Josey

Josey is a child in Ish’s community who grows into a mother and a caregiver to Em. Her story is told through a handful of concrete moments rather than a continuous account: she is ill during the community’s epidemic, tests and improves her skill with a bow, and later tends the household as Em’s life draws to a close. Together, these scenes locate her in the practical work of survival and in the succession of generations that outlasts the Old Times.

Identity and Place in the Community

The text first gives Josey a clear place in the younger generation through her association with Walt and the other children. She is young enough to join their games and to be among those for whom Ish’s improvised archery becomes a central activity. The narrative does not supply a full account of her childhood or specify the circumstances of her birth, so her early identity is defined chiefly through these shared experiences.

Her later life is glimpsed from a different angle. When Em is at her bedside, Josey is herself a mother, and she has taken responsibility for the house and for caring for Em. The shift from child at play to adult caregiver is not narrated as a single turning point; it emerges in the contrast between these scenes. Josey belongs to the community’s future not simply as one of the children who survive, but as a parent and as someone who looks after an older generation.

Illness During the Epidemic

During the outbreak that leaves several members of the community sick, Josey is in the early stages of the illness alongside Joey. Ish tends to them while Em devotes much of her attention to Bob, whose condition is already severe. The household’s care is therefore divided among the sick: Ish moves between the children, and other members of the community have been sent to help in different houses.

The episode places Josey inside the outbreak’s intimate, domestic scale. The danger is not an abstraction: Ish is leaning over Joey’s bed when he feels himself collapsing and has to use his last strength to reach his own bed. Josey’s illness is part of the same pressure on the household, even though the passage does not describe her symptoms in detail or record a specific recovery scene. Her later appearance as an adult establishes that she survives to take part in the community’s subsequent life.

Play, Archery, and Learning

As a child, Josey finds Ish whittling a straight piece of lemon wood on the porch. He has cut away its crooked end, stripped its dead bark, and is tapering the wood slowly, pausing to sharpen his knife on a whetstone. When Josey asks what he is doing, Ish says he is preparing to play a game. He has decided not to make the activity depend on a practical lesson, as he had tried to do with the school; instead, he means to draw on children’s evident love of play.

The game quickly becomes a communal pursuit. Within a week, arrows are flying around the houses, and the children’s enthusiasm creates real, if limited, hazards: mothers worry about eyesight, and two children arrive crying after being struck by arrows. The arrows have no heads and the bows are weak, so the injuries do not cause serious harm. The activity nevertheless requires rules against shooting toward people or too close to houses.

Josey’s part in the developing competition is specific. She complains that Walt always beats her at shooting. Ish suggests that she attach quail pinions to the back end of her arrow. She tries the adjustment, beats Walt, and establishes a practical demonstration that the others quickly adopt: soon all the arrows have quail feathers, and they fly farther and more accurately. Even some older boys, though permitted to use rifles, take an interest in making bows. Archery continues chiefly among children too young for rifles. Josey’s victory thus changes more than the outcome of one contest; her solution becomes a shared improvement, while the activity remains a game led by children.

Family Care and the Next Generation

Much later, Josey is shown caring for the house and for Em. The text describes her as a mother who walks with easy grace and says she has grown to be the one most like Em. This comparison links resemblance to conduct and presence: Josey has taken on the work of care, while the older woman she tends is visibly nearing the end of her life.

Em’s family gathers at her bedside, including tall sons, strong daughters, and grandchildren. The oldest grandsons are already growing tall, and the granddaughters are entering womanhood. Josey’s place among them is part of the scene’s generational pattern: she is both Em’s daughter in the role of caretaker and a mother within the growing family. Ish looks at the assembled children and descendants and recognizes the force of Em’s confidence that they will go on. Josey’s adult life gives that assurance a tangible form, joining care for the old to the presence of children and grandchildren.

Narrative Significance

Josey’s appearances show how knowledge and community life can develop through participation rather than formal instruction. In childhood, she does not receive an abstract lesson in archery; she competes, identifies a disadvantage, tests Ish’s suggestion, and produces a result that the group copies. The scene gives her a small but consequential role in shaping a practice that outlives the first demonstration.

Her later appearance shifts the emphasis from experimentation to continuity. The child who once learned through play is now a mother and a caregiver, situated among multiple generations. The novel provides little individual biography for Josey, but the contrast between her early contest with Walt and her later care for Em makes the passage of time legible through changing responsibilities. Her life belongs to the ordinary, collective persistence that allows the community to continue after the older survivors have begun to disappear.