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Phoenix Jackson: Very old black woman with pooreyesight who walks a long distance through wildernessand fields to obtain medicine for her grandchild. She isthe main character.

White Hunter: Man who helps Phoenix to her feet aftershe falls into a ditch.

Black Children: Children Phoenix encounters justbefore she reaches Natchez.

Natchez Pedestrian:Woman who ties Phoenix's shoes.

Attendant: Receptionist in a physician's office. Nurse:Physician's nurse, who gives Phoenix medicine

for her grandchild. Grandson of Phoenix: Child who once swallowed lye.

He requires medicine to treat his throat.

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Third-person point of view.

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Melancholy

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Alliteration

where the wind rocked

Lifting her skirt, leveling her cane fiercely before herlike a festival figure in some parade, she began tomarch across.

There she had to creep and crawl

Then she smelled wood smoke, and smelled the river,and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep

steps. Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a

dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in thenight.

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Simile

This (tapping of the cane) made a grave and persistentnoise in the still air that seemed meditative, like thechirping of a solitary little bird. Comparison of the noise made by the cane to the chirping of

a bird

Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberlessbranching wrinkles and as though a whole little treestood in the middle of her forehead. . . . Comparison of the branching wrinkles to the branching

limbs of a tree

Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as abuggy whip, would switch at the brush. Comparison of the limberness of her cane to that of a whip

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Big dead trees, like black men with one arm, werestanding in the purple stalks of the withered cottonfield. Comparison of the trees to black me

The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hungas white as lace from every limb.

Comparison of the moss to lace

The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road likecurtains. Comparison of the shadows to curtains

He wear a little patch-quilt and peep out, holding hismouth open like a little bird. Comparison of the boy to a bird

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Metaphor

A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching methe whole time. I come to stealing."

Comparison of a bird to the watchfulness of God At last there came a flicker and then a flame of

comprehension across her face, and she spoke.

Comparison of comprehension to a flicker and a

flame