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Create a timeline of what you consider to be the most significant events the story. For each event, note the characters involved, the cause of the event, the.
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Create a timeline of what you consider to be the most significant events the story. For each event, note the characters involved, the cause of the event, the
result that led to the next event, and whether the event had a positive or negative outcome. Additionally, choose a motif or pattern of language for each
event.
Event 1 Description
Phoenix maneuvers through the maze of corn and believes that she sees a ghost.
Event 2 Description
Phoenix, confronted by a dog, lands in the ditch. A hunter must come to help her.
Event 3 Description
Phoenix arrives in the city, which is lit up for Christmas time. She must make her way into the medical building.
Event 4 Description
Phoenix obtains the medicine from the city and then sets off to get her grandson a present and to return home.
Cause/Outcome
Because of her bad eyesight, she cannot see that the “ghost” is a scarecrow; however, she is undeterred in her journey.
Cause/Outcome
Phoenix attempts to hit the dog with her cane, but she loses her balance. She patiently waits for someone to come help her, and she outsmarts him.
Cause/Outcome
Phoenix, in her last set of trials, is still undaunted by the bustle and busyness of the city.
Cause/Outcome
Phoenix completes her journey.
Motif COLD
“She found a coat and inside that, an emptiness, cold as ice.” (25).
Motif HOME
The hunter asks if she is “on [her] way home,” and she answers, “I going to town.”
Motif BLINDNESS
“There were red and green electric lights strung and crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. [She] would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and
Motif SLOWNESS
“Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down” (99).
depended on her feet to know where to take her” (59).
Interpretive Commentary
The motif of cold suggests death, struggle, and trial. Phoenix, brave and resilient, is confronts all obstacles.
Interpretive Commentary
It would seem that Phoenix would give up and retreat to the safety of her home. She seems to draw strength, however, from the journey rather than the idea of home.
Interpretive Commentary
In mythology, blindness signifies wisdom or inner knowledge. The lights, symbolic of the city’s progress and modernity, provide more confusion for the almost blind protagonist. Her blindness is a symbol of her strength and wisdom.
Interpretive Commentary
Often the idea of slowness has a negative connotation, but in this story, Phoenix’s lack of speed signifies her steadiness and regularity.
● What words, phrases, images, ideas, objects, events repeat or are emphasized throughout the story? ● What could these symbolize? ● Can you categorize any of the symbols into recurring motifs?
● What is this story about on a literal level? How is Phoenix's trip into the city representative of journeys in the wider human experience? ● Consider Phoenix’s name. What is the significance of her name to a theme of the story? ● What motivates Phoenix’s journey into the paved city? How does this motivation give her journey meaning? ● How do Phoenix’s reactions to the trials on her journey reveal a central idea or theme of the story? ● Consider the title of the story. What does the description of the path as “worn” convey about Phoenix’s journey, both literally and allegorically?