[In the following review, Trefman argues that the protagonist's name, Phoenix, has Christian, as well as mythological, significance.]

In his discussion of Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path," (Explicator, June, 1957), William Jones identifies the central character, Old Phoenix, with the legendary bird of Egyptian folklore. Her arduous journey from her home, far out in the country, to the town of Natchez to help her ailing little grandson, is a journey of love, Jones suggests, that causes her own rejuvenation at its end. But perhaps her association with the Phoenix has even greater significance. This is, after all, a Christmas story, and when Phoenix and her grandson are viewed as different aspects of the same entity, this single being is clearly a symbol of Christ. Phoenix herself implies that she and her grandson are creatures apart, saying inexplicably that "we is the only two left in the world." And they are further identified with each other through bird imagery: Phoenix's cane makes a sound "like the chirping of a solitary little bird," and she steals the hunter's nickel as deftly as she would have lifted "an egg from under a sitting hen"; while her grandson, on the other hand, peeps out from his little patch quilt, "holding his mouth open like a little bird." Then, too, both reflect the purity and unworldliness of Christ: the grandson by his very youth and his fragile, dependent condition; the grandmother, by her great age which makes her strangely childish. However, she has the additional naivete of the untutored for, a freed slave, she never did go to school, being "too old at the Surrender." Finally, to both are attributed qualities long associated with Christ. The Phoenix, of course, is an established Christ symbol in its ability to resurrect itself, and the radiance that illuminates Phoenix's head, at times appearing through the "yellow burning" of her cheeks, and at other times seen as a "fierce and different radiation," seems very like a glory. The only things we are ever told about her grandson are that he is so special she "could tell him from all the others in creation," that he has a "sweet look," and that he suffers from a wound that never heals although it "don't seem to put him back at all." With his permanent wound, he recalls the maimed Fisher King of medieval literature who, like the Phoenix, originated in ancient folk-lore and developed, through later literatures, into a symbol of Christ.

The land that the maimed king ruled was a wasteland, and surely the land in which Phoenix and her grandchild live is a wasteland as well. She must journey over its "frozen earth," through its thorny bushes that only appear green to her old ruined eyes, pass its "big dead trees" standing in the "purple stalks" of "withered" cotton fields, and continue into fields of "dead corn."

The painstaking, often agonizing journey of the ancient woman, on which the story focuses, seems constantly to take on symbolic dimensions as it recalls the earlier journey of Christ up the hill of Calvary. "I got a long way," she moans at the outset, flicking the bushes to expose hidden menaces. And as she drags herself up a hill later on, she murmurs painfully that it "seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far." Significantly, it is thorns that tear at her long, full skirt, thorns that do their "appointed work." And in a tone full of foreboding, she comments that "the time getting all gone here." In addition, the entire journey reverberates with symbols from Christian tradition. As she enters a clearing she notes with relief that there is "no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come once." But, as with all tempters, it had taken "a while to get by him." Later, as she slyly pockets the hunter's nickel, a bird, traditional symbol of the Holy Spirit, flies by and Phoenix herself identifies him as she guiltily observes "God watching me the whole time." When she emerges at last from the darkness of the forest, Natchez is shining, bells ring out a joyous welcome, and a Christmas shopper kneels in unconscious adoration as she ties Old Phoenix's shoelaces.

Regarding the title of the story, the path along which the journey is made is not worn merely because the central character has undergone the trip before. Rather, it is worn because this is the symbolic journey made by all who are capable of self-sacrifice, of whom Christ is the archetype. Against self-sacrificing Phoenix, then, are juxtaposed the creatures of the wasteland. First there is the young, white hunter, a perfect contrast to the ancient Negress. He is destructive—from his bag hangs a dead bob-white "with its beak hooked bitterly"—and selfish, for although he says "I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me," he does not offer her the nickel he thinks is still in his pocket. These two do, indeed, go off "in different directions": Phoenix heads for the hospital for the medicine that will save her grandchild; while in the distance, the hunter's gun is heard "shooting again and again over the hill." The next inhabitants of the wasteland encountered are the nurse and attendant at the hospital, who dole out what is ironically termed "charity." Far too busy for charity, they caution Old Phoenix against taking up their time, and remind her that the medicine is available only as long as she can make the painful trip. Yet ironically it is with nickels from these two uncharitable souls that Phoenix will buy her beloved grandchild a little paper windmill for Christmas. And the most bitter irony of all is that as he looks at the little cross-shaped toy, he will indeed "find it hard to believe there is such a thing in the world."