’s wrinkles as looking like trees (Welty 2). Trees symbolize life and endurance. The story features a range of trees from the evergreens that live forever to deciduous trees and the temporary once that die fast as symbolized by the leaves falling off. The journey was filled with life, hope, and death. The evergreen trees represent life while deciduous one represents hope for life and the temporary trees represent death. Welty was attempting to put across the connection between life and death and how life revolves around such a cycle. Phoenix also goes through the cycle and in the story she is like the deciduous trees that seem dead, but they still have a life.
Welty also represents the lack of basic needs such as food, water, and medicine in the story. Basic needs are derived from the natural resources which Phoenix seems to lack in the story. Phoenix and her grandson lack a range of things including medical needs, transportation, and other resources such as finances. Welty uses their state of devastation in her story which is what forces the old lady to travel through the ‘worn path’ for her grandson’s sake. They represent those starving due to neglect during though times such as famine and drought.
Phoenix also is depicted as persistent and is symbolized as a windmill. The windmill does its rounds over and over again and never stops as long as the wind blows on. Same way, Phoenix’s determination to get medicine for her grandson is depicted by the wind which keeps her journey, the windmill, going. She says she will march up back to him and hand the medicine he needs to him (Welty 99). She goes to town then returns and embarks on a journey back to town again which depicts her as a strong person despite her looks and condition (Welty 44). She just does not give up like a weakling.
In the overall story, nature makes the entire journey look like the entire life of a person. In life, there are hard time and easy times, time for everything and bosssth familiar and new experiences. There are beauty and ugliness in life just the way Welty puts it in the story. Phoenix walks through the dangerous forest all alone, but her journey was filled with love and hope. She did not care about her condition, and she was focused on traveling across the forest just to get her grandson medicine from town. She encountered difficulties such as the white hunter who pointed a gun at her and called her a granny but her determination made her fearless. The determination is the nature of life. In life, one is supposed to be hopeful no matter what hits them along the way.
Works Cited BIBLIOGRAPHY
Vandaele, Jeroen. “On Comic Mental Imagery in Literature: The Case of Manolito Gafotas.” Neophilologus (2015): 351-370.
Welty, Eudora. A Worn Path. Atlantic Monthly, 1941.
