[In the following review, Jones examines the ways in which "deeper meaning" is contained in the apparently simple language and structure of "A Worn Path. "]

Unlike many of Eudora Welty's stories, "A Worn Path" has a deceptively uncomplex organization. The major portion of the story simply recounts the journey of an old Negro woman into Natchez at Christmas time to obtain medicine for her grandson. Underneath this seemingly naive account lies a persistently annoying suggestion that there is more to the story than appears at a casual reading.

The first hint of the deeper meaning is the old woman's name: Phoenix Jackson. The third sentence announces this name to the reader. The end of the first paragraph tells the reader that the stick she carries "made a grave and persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird." The next paragraph describes her: first her great age, then her color. " . . . a golden color ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the dark." Her hair was black, but "with an odor like copper."

These seemingly coincidental references to birds, great age, and gold might be overlooked, but the reader who knows some of Welty's other work is on the lookout for significant names. Some of the more obvious are Mr. Pétrie in "Petrified Man," Mrs. Rainy in "Shower of Gold," and Florabel in the early version of "The Burning" (Delilah in the later version).

By the end of the second paragraph the reader of "A Worn Path" may well suspect that the name Phoenix, like these others, is not a name chosen at random, nor even because it is a very reasonable name for a Southern Negro woman. The references at the beginning of the story announce rather clearly that a comparison with the legendary bird is intended. The similarity becomes more pronounced as the story progresses. After Phoenix's arduous journey into town, she arrives at the charity ward where she is to obtain the medicine for her grandson, "and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was hung up in her head." In this office Phoenix stands, "a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body." Obviously, like the embodiment of the original Egyptian sun-god that flew home every five hundred years, this Mississippi Phoenix has returned by instinct to the source of her strength to renew her own youth.

Having said simply, "Here I be," she refuses to speak until "At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke." She tells of her little grandson who has swallowed lye: "He going to last. He wear a little patch quilt and peep out holding his mouth open like a little bird." When she receives the medicine, the nurse offers her a nickel. "Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand." Obviously, in the burning and the rising again, the phoenix legend has been carefully paralleled.

There is little doubt that the phoenix is at the core of the story. The main question is why Miss Welty should make the old Negro so completely analogous to this bird. There are numerous possibilities which might involve an allegorical account of the Southern Negro's plight, but in the light of the story's phoenix symbol any such suggestion seems to lack support.

The main reason that Miss Welty chose a Negro seems to be that only a relatively simple, uncivilized individual is worthy of representing the powerful force which inspires such love as hers for her grandchild. Her long journey shows that all her struggles, all her fears, even her petty theft of a nickel from a hunter, were endured almost gaily because she was filled with a love which would cause rejuvenation at the end of the journey. The hunter whom Phoenix met on the path was in the country for what he could get for himself in the form of game; the woman who laced Phoenix's shoes was encumbered with packages; the nurses dispensed cold charity. But Phoenix has no selfish motives, no hate for anything. She does not condemn thorns for holding her, the hunter for pointing his gun at her, or a dog for knocking her into a ditch. She is the one who will last and return down the wellworn path. She moves instinctively, gaily, toward what love demands. As she herself said, "I bound to go on my way." As she leaves the doctor's office she is "going down," but the title itself suggests that she will, like the Phoenix of antiquity, return to the source of her youth again and again.