The short story "A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty tells of an old African American woman named Phoenix Jackson who undertakes a long journey on foot to obtain medicine for her grandson. On the way, she encounters many potential obstacles, but she overcomes them all and arrives safely at the clinic, where she picks up the medicine before starting on the walk back home.

The economic condition of old Phoenix and her grandson is deep poverty, and there are many indications of this throughout the text. Her apron is made of "bleached flour sacks." When she snags her dress on thorns, she considers that "it was not possible to allow the dress to tear," implying that it is probably the only dress she owns. As she crawls under the barbed wire fence, she thinks that "she could not pay to have her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was." In other words, she cannot afford medical treatment. She is careful to pick up and save a nickel she finds along the way. She obtains the medicine at a clinic that gives it to her for free as a charitable donation. Finally, Phoenix accepts a gift of a nickel from the nurse so she can buy her grandson a small present.

The title of the story, "A Worn Path," tells readers that Phoenix has taken this journey many times before. Additionally, at the clinic, the nurse tells the attendant, "She makes these trips just as regularly as clockwork." The nurse is used to Phoenix making these long, lonely trips to get the medicine for her grandson. Phoenix and her grandson live alone together in the hills, and since she makes the trip whenever he begins to have trouble breathing, she leaves him there and comes on her own.

Phoenix speaking to animals, imagining being offered a piece of cake, and forgetting where she is and what she is doing at the clinic all have to do with her extreme old age. As she says to herself in the cornfield, "My senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest person I ever know." So talking to animals and to herself, having vivid daydreams, and extreme forgetfulness are all indications of encroaching senility.

Phoenix's speech is indicative of her poor and simple background. She has grown up in the back hills and is uneducated. As she tells the nurse at the clinic, "I never did go to school... I'm an old woman without an education."

Given how happy she is with her two nickels, it seems safe to assume that Phoenix is quite poor. Also, she doesn't pay for her grandson's medicine; it is marked "Charity" by the nurse. Further, she wears a "red rag" tied on her head, rather than a hat, and wears a dress made of "bleached sugar sacks."

We know she has taken this path many times before because she knows the way by heart. Her eyesight has become poor, but she still can keep to the path. She says, "Up through pines . . . Now down through oaks." When she comes to the log laid across the creek, she says, "'Now comes the trial' . . . Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side." In addition, the title tells us that the path is "worn," and we learn from the doctor's office that she comes every so often for the "soothing" medicine for her grandson.

She does seem accustomed to being alone, as she surmounts one obstacle after the next, without really seeming to be terribly set back. She does fall over once, but she certainly does not panic. Besides, she tells the women at the doctor's office that her grandson only has her, so it doesn't sound like she keeps company often.

I think she speaks to animals, just like she speaks to the scarecrow, because the world is so alive to her. She is quite aged and nearly blind, but she feels quite connected to the world around her, even being able to navigate it without the use of good eyesight. She is named Phoenix—a mythical bird who dies in flame and is reborn from its ashes—after all, and she seems to have some preternatural abilities herself.

Perhaps she imagines the boy offering her a slice of cake because he is symbolic of the promises made to African Americans after the Civil War, promises that were not kept. Likewise, when she reaches for what he's offered her, he disappears, along with the cake.

Phoenix does not have a real education. She tells the nurse that she "was too old at the Surrender" to go to school. She says, "I'm an old woman without an education." Her speech is simple and conversational, not polished, and this seems to confirm her report.

We know that Phoenix is, if not out and out poor, right on the edge. Her dress is made from old sugar sacks, after all, and wears not a hat on her head but rather a "rag." She's rural, and likely poor.

As for the path, the title tells us it has been taken by someone often; it is "worn," after all. However, we also know more specifically; Phoenix talks to herself about how things always seem the same way every time she hits a specific point in the trail.