Theme of Race Relations in 2 Stories

Phoenix, the old black woman in "A Worn Path," is a product of slavery. She "was too old at the Surrender" of the South at the end of the Civil War to "go to school" (1657), which means that she was no longer a piece of property, but she never really achieved freedom. She came to accept race relations as they were defined by white people. She accepted herself as a passive and inferior being in a society controlled and run by white people. She also accepted her role as a black woman who was meant to be subservient to others as well. The only tension she feels in race relations is making sure that she does everything she can to stay in her place and not upset white people. Again, the most important point to remember about Welty's story is that it takes place in a time when there was little questioning of basic white-black relations. Many blacks and most whites, unfortunately, believed that whites were meant to be in the superior position in society, and blacks were meant to be in the inferio

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till" (1655), waiting for him to shoot her, if he pleases, or leave her alone, as he does. She is polite to everyone she meets, because that is the way that she has been raised as a slave. She is still a slave in her mind, at least in terms of having only one way to behave in the face of white people. She does not beg or grovel, even in the face of a gun, but she would never consider doing the kinds of things the black people in O'Connor's story do. Again, the most important thing to keep in mind is that race relations are mainly defined by the time in which they take place. The kind of anger expressed by the black woman on the bus in "Everything That Rises Must Converge" would probably never have taken place in the South of Phoenix's time. But in the era of civil rights, race relations had changed very much. Julian's mother is bewildered by such changes, and it is likely that Phoenix would have been even more bewildered. Some people take change well, and some people don't, and it would seem that Phoenix would have been as resistant to major change in race relations as Julian's mother is. Again, the tension in the O'Connor story is greater because the old race relations have broken down and nobody is quite certain of what the r
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Approximate Word count = 1808
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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