[In the following essay, Daly responds to interpretations of Phoenix Jackson's character offered by critics Neil D. Isaacs and William M. Jones. "Phoenix encounters not mere difficulty on her path, but evil," argues Daly.]

Neither Neil D. Isaacs nor William M. Jones in their recent articles [Isaacs, "Life for Phoenix," Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXI, Jan.-Mar. 1963; Jones, Explicator, Vol. XV, June 1957] has succeeded in completely explicating Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path." Both comment on the associations brought to mind by the first name of Phoenix Jackson and, between them, deal with most of the suggestive details of the story—the incidents of the journey, the hunter and his dog, the woman who laced Phoenix's shoes, the two nickels, the grandson, the Christmas imagery, and the journey motif itself. Both reach somewhat the same conclusions: Jones, that the journey is a parable of the renewal of Phoenix's youth, a renewal which will be effected at the end of her journey through her great love for her grandson; Isaacs, that as Phoenix symbolizes "life itself, dying so that life [her grandson] may continue," so "life is a journey toward death, because one must die in order that life may go on."

Mr. Isaacs' interpretation is most subject to question, for he frequently overlooks segments of the context which clarify the symbolism, especially of those figures which he feels support a Christian reading of the story. The lady who ties Phoenix's shoes is more than the angel Isaacs indicates; her odor of roses is characteristic of the Blessed Virgin, who extends immediate, ungrudging love in her service to the old woman. The helpless, diseased child Phoenix attends hardly suggests the Christ-child, and Isaacs' identification of the windmill as a star is quite arbitrary, overlooking the remarks Phoenix herself makes about that purchase. Nor does the hunter equate well with Santa Claus (Isaacs notes his ambivalence as a "death figure"), for the nickel was not given, but stolen, as Phoenix herself was well aware.

The Biblical, classical, and folktale elements are evident; however, they are usually colored by a negative aura that has been overlooked. Phoenix encounters not mere difficulty on her path, but evil; and she is aware that she participates in that evil. This aspect of her journey and her own final comments and gestures lead to an existential interpretation of the story. What Ruth M. Vande Kieft has said [in Eudora Welty, 1962] of George's career in Delta Wedding might be said of Phoenix's journey: ".. . it is the existential act which makes life significant, beautiful, even heroic."

Though in "A Worn Path" Miss Welty has employed a frame similar to that of Pilgrim's Progress, a journey through life's difficulties to the Celestial City, Phoenix is not Christian. Being Phoenix, the Phoenix, she has come before and will make the same journey again, for the end of her quest is not conclusive; it is only comforting, and Phoenix knows this. In her travels there is alert self-appraisal, not the naive wonder and carelessness of Christian. In the cyclic certainty with which Phoenix travels her worn path, Miss Welty alters Bunyan's comment on the relationship of man to God. The only book-length study of her works sums up her philosophy, cautiously, as "pessimistic and existential." Miss Vande Kieft concludes, "Through the experience of her characters she seems to be saying that there is no final meaning to life beyond the human meanings; there is no divine 'surround,' no final shape to total reality, no love within or beyond the universe . . . however much of it there may be burning in individual, isolated human hearts. Through an inevitable act of mind and heart .. . the individual makes whatever meaning is to come out of chaotic reality, and this is the existential act."

That Phoenix moves through "chaotic reality" is evident from the rhythms of her experience, a continual fluctuation between negation and affirmation, defined at last only by her own gestures. She makes a December journey, the sad journey of year's end with the folk associations of death, but revitalized, as is appropriate to the self-destroying, self-renewing phoenix-bird, by the promise of Christmas. She is aware that the medicine of charity (love, of course) dispensed in the heavenly office is not enough; she must buy with her begged and stolen nickels a suitable Christmas present, an unbelievable windmill for her grandson.

A first look at Phoenix reveals her depth. She is an old woman with "numberless branching wrinkles" forming a "whole little tree in the middle of her forehead," a visible mark of her experience, knowledge of good and evil. Her path leads through pine woods, the needles of the evergreen trees almost too bright to look at in the sun, the shadows dark like a menace in this very vitality. Trudging along, she warns away the small animals of the pine thicket: "Out of my way, all you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons, and wild animals! . . . Keep out from under these feet, little bob-whites. . . . Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't let none of those come running my direction. I got a long way.'" She shifts in this list from small, relatively harmless beasts (three are tricksters by reputation, the owl and beetle slightly ominous) to the bob-white, which she might inadvertently injure. But her reiterated anxiety to avoid the wild hogs indicates her awareness of danger; wild hogs recall the Gadarene swine, bearers of evil spirits, a menace on the "long way" of life.

When the path leads upward, Phoenix tries. "'Something always take a hold of me on this hill—pleads I should stay.'" It is "too bright" evergreen youth that Phoenix would not rush past. But at the summit she appraises her progress with a "full, severe look behind here where she had come" and is able to generalize upon the change marked in her life: '"Up through pines. . . . Now down through oaks.'" Youth with its hint of excess is reluctantly abandoned; entrance into maturity is a descent, necessary but not desired.

Going downward, despite her caution ("eyes opened their widest"), she blunders into thorns, the "appointed," ritualistic difficulty on her path. She made the error as she sought again the vital greenness she is reluctant to acknowledge is past: "'I in the thorny bush,' she said. . . . Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush'" (Miss Welty's italics). Freeing herself with difficulty, she retrieves the umbrella-rib cane (a skeleton of former shelter) which has protected her so far. The delay has been regrettable, for now the sun is high and "the thick tears" go over her eyes for this passing of the noon of life. "'The time [she notes] getting all gone here'."

At the foot of the hill she recognizes and surmounts the "trial" of crossing a creek on a log. She trusts her eyes no longer but, in an act of faith, shuts them and levels the protective cane before her. By this heroic and absurd method, "like a festival figure in some parade", she crosses the waters into the land of the dead. And Phoenix, phoenix-like, feels younger. "'I wasn't as old as I thought,' she said."

A vision follows. When a little boy brings her a piece of marblecake, Phoenix declares it "acceptable," the Biblical term for an offering without blemish (Leviticus 22:20, Philippians 4:18), which may be recognized by the "lips of the righteous" (Proverbs 10:32). But when she reaches for it, she finds nothing but her own hand in the air. If the sacrament of communion has been offered, it is illusory.

Now to penetrate a barbed-wire fence around the land of the dead, Phoenix has "to creep and crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps." She has become as a little child to enter. But when she seems safely through the fence, images of death cluster about her: dead trees in a withered cotton field, a buzzard, a field of dead corn where a maze replaces the reliable path, and finally a ghostly scarecrow with an "emptiness as cold as ice" within his coat. Macabrely Phoenix dances with the scarecrow, while dry husks, contrasting with the lightly falling pine cones of youth, blow down. Throughout this segment of her ordeal, Phoenix is faithful and challenging. '"Who you watching?'" she questions the buzzard. To the scarecrow, "'Ghost,' she said sharply, 'who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close by'." Shutting her eyes, she "sees" the scarecrow's emptiness and laughs at the hollowness of death. The same faithful gesture which carried her over the waters now affords this revelation.

Phoenix then reaches the "easy way," where going past trees with silvery dead leaves and boarded up cabins "silver from weather," she explains, "'I walking in their sleep'." The imagery is no longer darkly ominous, as she identifies death with sleep. She drinks from a spring sweetened with sweet-gum, a spring older than she is, older than the pheonix; hence, eternal. It is a purification ritual, a rite of renewal; but Phoenix is not yet beyond all menace.

In the dark shadows of the live oaks where the road has gone deeply down, a black dog reminiscent of Faust's devilish poodle, surprises the meditating old woman. She flourishes her cane ineptly; the animal pushes her into the ditch. It is a symbolic burial in the dead weeds. A dream comes, but when she extends her hand, for the second time it is to nothing: "nothing reached down and gave her a pull." The black dog stands guard grinning until a young white man, a hunter who has killed a bob-white, the bird Phoenix did not wish to injure, appears. After her valiant and jocular reply to his laughing question, he lifts her from the ditch. She then creates the diversion which causes him and his dog to chase the black dog away. Their absence enables Phoenix, with her eyes closed again, painstakingly to pick up a nickel he has dropped. When a bird flies by, she sees what she has done: "'God watching me the whole time. I come to stealing'."

This incident is the most puzzling of the story. Having chased away the black dog, the young man returns and mockingly threatens Phoenix with his gun. She is not afraid: she has '"seen plenty go off closer by . . . and for less than what I done'." If this is an acknowledgement that her sins deserve punishment, her fearless humility absolves her, for the young man lowers his gun. He, of course, does not know she has his nickel and apparently lies about his inability to give her a dime. He has advised her once to go home. Now he repeats that advice, adding '"stay home, and nothing will happen to you'." As Phoenix is on no natural journey, the paradoxical truth of his statement has the nature of a final temptation and confirms the negative nature of a young man. Though he has raised her from the gravelike ditch and confronted the black dog, these acts are in response to gestures made by Phoenix. Essentially he denies her charity and would discourage her mission. But Phoenix is '"bond to go on [her] way'," and has nearly reached her destination.

The images which describe Natchez, "the paved city," at Christmas time clearly suggest the Celestial City Bunyan's Christian sought. The service of the lady with the presents is the only freely given charity that Phoenix will receive. Even as she climbs a circular tower to the office which is her destination, she relies on her feet, not her eyesight. Seeing to Phoenix has never been believing. Here she sees "nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and framed with the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head." But the dreams to which Phoenix has reached have left her hand in empty air, and so it will be again.

Having ceremonially announced her presence, Phoenix is silent. Soon she has annoyed both the attendant and the nurse by her lack of response to their questions. She waits for a long time in her dream of a celestial office where "Your Father knows what your needs are before you ask him" (Matthew 6:8), but here they do not know her needs nor can they satisfy her with their prescription. Phoenix recognizes that, as with the hunter in the woods, she must maneuver, and she does.

Apologetically she explains that her inattention is due to age: '" .. . too old at the Surrender'" to go to school, she seems in this context to antedate the fall of the angels and thus is conditioned to expect a spiritual immediacy and understanding clearly not available here. Times have changed, she notes, as "a flicker and then a flame of comprehension" cross her face. In her moment of exultation she had forgotten the reason for her trip, but now she denies that her grandson is dead. '"He is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming'." Gradually winning her way to the city, triumphing over the obstacles of the worn path, Phoenix feels sufficient identity with her descendant ('"We is the only two left in the world'.") to forget for a moment his condition. But though he is like her in that '"He going to last,'" there is a difference: '"He not get his breath. He not able to help himself. .. . He suffer. Between them ranges the gamut of humanity, those who act and those who endure.

Phoenix, who acts, has made her habitual, repetitive journey of aspiration; but the medicine she requests is only "soothing medicine," which even the nurse acknowledges "never heals." Though she regards the grandson as an "obstinate case," the nurse must give Phoenix medicine; for the doctor, authority behind the gold-framed, goldsealed diploma in the tower-office of celestial Natchez, has said Phoenix could have a bottle as long as she came for it. Though the agents of heaven are officially impatient, there is at least the promise that this charity or love will be there when humanity applies. The gesture will elicit a response.

The story, however, cannot end until Phoenix makes it clear that the celestial medicine is not enough. When the attendant offers the old woman a few pennies, Phoenix "stiffly" (she is as obstinate a case as her grandson) begs a nickel. Thus she obtains as much from heavenly charity as she stole from her savior-tempter in the woods. With these funds of mixed virtue, she announces that she will buy her grandson a little paper windmill, a wonder. '"He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world'." So Phoenix will return to the child who is part of herself with more than the soothing medicine of charity. She will militantly '"march . .. back'" carrying an unbelievable symbol, the emblem of Don Quixote's undefeated madness.

Quixote, despite his tremendous efforts to assist humanity, spent himself entirely on illusion. This recollection provides a final comment on Phoenix's existential career. She will eternally tread the worn path for her obstinate human case; she knows that she does not return with a cure, but it seems to help. And for the heavenly office, which has a fifty percent share in the Christmas gift, the irrationality crystallized by the windmill balances the score with a similar implication: charity, regardless of efficacy, will always be dispensed whenever old Aunt Phoenix comes. In the end, Miss Welty would apparently suggest that neither humanity nor heaven forsakes aspiration. Though the ultimate issue remains doubtful, the act elicits a response. This communication is not entirely satisfactory, but it is a comfort, as it creates a meaning.