A_Worn_Path

A Worn Path Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path” is a story that emphasizes the natural symbolism of the surroundings. As the story begins, we are introduced to our main character, Phoenix Jackson; she is described as a small, old Negro woman. I believe that the name Eudora Welty gives our main character is very symbolic. The legend of the Phoenix is about a fabled sacred bird of ancient Egyptians. The bird is said to come out of Arabia every 500 years to Heliopolis, where it burned itself on the altar and rose again from its ashes, young and beautiful. Phoenix, the women in the story, represents the myth of the bird because she is described as being elderly and near the end of her life. Phoenix can hardly walk and uses a cane made of an old umbrella to aid her. Her skin is described as old and wrinkly, but yet with a golden color running beneath it “Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color ran underneath”(55). Her skin tone represents the golden feathers of the Phoenix and her grandson worn, path, phoenix, hunter, old, journey, town, man, herself, welty, tells, reader, go, ditch, very, story, represents, reason, nickel, 56, woman, white, way, phoenix’s, makes, eudora, come, bird, begins, author, assumes, after, years, while, time, telling, small, skin