Feeling like an outsider can be a variety of different things. Picked on in school, or excluded from different events because of a certain trait about someone. In this case in particular two ladies are viewed as an outsider because of their class and different personality compared to the others in their surroundings. After reading and understanding the main characters in both stories, Phoenix, the grandma from "A Worn Path", and the mother from "New York Day Women" seem to have a striking similarity when coming to be an outsider, and the everyday experiences they face both have a common bond, the way the people on the outside perceive and treat them. Both Phoenix, and also the mother in "New York Day Women" are round characters in the story. Aside from the interesting style and tone of the text, where it switches off points of view from the daughter narrating to things she imagined her mother saying to her as the story progresses, the mother's characteristics are very developed based off how her daughter goes on to give a description. For example the imagery she gives off in the way she describes her mother when she left the house in the morning, " in her bathrobe, with pieces of newspapers twisted like rollers in her hair" (345). The mother seems to be very aware of her surroundings, poor and lonely. Her awareness comes to light in the story when she is in a neighborhood her daughter
Croucier 2 never thought she would see her in, and not only was she there, but she was walking through there looking through all the high end designer shop windows looking at product. "I have never seen her in this kind of neighborhood, peering into Chanel and Tiffany's and gawking at the jewels glowing in the Bulgari windows" (345). She waits for the taxi drivers to stop arguing. It is identified that the mother is or was poor, by how she talks about saving old clothes for family back in Haiti instead of donating them to the Goodwill, loosing three teeth in one week due to her bad dental hygiene, and she lives in Brooklyn, which is considered to be one of the not so wealthy parts of New York. It's obvious that she is lonely, due to the fact that she talks to herself and her daughter doesn't visit her. But what really stuck out and proved the above assumptions was where the story reads as the daughter saying, "my mother, who watches the lottery drawing every night on channel 11 without ever having played the numbers" (346). Then immediately her mother saying, "a third of that money is all I would need. We would pay the mortgage, and you father could stop driving that taxicab all over Brooklyn. The two sentences have a huge connection with each other, and interestingly enough the second sentence verifies the loneliness and lack of money having that is noticed in the first sentence, of her watching the lottery, because she is lonely and poor, because her husband is never home due to being a taxicab driver to try to make money. Phoenix's roundness, in "A Worn Path" is based on the vivid description of her looks and traits, as stated, "She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced
Croucier 3 heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock..." Pheonix's traits also consist of her awareness of her surroundings, she's extremely poor, and lonely. The story begins with her instantly noticing her surroundings as she is walking through the woods, her traveling being interrupted by animals such as foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, and coons running in running through her path. Also her encounters such as the scarecrow whom she had mistaken for a tall black man due to her bad eyesight, and the hunter she came across when his dogs found her walking. The severity of Phoenix's poorness and loneliness was hinted throughout the story. In one particular scene where she is trying to go through a barbed-wire fence the narrator says, "she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she could not pay for having her arm oh her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was" (462). That particular line briefly stating that she couldn't pay for a new dress, giving the readers their first clue to Phoenix not having much money. Another hint of her being poor during her encounter with the hunter, "the deep lines in her face went into a fierce and different radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of the man's pocket and onto the ground" (464). She picked it up when his back was turned. Oddly enough when he pointed his gun at her face, it did not phase her, as if this was something normal to her, or she had received worse of a punishment. A couple of the last major signs of Phoenix's poorness was when she had finally reached the doctor's office, the nurse gave her the medicine for her grandson and called it "charity", then the attendant offered her a few pennies, her response was, " five pennies is a nickel" (466), unafraid to ask for more money. We
Croucier 4 also notice her loneliness as she talks to the scarecrow when she sees it, then to herself throughout her adventure through the woods, as if she's narrating her way through until she gets to her destination. Now lastly, the strongest, most important connection and similarity between the characters in the two stories, was the outsiderness and distance they experience as they go about their routines and daily lives. In "A Worn Path", given the way people talk to and treat Phoenix shows how they actually perceive her, which most definitely isn't the same was as they look at the others in town. They pitty her and don't really take her very seriously because of how old and poor she is. Like the way the hunter spoke to her, "Well, Granny! *he laughed* What are you doing here?", in a mocking sort of tone. Then the lady that tied Phoenix's shoe also called her "Grandma", as if that is her name to everyone and not Pheonix. Which gives off the impression that everyone around town views her as this crazy, old, poor, grandma that talks to herself and travels all through the woods all for some medicine. But regardless, she has no shame in stealing the coin that fell from the hunter's pocket and asking for a nickle instead, when the attendant at the front desk in the doctor's office offered her a few pennies and doing whatever it takes to make her grandson happy. As for the mother in "New York Day Women", it is mainly her daughter that seems to view her a certain way. Seeing her mother walking around in the nicer part of New York, she is surprised because of how she normally acts, which seems to be this lady who doesn't expect much and know what is okay or socially acceptable in the
Croucier 5 modern day world. Like when her daughter is describing her and says how there's "a large gap in her mouth where she lost three molars to the dentist last week. My mother, who at fifty-nine, says dentures are okay." Obviously most of us would probably tilt our heads in confusion with the statement, because dentures are usually associated with that stereotypical old grandma who leaves a lipstick kiss mark on your cheek. Or how she sews lace collars on my company softball t-shirts, which is something so small, but all these small things are exactly what the daughter goes on to describe throughout the story that make her seem different in the big city. Both stories indicate that although there is sometimes struggle and discrimination, one must keep moving forward and do whatever it takes to live and survive life, and in Phoenix's case, to help her grandson. Though "A Worn Path" and "New York Day Women" have different events and views on how they took place, end up being very similar in the sense that people viewed them as an outsider in their town or city.