A Worn Path

Phoenix Jackson is an aged, impoverished grandmother who determinedly walks from her home far up the Old Natchez Trace in Eudora Welty's short story "A Worn Path." That Phoenix Jackson follows "a worn path" makes the reader realize that she has made the journey often enough to have charted and mastered the obstacles she encounters. She is a part of the nature she traverses, speaking encouragements to her, warning the brambles not to hold her, even laughing as she lies like a June bug in the ditch into which she has tumbled (Ann Charters, pp. 47). Despite of being ...