[In the following essay, Robinson focuses on a particular scene in "A Worn Path" that is open to a variety of interpretations and evaluates the plausibility of each.]

Since I believe writing and reading are allied skills, I like to give essay assignments that involve careful reading. One of my most successful assignments concerns the nickel episode of Eudora Welty's story "A Worn Path," which is included in many literature textbooks. The passage is an excellent test of a student's ability to see how facts can be fitted into different interpretive patterns, though some of the patterns accommodate more of the facts than others do.

The central character, Phoenix Jackson, is an old black woman on her way to Natchez at Christmas time. We know that she is poor, feeble, and nearsighted; nonetheless she is willing to face a number of obstacles—animals, a barbed-wire fence, a narrow log traversing a stream—for her mission, which is not revealed until the end of the story. The title, as well as clues throughout, suggests that her action has taken place many times before, and we finally learn that Phoenix regularly takes the "worn path" to bring back medicine for her grandson, who has swallowed lye and is evidently bedridden. The nurse who gives her the medicine asks about the child; Phoenix assures her that he is still alive, and receiving a nickel in addition to the medicine, she leaves for her home.

The passage central to my assignment appears about twothirds of the way through the story. Momentarily distracted by a large and frightening black dog, Phoenix falls into a ditch and is unable to get up. Luckily a white hunter comes by shortly thereafter, and lifts her out. He asks where she lives; when she tells him, and mentions her destination, he replies that it is too far for her to go. She is adamant about her mission, saying, "I bound to go to town, mister. . . . The time come round"; he laughs and says, "I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa Claus!" She sees a nickel fall from the hunter's pocket, and calls his attention to the black dog that has troubled her. While the hunter is chasing the dog away, she carefully picks up the nickel and puts it in her apron pocket. The hunter returns and points his gun at her, asking if she is scared by it. She answers, "No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done." He smiles, shoulders the gun, and remarks, "[Y]ou must be a hundred years old, and scared of nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you." Phoenix tells him that she intends to continue her journey, and they part.

This scene is the climax of the story. Whereas up to this point Phoenix has faced physical, external obstacles, her situation here involves moral choice, as she well knows ("God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing"). The sympathy we have felt for her so far is now qualified by our sense of her wrongdoing, though we discover at the end of the story that she intends to use this money, as well as the nickel she takes from the nurse, to buy her grandson a paper windmill as a present. One critic has accused the story of sentimentality [Robert Towers, "Mississippi Myths," New York Review of Books, No. 24, Dec. 1980], and certainly Welty's decision to write about a poor old black woman in the South risks bathos. But this scene refutes such a judgment. In a truly sentimental tale, Phoenix would be a figure of pure goodness who would either refuse the temptation or, having taken the coin, experience remorse; she might tell the hunter that he had dropped the nickel.

The theft itself is the important issue in the scene; a number of critics [such as Alfred Appel in A Season of Dreams, 1965] have discussed its place in the story's theme of charity. However, the issue my students write about is this: does the hunter know Phoenix has stolen the nickel, and if so, how much does he know?

When I first read the story, I was sure that he knew nothing about the theft; subsequent readings, and a number of papers by my students, have made me less sure. According to one interpretation, the entire episode is a charade performed by the hunter. One student commented, "The white man sees an opportunity for Phoenix to pick up his coin, so he gets his dog and chases after the black dog. The hunter gave Phoenix enough time to see if she was going to pick the money up and keep it for herself or return it to him." Some students argue that he does not wish to insult her by offering the money out-right. Certainly Welty's description of the dropping nickel is neutral enough to permit such a reading. The hunter's action would of course fit into the charity theme, and would suggest the intricacy of relations between the races. Attractive as this view is, though, objections are easy to find. For one thing, it seems odd to assume that his motive is to preserve her dignity, if she is going to feel as though she is stealing the money. Second, the passage about the gun becomes inexplicable. Why would he point the gun at her if he wishes to conceal his knowledge?

A reading that more students offer is that he is unaware at first that he has dropped the money, but sees her pick it up. Welty says nothing about what he sees while he is chasing the black dog. In this case the gun passage becomes quite clear: he points the gun at her to see if she will confess, but she does not flinch. A student wrote, "He should have known when Phoenix said, 'No, sir, I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done.'" Another student concluded, "He lets her keep the nickel because he admires her age and fearlessness." This interpretation is better than the previous one, since it accounts for more of the facts, while still focusing on the charity theme. (The hunter's compassion vies with his annoyance at her theft, and the former wins out.) The one difficulty with this reading is his next-to-last sentence: "I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me." This is the only explicit reference to money in the entire dialogue. Such a statement is incongruous if he knows she already has the nickel. To make the statement fit this reading, one must assume either that he means "if I had more money" or that he is being ironic. The former is an unlikely meaning for such an apparently direct remark; the latter is an assumption about his character which needs examining.

The sentence is less troublesome if one assumes that it means exactly what it appears to: that he doesn't know that he had any money with him. Some students doubt his good nature: "I think that if the hunter had known he would not have been as kind to her," one commented. Certainly it is a common experience for one to forget a small coin in a pocket, or for such a coin to fall through a hole. If this is what has happened, a different reading becomes possible, or even necessary, because we need a new explanation for the gun passage. Why would the hunter point the gun at her if he does not suspect her of the theft?

An answer to this must begin with consideration of an earlier exchange. After he has lifted Phoenix out of the ditch and asked her destination, the hunter says, "I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see Santa Claus!" We do not know at this point that Phoenix's object is to get medicine for her grandson, but the hunter's remark is nonetheless condescending—tactless even if he's only teasing. This is another reason to think he is incapable of the benevolent charade the first interpretation assumes. He means well, as his helping her out of the ditch indicates, but he is not very sensitive to her feelings. in this light we can reconsider the gun episode. A student offered this interpretation: "When the hunter had the gun pointed at the old woman, it was another of his careless pranks. He wasn't trying to scare her; he was teasing with her just as he had teased with her from the beginning of the encounter. If he had been serious about pointing the gun at the woman as a threat, he wouldn't have so soon given up the prank." If this is the case, he has been completely taken in by her misdirection of his attention, and his remark about her purpose in going to Natchez, based upon a stereotype of black people as simple and childlike, has redounded upon him: he is the one who isn't very bright. (Phoenix may even be teasing him when she says, "for less than what I done," knowing he won't understand.) The comment about the dime is further irony on Welty's part, since the hunter is unaware that he has given Phoenix some money already. The whole incident may then show Phoenix as using the man's prejudice to her advantage—exacting a fine, so to speak—and it allows us to assent to the theft. Like the other two interpretations, this assumes Welty is commenting subtly on race relations, but the position of superiority is now Phoenix's rather than the hunter's. The drawback to this reading, however, is that it may put more emphasis on the hunter's words than they will bear.

Other critics have interpreted this scene as evidence of Phoenix's refusal to be patronized, or of the hunter's prejudice, but they have not sufficiently analyzed Welty's ingenuity in the whole scene [See Appel, and Grant Moss, Jr., "'A Worn Path' Retrod," College Language Association Journal, Vol. 15, December, 1971]. The entire complicated situation is presented in a few lines of dialogue and some descriptive passages. The scene is thus useful for showing students how a great short-story writer can create a very rich episode with a minimum of words.