Taylor Cunningham

Threatt

EH 102-01

17 March 2019

Creative: Critical

A grandmother is the mother of one’s father or mother. They are one of the most influential people in the families. These are the people who have all the funny and most adventurous stories to tell, especially from when they were growing up. Living in the past is what is being focused on because of these two grandmothers that are different in color, race and ethnicity. Although the grandmothers in both stories are completely different, they also have some similarities in their stories when comparing them.

In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the grandmother did not specifically have a name as the others did. In the beginning of the story, O’Connor started off by saying, “THE GRANDMOTHER didn’t want to go to Florida” (138). By her doing that shows symbolism that the grandmother is not really an important person to the others. By reading, it is easy to tell that “the grandmother” is a white female who is up in age “older”. “She stood there with one hand on her thin hip”, this helps because older people’s bodies are thinner than younger people (O’Connor 138). Also, when O’Connor said, “The old lady settled herself comfortably”, with “The Grandmother” being described in the way that she is, it is pointing to the fact that she is an older lady. Now, in the short story “A Worn Path”, Phoenix Jackson was automatically pointed out as being an old woman by Welty saying, “She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving little from side to side in her steps” (Welty 1). Not only that, Phoenix being a negro woman was stated as well. When wearing clothing with older people, they tend to want to cover up as much as possible. In the story, Phoenix wore, “A dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron of bleached sugar sacks”, which is typical for the dress code back in that time period (1).