A Worn Path

A Worn Path

Challenges and obstacles are frequently thought of as a nuisance or an inconvenience; but it is how we react to these upsets to our norm, that defines who we are. In A Worn Path, by Eudora Welty, “Old Phoenix” rises to many challenges and obstacles as she sets forth in pursuit of medicine for her grandson. As she confronts physical challenges in an obstacle driven environment, her determination defines her virtues. Phoenix chooses her responses to these challenges very carefully each step of the way as she treks from “…the Old Natchez Trace” to the “…paved city…” to fulfill her personal obligation to her grandson and to his health.

On a “bright and frozen day” the wintry conditions lay the background to a “small and old” black woman named Phoenix Jackson, walking “along a path through the pinewoods.” She wears a “long apron of bleached sugar sacks” and carries “a thin small cane, made from an umbrella.” With intent she openly admits “…there is chains about my feet…” but willingly, lifting one foot at a time, she heads “up through the pines” and “…down through the oaks.” With “her unlaced shoes” she marches on, persistently until her “old eyes thought…a pretty little green bush” was just that and gets hung up in a “thorny bush.” Without “…[allowing] [her] dress to tear,” she quickly gains her composition and “[levels] her cane fiercely” to cross over a log to get “safe [onto] the other side.” Successfully over to the other side, she “[spreads] her knees and [stretches] her fingers…” as she climbs “…through a barbed-wired fence.” With the “sun so high” time is moving quickly and she gathers her strength and goes “through the maze…” as the path has finished its work. Finally arriving at the “wagon track” where the trail becomes “…easy going…” she encounters a defining moment where her reactions reveal what she is made of.

While cautiously warning the nearby alligators of her passing she reaches the “…swampy part, where the moss [hangs] as white as...