Adventure, Disappointment, and Love

Adventure, Disappointment, and Love
In the short story The Ugliest Pilgrim, Violet defines herself as being a self conscience, determined, spiritual middle aged woman on a mission. The story unfolds as Violet travels, from her mountain top home, on a bus to Oklahoma. While on the trip she learns some very important lessons as well as people. Despite some of her most apparent characteristics in the story the people she meets on the trip will help her overcome some of the things she has been missing all her life.
Throughout the story, the fact that Violet is self conscience of herself is clearly shown by her actions and as well as her thoughts. Violet is mostly conflicted with her facial appearance which can be conceived with her statement “Whoever it was, he won’t look back. People in Spruce Pine don’t like to look at me, full face” (Betts 36).   Later in the story the reader learns that as a child she suffered a tragic accident involving an axe cutting her face leaving a large scar. You can tell she is embarrassed by her looks because even as a middle aged woman she does not look people in the eyes and tries to sit at angles where the entire scar is not visible. The most unique element of her appearance issue, in the story, is her composition book.   Throughout the story, Violet is very observant and records, in her notebook, every physical feature of the people she comes in contact with in hope to find a perfect combination of features that will achieve the level of beauty she desires. Violet later finds out that outward beauty is not what makes people like you but it’s the beauty within.
As Violet begins her journey the thing that stands out the most about her is her determination.   She had a plan to take a trip cross country to become beautiful. She worked hard as she states “ …the bus looks over the valley and its thickety woods where I pulled armloads of galax, fern, laurel, and hemlock to have spending money”(Betts 38), to be able to take this trip to...