Symbolizing the Journey Introduction Visualize if you can a small child. She is about five years old with bouncy blonde curls that lie upon her tiny shoulders. She is kneeling over a small creature on what seems to be a deserted road. As she begins to weep uncontrollably until her little body is shaking as if she were standing on a fault line during an earthquake. If you look over her tiny shoulder a small white dog lies upon a gravel road. The dog’s eyes seem to be squinting yet all of the dust from the dirt road is almost completely covering its tiny, furry, body. But what is wrong with the dog? Is it dead or only merely injured? How did it get there and can it be saved? These questions that are shaped in the readers mind is indicative of a short story that uses not only imagery but symbols to tell a story. The picture you have formed in your head of the small, sad little girl and her beloved dog is an example of symbolism of the journey. While literally the dog is dead this may also be a symbolism of a girl losing the only thing in her little life that she trusted in a world that has abandoned her like the empty road she finds herself on. The symbolism of the journey and how two authors used this theme is the topic of this paper.
Thesis
While both Jean Rhys “Used to Live Here Once” and Eudora Weltly, in “A Worn Path” use symbolism and exposition one story is also about death and the other is about helping her grandchild’s life, yet many of the words used in “A Worn Path” as indicative of death. Each story uses symbolism of the journey. Both stories also include an omniscient point of view and using imagery, which doubles as symbolism. Also using motif the narrators guide us through their stories also bringing a racism theme. Both authors Rhys and Weltly take us on journeys through the stories told.
Symbolism and Motif in Rhys, “Used to Live Here Once”