Eudora Welty: "A Worn Path," "Why I Live at the P.O." and "No Place For You, My Love"
"Eudora Welty won eight O Henry awards and the Pulitzer prize, was awarded the Légion d'honneur, became the first living author to have her works published in a Library of America edition, and was long considered a likely recipient of the Nobel. Long before her death in 2001, aged 92, she had become the grande dame of American letters: an infallibly polite and humorous southern lady who still lived in the same house, in Jackson, Mississippi, where she was born. It's a portrait that tells nothing of the cryptic brilliance of her best fiction."
Thus begins the post by Chris Power on Books Blog, of the Guardian, in "A brief survey of the short story." It's worth reading, if you want a quick peek into Welty's work. And a more recent image than this one of her as a girl, barefooted.
I never had given Eudora Welty a real look until recent years, when I finally learned to read. Now, she is one of my favorites; her short stories in the collection, A Curtain of Green, are some of the best stories I've ever found. I like Powers's phrase "cryptic brilliance." When I met with David Joseph today to discuss our takes on these three pieces, I shared my readings of the cosmic scope of the very grounded worn path, and my love for the otherworldly possibility in the story about the haphazard couple driving south from New Orleans. These stories blow me away, but I think, no, I know, that it's because I have given myself over to them. Welty demands it.
If you spend time with these stories, they will take you mysterious places, like on a long, slow, painful walk, or a wild ride. You might discover joy in a paper windmill, or you might, in horror and shriek, fall in love.
Honestly, I had some trouble with these stories. They just didn’t sit all that well with me. Certainly, “A Worn Path,” “Why I Live at the P.O.,” and “No Place For You, My Love” share one obvious ideal, in that they are quite uniquely set in the Southern United States. Granted, this is not exactly groundbreaking, so I won’t spend too much time discussing this. However, I do have to say that I respect Welty’s ability to capture character through dialogue, as well as situations within the stories. “A Worn Path” is a story that I almost want to enjoy, but I can’t. Welty does an admirable job of exploring character through Phoenix’s interactions with the hunter, herself, and the nurse at the doctor’s office. This is the lone story that captures dialogue, as well as setting. We see the woods. We see the town. But, why can’t I enjoy it, despite all this? Frankly, I don’t know. I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t feel all that invested in it. “Why I Live at the P.O.” does a decent job of showing more of this character development through the narrator’s interactions with her sister, Stella-Rondo, as well as her interactions with the other characters in the piece (Mama, Papa-Daddy, and Uncle Rondo). But, unlike “A Worn Path,” I struggle ever seeing this story work for me. It just seems so… I don’t know. It just seems too absurd to me. The ending is unsatisfying and at the same time far too happy for me to properly appreciate it. “No Place for You, My Love” is a kind of love story that isn’t a love story. Right now, I would have to say I found this one to be the most enjoyable of the three pieces in this collection. There is much more of a reliance on the psychological in this one than the others. Dialogue does not drive this piece, but rather setting and thought processes do. The man and the woman are quite complicated. Their day trip is strange. It doesn’t make sense. I love it. The ending, unlike “A Worn Path” and “Why I Live at the P.O.” really works. It ends strangely; it ends appropriately with the reader still wanting to know what the fuck exactly just happened. All in all, I see how Welty is such a renowned writer. While I did not particularly enjoy these stories, they did have certain aspects to them that could make them strong fictional pieces. Welty clearly has a control of her language, as well as a true understanding and appreciation of a particular culture. Since this was my first experience with Welty, I am inclined to think that her fiction gets better with time. Perhaps the more I read (and reread) of her, the more I will enjoy, or at least more fully appreciate, her writing. Perhaps not. Perhaps, no matter how much I try, I will never be a huge fan of Eudora Welty. In the end, though, I am fairly certain that I will always have a respect for what Welty has done for fiction, if nothing else.
ReplyDeleteEudora Welty takes her fiction in a peculiar direction when it comes to “telling a story.” She goes against typical conventions and scales back on the “telling” within the story, and scales back hard. In each of the stories today, the reader is left with questions regarding the details surrounding each piece which Welty left unanswered. For example, “A Worn Path” features Phoenix Jackson, a woman significantly further along in her years than one would expect from someone making such an arduous journey as she did, but it is not until the final two pages of the story that we are given a reason for the trip, and even then, is it really the reason? Phoenix hallucinates, talks to herself with phrases and concerns that are rather odd – she wears a dress that simply cannot be ripped, yet she takes such a hazardous path, and when she isn’t musing out loud, she’s berating the animals in a tone as if they are equals – and when being told about her own grandson, she stares into space and remains forgetful until the purpose of her journey is explained three times to her. It is clear that old age has claimed her mental stability, but how far? With our only information coming from such a source, how can we be sure if she is fully aware of her grandson’s condition, how serious it is or if it still persists, or even if her grandson is still as young as she envisions him, or even if he’s alive? The unreliability of this character (through no fault of her own) creates a lack of information, which we must piece together ourselves. Similarly, “Why I Live at the P.O.” has a narrator that cannot be trusted. Sister paints her family (and herself) with the personalities of whiny five-year-olds, the immature child reading even further backed up by their childish need to over-explain themselves. Furthermore, the degree to which Sister demonizes and mocks her family while passing herself off as innocent is painfully one-sided. In the end, all we really know about the tale is Sister’s own immaturity and antagonism in regards to telling this story, so in reality, we can trust nothing she says, and the true events are left to our own imagination to figure out. “No Place for You, My Love” also leaves it up to us to figure out what elements in the characters’ subconscious led to them going on a spontaneous drive, and how they would be affected afterwards. Perhaps this method of letting the reader “figure it out” isn’t for everyone, but it is interesting to let the audience see what they can add to the story from the breadcrumbs offered by the author.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can see, Eudora Welty has created several stories with unreliable narrators. The fact that these narrators were so unreliable made it hard for me to connect with these stories, or the characters in general. While they were interesting to read about, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was real and what was simply in the characters imaginations. In “No Place for You, My Love” we have to figure out why the characters subconscious made them go on a spontaneous drive. In “Why I Live at the P.O.” Sister shows her and her family to be nothing more than winy children that insult and abuse each other regularly (herself included). She demonizes her relatives and makes herself look sweet and innocent, so the story is very one sided. All we know is that Sister is the one who caused all this drama, so we can not trust the imagination of someone who sees everyone as a five year old. Finally we have A Worn Path,” whose main character is an old woman is a women with an increasingly failing memory and an increasingly lost sense of reality. We do not even know the purpose of her journey until the last two pages of the story. We can not know if any of the information she gave us is reliable or even true in the slightest. While I understand the use of unreliable narrators in literature (Nick Carroway from The Great Gatsby comes to mind) I feel like the execution in these stories was much harder for me to digest and accept.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading all three of these stories I found myself fully interested in the outcome and path that these characters were following. Welty doesn't necessarily keep me in suspense, but she has a way of giving me just enough subtly information I know there is a reason for the pacing. I like that none of these stories jump out at the reader right away, they set us up with strong narrations and great detail of character and setting. That being said at the same time that i thought that was a strong point in her writing I also found myself annoyed with it. While reading "A Worn Path", I knew that Phoenix's destination was or should be the climax of the story, I got caught up in her journey through the woods and the almost oddly magical/ hallucinations to be interesting. However when it came to the very end of the story I found myself not trusting Phoenix. I almost viewed her as this senile women that walked around the town pretending she had a grandson. The story seemed to lose its magic for me. Yet, i have to give it to Welty for she kept my attention because she did build and build on information. I had no idea why this old woman who was struggling so hard was going down this path, so naturally as the reader i'm going to be interested in her journey. I think pacing a story in this way is smart. Another element of Welty's writing in "A Worn Path" was her strong and vivd descriptions of Phoenix. The language and imagery was beautiful and so fitting. "Her fingers slid down and along the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting and egg from under a setting hen (1043)." In "Why I live in P.O", I found myself again trying to see where the story was going to end. I think that Welty wants her readers to work for her, and I think as readers we should. She gives us great descriptions and such strong characterization that it all seems very real. I love the family dynamic we see in "P.O" and the different voices of Mama, Stella-Rondo, Sister, and Pappa-Daddy, are realistic. I think in order to really enjoy all three of these stories I have to trust Welty. In "No for you, my love"again we see Welty setting the reader up to follow little hints to where this characters are going to end up. Again i think this a smart method, but at the same time if you don't have the strong drive of imagery, language and detail that Eudora Welty bring to these pages, I think that this method of writing could also be extremely hard to enjoy and understand.
ReplyDeleteI will admit that I struggled with Eudora Welty. I felt as though I missed the point in these three stories, as they all left me wondering the entire way through. The endings never seemed satisfying because it just left me with more questions. I’m beginning to wonder if that was the point.
ReplyDeleteFrom “A Worn Path” and “Why I Live at the P.O.” we can see that Welty has an amazing talent for voice. Phoenix Jackson has a very particular way of talking. It’s difficult to understand exactly what she’s saying because of her abnormal syntax, but you get the basic point of it, as does everyone else in the story. It’s a very important part of her character, as her voice paints as much of a picture of Phoenix as the initial description does. For Sister of “Why I Live at the P.O.” she is the narrator, and we hear her voice all the time. She too has a very different way of speaking, to the point that I could hardly understand what she was saying sometimes. Everyone else speaks in this manner too, which certainly didn’t help my confusion. Again though, this voice became the character.
Now, as far as the stories themselves, I understand the basic plot, but I was left with many questions. Why was Phoenix taking such a long hike to town? We figure out it was for her grandson, but then that leaves us with more questions. How could she forget such an important thing along the way to town? Is it that her grandson is actually dead? How far gone is this old woman? As for “No Place for You, My Love” I was wondering why these two went off together in the first place. It seemed very clear from just the first page that the man didn’t fancy the woman at all. If he could care less, why bother getting swept up in this sort of childish impulse to go somewhere? What was the point of it? My biggest question for “Why I Live at the P.O.” was, “what is wrong with this whole family?” Everyone was a gossip, and hardly anyone could get along. I couldn’t find myself attracted to any of those characters because of how absurd they were all being.
I never like feeling lost at the end of a story, or feeling like my questions haven’t been answered. I read for clarity, not confusion. Unfortunately, I did not find any of these stories particularly striking, though I did prefer “The Worn Path” to the rest of the pieces. Perhaps Eudora Welty’s style just isn’t for me. I was disappointed in myself for not being able to feel as engaged with the pieces as I had with previous authors, but I was glad to have had the experience of reading these pieces at least.
Eudora Welty is a fantastic storyteller as she weaves vivid description, familiar characters, human mystery, and a fairy tale like quality through her narratives. She uses phrases and dialogue that fit perfectly into her stories and are delights to stumble upon. I found myself very involved in trying to understand Welty’s characters. Each one was very complex with different emotions. Once each story ended, the characters stuck in my head as I kept thinking about them and their actions. Her stories take us on a journey as one old woman travels miles to get medicine for her grandson, a frustrated young woman creates a scene as she attempts to remove herself from her own crazy life, and two strangers have a secret tension that floats through the story as they travel to the great bayou and back.
ReplyDeleteIn “A Worn Path,” Aunt Phoenix goes on what seems like an impossible journey for a woman of her age. She makes it with such determination and stubbornness that she feels very familiar. Her motive of getting to town is unclear until the end, but even at the end, the reader is left wondering about the grandson, who the reader never meets. The description in the story is very detailed like when Aunt Phoenix reaches to pick up the dropped nickel. The passage reads, “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 setting hen” (1043). Aunt Phoenix shows so much care in everything she does much like her creator does. Her story seems like a reflection of a fairytale as Aunt Phoenix emerges out of the snow, rescued out of a hole, and makes it safely to town. What the reader doesn’t necessarily think about is that this is only half of the journey. She still has to go back.
“Why I Live at the P.O.” is a lot more humorous story as Sister gets jealous of Stella Rondo. Sister has constant cocky comments and is breaking the fourth wall in an attempt to get the reader “on her side.” She is always explaining herself to the reader and making it seem like she is the victim, she is the one who is being picked on. The comedic scene of Sister finally escaping the house almost feels like a cartoon as she banters with her family over what is really hers. She decides to live at the P.O and imagines that life there would be a fairytale as she says, “I’ve got everything cater-cornered, the way I like it.” The reader shouldn’t trust sister. She never seems to wonder if any of the tensions in the family are her own fault.
“No Place for You, My Love” was perhaps the most puzzling to me. Like a fairytale, two strangers meet and venture to the mysterious bayou and miraculously come out with their morals intact. From the beginning of the story, readers know there is a tension between the two. As they dance together, this tension rises until they leave and come back to the real world where “something that must have been with them all along suddenly, then, was not.” Suddenly it is no longer this dream world with seemingly not responsibilities and adventure. They are back to their “normal” lives, lives that the readers never know. That line was my favorite line from each of the stories. It is a simple line, but has a lot of mysterious meaning. The line is a great short example of Welty’s writing skills.
In the introduction to Eudora Welty’s stories, Lee Smith writes that “the reader always senses a deeper meaning, an unspoken revelation or unseen presence, an immanence beneath her graceful writing and the shining surface of the story.” There’s something in each of these stories, particularly with the main female character, that speaks to this statement. In “A Worn Path,” we have the contradiction of Phoenix Jackson: a chipper, old woman who is facing the mortality of both her and her grandson. So much of the story centers on the details of the path that Jackson takes, like how 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” (1043). These details, combined with Jackson’s character, take us beyond the trees and wood-smoke to the longer journey of life, not just the physical one she is taking.
ReplyDeleteIn both “Why I Live at the P.O.” and “No Place for You, My Love” are characters that fill us in on the story only so much. Welty leaves us to fill in the blanks, to “respect the page” (125), in a sense, as Margaret Atwood says. The first of these two stories is fun to read, mainly because the unfortunate situation of the narrator is not our own. But underneath that, we are left to consider how she really feels about leaving home because her family cares more for her older sister. And, does she truly enjoy living at the P.O.? She says, “But oh, I like it here. It’s ideal, as I’ve been saying” (1054), but Welty leaves this open-ended, letting us decide if she is being sarcastic or not.
In the same way that the P.O. story was left open-ended, “No Place for You, My Love” gives us a sense that something terrible is about to happen, or at least that’s what I thought. The man driving the woman off, especially when he was married, led me to believe this story would end tragically, especially with details like “The nearness of darkness, the still uncut trees… dark shapes of boats tied up” (1061), but in reality Welty is doing what we talked about in class—building up to the scene we think we’re going to get to, and then changing it up. I enjoyed this “changing up” in each of her stories, and also looking for the hidden meanings under the surface.
Eudora Welty as always has a unique voice and tone for her characters that I think really, show how talented she is. Her description as well was very well written and setting was also prevalent. Each individual scene was great for all three of her stories. That’s what I like about her that she remains consistent not of theme or plot, but with a tone.
ReplyDeleteThe first story that we had to read “A worn Path,” was my favorite of the three stories, for three reasons, the first: the second story was hard to follow and the second: the third was sad, and it over all was more interesting. The story really is powerful in a way: travels of this old lady phoenix through the forest and marsh lands, just so she can get her grandson medicine. The theme that I saw through all three of these stories was lost direction. Determination even when she meets the white man hunter she doesn’t falter and moves on. Although I was slightly confused about what she meant when she was crawling and how she would be destroyed or something and how the tree ahead of her looked like a black man with one arm.
The second story: seemed really challenging for me to read for some reason, the language was too strong and the way that they talked was rough. The family situation was interesting, but it didn’t hold my attention as much as I would have hoped I did like the dialog of the uncle, father, mother and sister though even if it was confusing. The theme that I found in this story that connected to the others was family unrest. In the first story it was the grandson who was in danger and in the third it was the man and his wife who’s relationship was unclear and the women who rocked the boat.
The Third story was very interesting “No place for you, my love,” I found the interesting theme that “the road is ending” was a theme in this story that it was repeated several times in the story. As if the story it’s self was tying to tell the two travels that what they did could not go on. I like this story a little its tone was nice and it flowed with language and dialog much neater then the second.
Like many others, I found it hard to digest these stories. I found them very intriguing, but some parts of her stories I stumbled over and searching for an explanation to help me keep track of what was happening. They had me questioning what is real and what isn’t. How grounded were these narrators? How can I make sense of this?
ReplyDeletePhoenix in “A Worn Path” is certainly not grounded in reality, the entire story up until the end having a magical feel to it. This magical feel can be seen in her name, setting Phoenix up as this mystical old woman. She talks to animals, her dress cannot be ripped, and she takes a difficult journey very easily. But in the end, the magical nature might just be the delusions of an old woman. It’s hard to tell and I don’t have much to explain it. Before she tells the attendants about her son, she laments about her past and not getting an education. Someone who laments their childhood might fall back on the magical fairy tales, just like a girl who wants to grow up to be a princess. With a name like Phoenix, it might not be too hard for her to fall back on the magical nature of things.
“Why I Live at the P.O.” might not have the question of the magical nature, but it does have a question if Sister was telling the truth. Everyone seems to be painted as just an extreme, and it’s hard to tell if Sister is warping their view or if the entire family is just extremely immature. The strong voice helped me get through the story. The voice was so thick it sounded like someone was actually sitting down and telling me the story, not like I was reading it. People tend to exaggerate people to only their base tropes when talking about them.
I do not have much to say about “No Place for You, My Love.” After stepping out of the strong voice that was in the previous story, the last story seemed very mellow and easy to swallow. I found myself not worrying about anything too much, just going with the flow on the journey with the characters.
It should simply be noted the level of descriptive narrative that Eudora Welty possesses throughout her stories. Not only the clarity and poetry of it, but how she alters it for each of these stories. In “A Worn Path” and “No Place for You, My Love” especially, it may be cliché but I found myself becoming lost in just the description of these stories. In “A Worn Path” with such lines like, “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,” (1040) Phoenix Jackson’s character is also peculiar because of her vernacular. She constantly drops any “to be” verbs until closer to the end, when she begins to interact with other characters. Even though we may not get a clear view at everything that is causing Phoenix so much conflict, it is still an interesting journey to be taken on.
ReplyDeleteIn “Why I Live at the P.O.”, Welty has characters that sound to be out to get each other, at least Sister, who at first appears as the truly innocent one in the family. As the story progresses however, it becomes easier to see how much hostility and antagonism is shared between them. Sister’s family, arguably with the exception of Uncle Rondo, see her a scapegoat, the one always to blame and never to listen to because she is always making trouble. As the intensity from that builds, Sister keeps up her sarcastic nature. Even though there’s a battle of a sort going on between Sister and her family, she still seems to be the one carrying the burdens. Her personality sounds like a realistic product of her upbringing.
There were times in “No Place for You, My Love” that I wondered where the story was going or what it was supposed to be getting at, but again the description and narration was captivating enough for me that it was what defined the story. Passages such as “The Southern look – Southern mask – of life-is-a-dream irony, which could turn to pure challenge at the drop of a hat, he could wish well away.” Welty reaches a point in her description that it begins to strike new ideas and thoughts in her audience, and that’s what helps draw them in.
Eudora Welty has such a unique way of writing that as soon as I began to read A Worn Path, I was captivated. Here we have one extremely unique character, who is immediately introduced to us as Phoenix Jackson. Wow, already there’s a moment where this character has a different air about her, simply because of her name. We know she is “Old Phoenix”. Welty has this woman continue a long journey by herself, and all the while Old Phoenix seems completely tough and able to complete this journey to wherever she is going (in the middle of winter). On top of that, we see her sense of humor, “‘My senses gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow.’” Up until the end of her journey, I felt attached to this strong character; until we see the reason for taking the path constantly and the fact that the people she encounter at the end are in a sense putting up with her inability to accept the death of her young grandson.
ReplyDeleteWhy I Live at the P.O. is another story of strong-willed characters, and No Place for You, My Love. Why I Live at the P.O. was probably my least favorite piece of the three, and I feel as though the characters were merely picking and picking at each other just to start all over again which doesn’t make any sense to me. No Place for You, My Love was also an interesting piece due to the characters, as well as the vividness and description included in the occurrences of this somewhat of an affair. We never actually learn the names of our two characters that seem to bond immediately, however there isn’t any sexual tension or urgency from the two of them. At the end, the man does kiss the woman, but that’s all that occurs, even after the man remembers that his wife is entertaining another man. Wow. That was not how I expected the ending to be, however, I’m glad for the little dependence on each other after the short time these two characters spent together.
Y'all really know what you're talking about.
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