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Comparing Eudora Welty And A Worn Path

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Some people say that when telling a story individuals reference experiences that they have gone through in their lives. However, this idea of writing may be difficult if the writer is describing a person completely different from themselves. Although personal experiences may help a writer, an open mind with an imagination and allowing the story to tell itself are qualities which are what helps writers create great stories. Eudora Welty, who wrote “A Worn Path”, and Nadine Gordimer, with “A Chip of Glass Ruby”, were able to depict and describe women from different ethnic backgrounds from themselves. I believe that they were able to accomplish this gracefully by describing both physical and mental traits of the characters and giving the reader …show more content…

The writing of Welty has many instances of reading between the lines. For example when Phoenix is climbing a hill she states “seem like there is chains about my feet” (Welty 234) which hint back to the fact that Phoenix was born a slave. The tone of “A Worn Path” is airy and full of life and nature. Welty sets the scene of the journey in such a way that intrigues the five senses and allows the reader to go on this voyage with Phoenix Jackson. This could be the result of their only being one substantial character. Therefore, this allows for more time inside one character’s mind and to get a sense of what the character is experiencing. On the other hand, Gordimer’s writing in “A Chip of Glass Ruby” is straight forward with its words. This story is more engaged with the characters and their actions. There is more dialog in this narrative which is crucial to the flow of the story. And this flow could have been disrupted if the author tried to spend a lot of time setting the scene. The tone of this story is hard and dark, which matches the emotion that Yusuf has during the span of the tale. Nonetheless, both authors and their stories were able to incorporate a character who was different from the author and still represent the character in a fashion that allowed the story to come across as convincing and

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